This orgy of sociability culminated in a gigantic party at the Nassau Inn, where punch was dispensed from immense bowls, and the whole down-stairs became a delirious, circulating, shouting pattern of faces and voices.
"Hi, Dibby--'gratulations!"
"Goo' boy, Tom, you got a good bunch in Cap."
"Say, Kerry--"
"Oh, Kerry--I hear you went Tiger with all the weight-lifters!" "Well, I didn't go Cottage--the parlor-snakes' delight."
"They say Overton fainted when he got his Ivy bid--Did he sign up the first day?--oh, no. Tore over to Murray-Dodge on a bicycle--afraid it was a mistake."
"How'd you get into Cap--you old roue?"
"'Gratulations!"
"'Gratulations yourself. Hear you got a good crowd."
When the bar closed, the party broke up into groups and streamed, singing, over the snow-clad campus, in a weird delusion that snobbishness and strain were over at last, and that they could do what they pleased for the next two years.
Long afterward Amory thought of sophomore spring as the happiest time of his life. His ideas were in tune with life as he found it; he wanted no more than to drift and dream and enjoy a dozen new-found friendships through the April afternoons.
Alec Connage came into his room one morning and woke him up into the sunshine and peculiar glory of Campbell Hall shining in the window.
"Wake up, Original Sin, and scrape yourself together. Be in front of Renwick's in half an hour. Somebody's got a car." He took the bureau cover and carefully deposited it, with its load of small articles, upon the bed.
"Where'd you get the car?" demanded Amory cynically.
"Sacred trust, but don't be a critical goopher or you can't go!"
"I think I'll sleep," Amory said calmly, resettling himself and reaching beside the bed for a cigarette.
"Sleep!"
"Why not? I've got a class at eleven-thirty."
"You damned gloom! Of course, if you don't want to go to the coast--"
With a bound Amory was out of bed, scattering the bureau cover's burden on the floor. The coast... he hadn't seen it for years, since he and his mother were on their pilgrimage.
"Who's going?" he demanded as he wriggled into his B. V. D.'s.
"Oh, Dick Humbird and Kerry Holiday and Jesse Ferrenby and--oh about five or six. Speed it up, kid!"
In ten minutes Amory was devouring cornflakes in Renwick's, and at nine-thirty they bowled happily out of town, headed for the sands of Deal Beach.