When the disbanding came, Amory set out post haste for Minneapolis,
for Sally Weatherby's cousin, Isabelle Borge, was coming to spend the
winter in Minneapolis while her parents went abroad. He remembered
Isabelle only as a little girl with whom he had played sometimes when he
first went to Minneapolis. She had gone to Baltimore to live--but since
then she had developed a past.

Amory was in full stride, confident, nervous, and jubilant. Scurrying
back to Minneapolis to see a girl he had known as a child seemed the
interesting and romantic thing to do, so without compunction he wired
his mother not to expect him . . . sat in the train, and thought about
himself for thirty-six hours.

* * * *

"PETTING"

On the Triangle trip Amory had come into constant contact with that great
current American phenomenon, the "petting party."

None of the Victorian mothers--and most of the mothers were Victorian--
had any idea how casually their daughters were accustomed to be kissed.
"Servant-girls are that way," says Mrs. Huston-Carmelite to her popular
daughter. "They are kissed first and proposed to afterward."

But the Popular Daughter becomes engaged every six months between sixteen
and twenty-two, when she arranges a match with young Hambell, of Cambell
& Hambell, who fatuously considers himself her first love, and between
engagements the P. D. (she is selected by the cut-in system at dances,