However, all "old citizens" recognizable as gentry received cards, and of course so did their dancing descendants.
The orchestra and the caterer were brought from away, in the Amberson manner, though this was really a gesture--perhaps one more of habit than of ostentation--for servitors of gaiety as proficient as these importations were nowadays to be found in the town.

Even flowers and plants and roped vines were brought from afar--not, however, until the stock of the local florists proved insufficient to obliterate the interior structure of the big house, in the Amberson way.

It was the last of the great, long remembered dances that "everybody talked about"-- there were getting to be so many people in town that no later than the next year there were too many for "everybody" to hear of even such a ball as the Ambersons'.
George, white-gloved, with a gardenia in his buttonhole, stood with his mother and the Major, embowered in the big red and gold drawing room downstairs, to "receive" the guests; and, standing thus together, the trio offered a picturesque example of good looks persistent through three generations.

The Major, his daughter, and his grandson were of a type all Amberson: tall, straight, and regular, with dark eyes, short noses, good chins; and the grandfather's expression, no less than the grandson's, was one of faintly amused condescension.

There was a difference, however.