There were some few grains of comfort. Whenever Amory was submerged,
his vanity was the last part to go below the surface, so he could still
enjoy a comfortable glow when "Wookey-wookey," the deaf old housekeeper,
told him that he was the best-looking boy she had ever seen. It had
pleased him to be the lightest and youngest man on the first football
squad; it pleased him when Doctor Dougall told him at the end of a heated
conference that he could, if he wished, get the best marks in school.
But Doctor Dougall was wrong. It was temperamentally impossible for
Amory to get the best marks in school.

Miserable, confined to bounds, unpopular with both faculty and students--
that was Amory's first term. But at Christmas he had returned to
Minneapolis, tight-lipped and strangely jubilant.

"Oh, I was sort of fresh at first," he told Frog Parker patronizingly,
"but I got along fine--lightest man on the squad. You ought to go away
to school, Froggy. It's great stuff."

* * * *

INCIDENT OF THE WELL-MEANING PROFESSOR

On the last night of his first term, Mr. Margotson, the senior master,
sent word to study hall that Amory was to come to his room at nine.
Amory suspected that advice was forthcoming, but he determined to be
courteous, because this Mr. Margotson had been kindly disposed toward him.

His summoner received him gravely, and motioned him to a chair. He
hemmed several times and looked consciously kind, as a man will when
he knows he's on delicate ground.