"I've often thought that humor was not my forte," he sighed.
"Lord! She doesn't 'cheer up' much!" The collegian did not return to his home for the holidays.

Instead, Isabel joined him, and they went South for the two weeks.

She was proud of her stalwart, good-looking son at the hotel where they stayed, and it was meat and drink to her when she saw how people stared at him in the lobby and on the big verandas--indeed, her vanity in him was so dominant that she was unaware of their staring at her with more interest and an admiration friendlier than George evoked.

Happy to have him to herself for this fortnight, she loved to walk with him, leaning upon his arm, to read with him, to watch the sea with him--perhaps most of all she liked to enter the big dining room with him.
Yet both of them felt constantly the difference between this Christmastime and other Christmas-times of theirs--in all, it was a sorrowful holiday.

But when Isabel came East for George's commencement, in June, she brought Lucy with her--and things began to seem different, especially when George Amberson arrived with Lucy's father on Class Day.
Eugene had been in New York, on business; Amberson easily persuaded him to this outing; and they made a cheerful party of it, with the new graduate of course the hero and center of it all.
His uncle was a fellow alumnus.