all those things he had wished "somebody" would
tell him.

Old Sam, shuffling in with the breakfast tray, found the Major in his
accustomed easy-chair by the fireplace--and yet even the old darkey
could see instantly that the Major was not there.

Chapter XXXI

When the great Amberson Estate went into court for settlement, "there
wasn't any," George Amberson said--that is, when the settlement was
concluded there was no estate. "I guessed it," Amberson went on. "As
an expert on prosperity, my career is disreputable, but as a prophet
of calamity I deserve a testimonial banquet." He reproached himself
bitterly for not having long ago discovered that his father had never
given Isabel a deed to her house. "And those pigs, Sydney and Amelia!"
he added, for this was another thing he was bitter about. "They won't
do anything. I'm sorry I gave them the opportunity of making a polished
refusal. Amelia's letter was about half in Italian; she couldn't
remember enough ways of saying no in English. One has to live quite a
long while to realize there are people like that! The estate was badly
crippled, even before they took out their 'third,' and the 'third' they
took was the only good part of the rotten apple. Well, I didn't ask them
for restitution on my own account, and at least it will save you some
trouble, young George. Never waste any time writing to them; you mustn't
count on them."

"I don't," George said quietly. "I don't count on anything."

"Oh, we'll not feel that things are quite desperate," Amberson laughed,
but not with great cheerfulness. "We'll survive, Georgie--you will,
especially. For my part I'm a little too old and too accustomed to fall
back on somebody else for supplies to start a big fight with life:
I'll be content with just surviving, and I can do it on an
eighteen-hundred-dollar--a-year consulship. An ex-congressman can always
be pretty sure of getting some such job, and I hear from Washington the
matter's about settled. I'll live pleasantly enough with a pitcher of
ice under a palm tree, and black folks to wait on me--that part of it
will be like home--and I'll manage to send you fifty dollars every now
and then, after I once get settled. So much for me! But you--of course
you've had a poor training for making your own way, but you're only a
boy after all, and the stuff of the old stock is in you. It'll come out
and do something. I'll never forgive myself about that deed: it would
have giv