"I don't know why, but I think of all Harvard men as sissies, like I used to be, and all Yale men as wearing big blue sweaters and smoking pipes." Monsignor chuckled.
"I'm one, you know." "Oh, you're different--I think of Princeton as being lazy and good-looking and aristocratic--you know, like a spring day.

Harvard seems sort of indoors--" "And Yale is November, crisp and energetic," finished Monsignor.
"That's it." They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.
"I was for Bonnie Prince Charlie," announced Amory.
"Of course you were--and for Hannibal--" "Yes, and for the Southern Confederacy." He was rather sceptical about being an Irish patriot--he suspected that being Irish was being somewhat common--but Monsignor assured him that Ireland was a romantic lost cause and Irish people quite charming, and that it should, by all means, be one of his principal biasses.
After a crowded hour which included several more cigarettes, and during which Monsignor learned, to his surprise but not to his horror, that Amory had not been brought up a Catholic, he announced that he had another guest.

This turned out to be the Honorable Thornton Hancock, of Boston, ex-minister to The Hague, author of an erudite history of the Middle Ages and the last of a distinguished, patriotic, and brilliant family.
"He comes here for a rest," said Monsignor confidentially, treating Amory as a contemporary.

"I act as an escape from the weariness of agnosticism, and I think I'm the only man who knows how his staid old mind is really at sea and longs for a sturdy spar like the Church to cling to." Their first luncheon was one of the memorable events of Amory's early life.

He was quite radiant and gave off a peculiar brightness and charm.