minute! My idea is--don't forget it's a confidential one, but
I'm devilish right about it, young Georgie!--it's this: Fanny uses your
mother for a decoy duck. She does everything in the world she can to
keep your mother's friendship with Eugene going, because she thinks
that's what keeps Eugene about the place, so to speak. Fanny's always
with your mother, you see; and whenever he sees Isabel he sees Fanny.
Fanny thinks he'll get used to the idea of her being around, and some
day her chance may come! You see, she's probably afraid--perhaps she
even knows, poor thing!--that she wouldn't get to see much of Eugene if
it weren't for Isabel's being such a friend of his. There! D'you see?"

"Well--I suppose so." George's brow was still dark, however. "If you're
sure whatever talk there is, is about Aunt Fanny. If that's so--"

"Don't be an ass," his uncle advised him lightly, moving away. "I'm off
for a week's fishing to forget that woman in there, and her pig of a
husband." (His gesture toward the Mansion indicated Mr. and Mrs. Sydney
Amberson.) "I recommend a like course to you, if you're silly enough to
pay any attention to such rubbishings! Good-bye!"

George was partially reassured, but still troubled: a word haunted him
like the recollection of a nightmare. "Talk!"

He stood looking at the houses across the street from the Mansion;
and though the sunshine was bright upon them, they seemed mysteriously
threatening. He had always despised them, except the largest of them,
which was the home of his henchman, Charlie Johnson. The Johnsons had
originally owned a lot three hundred feet wide, but they had sold all of
it except the meager frontage before the house itself, and five
houses were now crowded into the space where one used to squire it so
spaciously. Up and down the street, the same transformation had taken
place: every big, comfortable old brick house now had two or three
smaller frame neighbours crowding up to it on each side, cheap-looking
neighbours, most of them needing paint and not clean--and yet, though
they were cheap looking, they had cost as much to build as the big brick
houses, whose former ample yards they occupied. Only where George stood
was there left a sward as of yore; the great, level, green lawn that
served for both the Major's house and his daughter's. This serene
domain--unbroken, except for the two gravelled carriage-drives--alone
remained as it had been during the early glories of the Amber