golly, I guess you think you own this town!” an embittered labourer complained, one day, as Georgie rode the pony straight through a pile of sand the man was sieving. “I will when I grow up,” the undisturbed child replied. “I guess my grandpa owns it now, you bet!” And the baffled workman, having no means to controvert what seemed a mere exaggeration of the facts could only mutter “Oh, pull down your vest!”
“Don't haf to! Doctor says it ain't healthy!” the boy returned promptly. “But I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll pull down my vest if you'll wipe off your chin!”
This was stock and stencil: the accustomed argot of street badinage of the period; and in such matters Georgie was an expert. He had no vest to pull down; the incongruous fact was that a fringed sash girdled the juncture of his velvet blouse and breeches, for the Fauntleroy period had set in, and Georgie's mother had so poor an eye for appropriate things, where Georgie was concerned, that she dressed him according to the doctrine of that school in boy decoration. Not only did he wear a silk sash, and silk stockings, and a broad lace collar, with his little black velvet suit: he had long brown curls, and often came home with burrs in them.
Except upon the surface (which was not his own work, but his mother's) Georgie bore no vivid resemblance to the fabulous little Cedric. The storied boy's famous “Lean on me, grandfather,” would have been difficult to imagine upon the lips of Georgie. A month after his ninth birthday anniversary, when the Major gave him his pony, he had already become acquainted with the toughest boys in various distant parts of the town, and had convinced them that the toughness of a rich little boy with long curls might be considered in many respects superior to their own. He fought them, learning how to go berserk at a certain point in a fight, bursting into tears of anger, reaching for rocks, uttering wailed threats of murder and attempting to fulfil them. Fights often led to intimacies, and he acquired the art of saying things more exciting than “Don't haf to!” and “Doctor says it ain't healthy!” Thus, on a summer afternoon, a strange boy, sitting bored upon the gate-post of the Reverend Malloch Smith, beheld George Amberson Minafer rapidly approaching on his white pony, and was impelled by bitterness to shout: “Shoot the ole jackass! Look at the girly curls! Say, bub, where'd you steal your mother's ole sash!”
“Your sister stole it for me!” Georgie instantly replied, checking the pony. “She stole it off our clo'es-line an' gave it to me.”
“You go get your hair cut!” said the stranger hotly. “Yah! I haven't got any sister!”
“I know you haven't at home,” Georgie responded. “I mean the one that's in jail.”
“I dare you to get down off that pony!”
Georgie jumped to the ground, and the other boy descended from the Reverend Mr. Smith's gatepost—but he descended inside the gate. “I dare you outside that gate,” said Georgie.
“Yah! I dare you half way here. I dare you—”
But these were luckless challenges, for Georgie immediately vaulted the fence—and four minutes later Mrs. Malloch Smith, hearing strange noises, looked forth from a window; then screamed, and dashed for the pastor's study. Mr. Malloch Smith, that grim-bearded Methodist, came to the front yard and found his visiting nephew being rapidly prepared by Master Minafer to serve as a principal figure in a pageant of massacre. It was with great physical difficulty that Mr. Smith managed to give his nephew a chance to escape into the house, for Georgie was hard and quick, and, in such matters, remarkably intense; but the minister, after a grotesque tussle, got him separated from his opponent, and shook him.
“You stop that, you!” Georgie cried fiercely; and wrenched himself away. “I guess you don't know who I am!”
“Yes, I do know!” the angered Mr. Smith retorted. “I know who you are, and you're a disgrace to your mother! Your mother ought to be ashamed of herself to allow—”
“Shut up about my mother bein' ashamed of herself!”
Mr. Smith, exasperated, was unable to close the dialogue with dignity. “She ought to be ashamed,” he repeated. “A woman that lets a bad boy like you—”
But Georgie had reached his pony and mounted. Before setting off at his accustomed gallop, he paused to interrupt the Reverend Malloch Smith again. “You pull down your vest, you ole Billygoat, you!” he shouted, distinctly. “Pull down your vest, wipe off your chin—an' go to hell!”
Such precocity is less unusual, even in children of the Rich, than most grown people imagine. However, it was a new experience for the Reverend Malloch Smith, and left him in a state of excitement. He at once wrote a note to Georgie's mother, describing the crime according to his nephew's testimony; and the note reached Mrs. Minafer before Georgie did. When he got home she read it to him sorrowfully.
Dear Madam: Your son has caused a painful distress in my household. He made an unprovoked attack upon a little nephew of mine who is visiting in my household, insulted him by calling him vicious names and falsehoods, stating that ladies of his family were in jail. He then tried to make his pony kick him, and when the child, who is only eleven years old, while your son is much older and stronger, endeavoured to avoid his indignities and withdraw quietly, he pursued him into the enclosure of my property and brutally assaulted him. When I appeared upon this scene he deliberately called insulting words to me, concluding with profanity, such as “go to hell,” which was heard not only by myself but by my wife and the lady who lives next door. I trust such a state of undisciplined behaviour may be remedied for the sake of the reputation for propriety, if nothing higher, of the family to which this unruly child belongs.
Georgie had muttered various interruptions, and as she concluded the reading he said: “He's an ole liar!”
“Georgie, you mustn't say 'liar.' Isn't this letter the truth?”
“Well,” said Georgie, “how old am I?”
“Ten.”
“Well, look how he says I'm older than a boy eleven years old.”
“That's true,” said Isabel. “He does. But isn't some of it true, Georgie?”
Georgie felt himself to be in a difficulty here, and he was silent.
“Georgie, did you say what he says you did?”
“Which one?”
“Did you tell him to—to—Did you say, 'Go to hell?”
Georgie looked worried for a moment longer; then he brightened. “Listen here, mamma; grandpa wouldn't wipe his shoe on that ole story-teller, would he?”
“Georgie, you mustn't—”
“I mean: none of the Ambersons wouldn't have anything to do with him, would they? He doesn't even know you, does he, mamma?”
“That hasn't anything to do with it.”
“Yes, it has! I mean: none of the Amberson family go to see him, and they never have him come in their house; they wouldn't ask him to, and they prob'ly wouldn't even let him.”
“That isn't what we're talking about.”
“I bet,” said Georgie emphatically, “I bet if he wanted to see any of 'em, he'd haf to go around to the side door!”
“No, dear, they—”
