“I remember,” said Mr. Kinney sympathetically. “Well, life’s odd enough as we look back.”
“Probably it’s going to be odder still—if we could look forward.”
“Probably.”
They sat and smoked.
“However,” Mr. Morgan remarked presently, “I still dance like an Indian. Don’t you?”
“No. I leave that to my boy Fred. He does the dancing for the family.”
“I suppose he’s upstairs hard at it?”
“No, he’s not here.” Mr. Kinney glanced toward the open door and lowered his voice. “He wouldn’t come. It seems that a couple of years or so ago he had a row with young Georgie Minafer. Fred was president of a literary club they had, and he said this young Georgie got himself elected instead, in an overbearing sort of way. Fred’s red-headed, you know—I suppose you remember his mother? You were at the wedding—”
“I remember the wedding,” said Mr. Morgan. “And I remember your bachelor dinner—most of it, that is.”
“Well, my boy Fred’s as red-headed now,” Mr. Kinney went on, “as his mother was then, and he’s very bitter about his row with Georgie Minafer. He says he’d rather burn his foot off than set it inside any Amberson house or any place else where young Georgie is. Fact is, the boy seemed to have so much feeling over it I had my doubts about coming myself, but my wife said it was all nonsense; we mustn’t humour Fred in a grudge over such a little thing, and while she despised that Georgie Minafer, herself, as much as any one else did, she wasn’t going to miss a big Amberson show just on account of a boys’ rumpus, and so on and so on; and so we came.”