Chapter 2 takes the narrative back to 1937, during the Great Depression. At this time, Larry and Sally are a poor, young couple traveling to Wisconsin, where Larry will be a professor at the university in Madison. He regards his job as a “fluke” and is eager for the opportunity. While bargaining for temporary lodgings with his ever-dwindling savings, he remarks to himself that his position is temporary because “deep in the Depression, universities had given up promoting and all but given up hiring,” and he sees himself as “a single cork to plug a single hole for a single season” (16). Adding to his material anxiety is the fact that Sally is pregnant with their first child. He romanticizes their difficulties, musing, “In a way, it is beautiful to be young and hard up. With the right wife, and I had her, deprivation becomes a game. […] The storeroom next to the furnace, warm and dry, would be my study until Junior arrived (16).

Chapter 3 introduces Larry’s colleagues and future friends, Sid and Charity. The Langs make a strong impression on Larry, who admires and respects them but is also intimidated by them. This dynamic begins when he learns that Charity is “from” Harvard, an institution that Larry reveres. 

At this transition period in Larry’s own life, he cannot help but be charmed by Charity, Sid, and their connection to Harvard, for in his mind, the couple represents “the cultivation, good manners, consideration for others, cleanliness of body and brightness of mind and dedication to high thinking that were the goals of outsiders like [him] […]. Mixed with [his] liking was […] a respect too sincere to be tainted with envy” (21). As they become acquainted and Larry begins work, these emotions of alienation and wonder become more significant. The narrative also reveals that Charity, like Sally, is pregnant, and this solidifies the growing bond between the two young families.

Chapter 4 introduces more of Larry’s colleagues and their families at a party recounted from 1937, during Prohibition. At this time, Sally is worried about being able to fit in among her new social set, fretting briefly about whether the other women will be wearing long dresses. The party has special significance for the new world they are entering. As Larry muses, “The mere prospect of a square meal could cheer me in those days, and here was much more—light, glitter, chatter, smiles, dressed-up people, friends, audience” (34). Larry is keen to be recognized as a member of this new society, which is as much a separation from his roots growing up in Albuquerque as his time as a student. Though he and Sally are the guests of honor, Sid and Charity are the hosts, and Larry’s infatuation with the couple only intensifies. After dinner, they play the piano, and Sally reads from Homer. The party soon breaks up, leaving Larry with a memorable moment. He thinks, “All of us felt it […] we fell into a four-ply laughing hug, we were so glad to know one another and so glad that all the trillion chances in the universe had brought us to the same town and the same university at the same time” (46).

Chapter 5 includes Larry’s recollections of Madison, as well as several conversations between Larry, Sid, and Charity. They speak about their respective families and the serendipity and opportunity that has brought them to the university. Larry says to Sid, “We are lucky in our parents, teachers, experience, circumstances, friends, times, physical and mental endowment, or we are not (50). 

The decision to pursue English Literature has different connotations for each of them. Sid's father disapproved of his decision to study English, but for Larry, whose parents died when he was younger, there was little pushback. 

When Sally, Larry, Charity, and Sid have a picnic together, Larry notices the tension in Sid and Charity’s relationship. Later, they all go ice-skating, an activity that worries Larry because of Sally’s pregnancy. Caught up in the thought of the fragility and immediacy of new life, he muses, “Coming from the kitchen bringing the rum bottle and the teakettle for a fresh round of drinks, I see them there, and think how in those two women four hearts are beating, and it awes me” (60).

Chapter 6 provides Larry’s imaginary account of Sid and Charity’s courtship. In this fictional episode, Larry imagines Sid visiting Charity’s well-to-do family at their residence in Battell Pond, where they are initially critical of Sid’s modest appearance and Pittsburgh origins but pleased with Sid’s politeness and earnestness. Larry’s imagined descriptions of Charity's Aunt Emily take up much of this fictional account as he describes her reading excerpts from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha to a group of children. He reflects, “The sound of her voice reading will condition how [the children] look upon themselves and the world. […] Nature to them will always be beneficent and female” (66). Larry remarks internally on how important the poem was to Charity and how much it reminded her of childhood. In Larry’s imaginary version of events, although Sid makes a decent impression on the family, the meeting is still awkward, and only after he leaves does Charity tell her family that Sid is of considerable means despite the deficiencies in his dress and mannerisms.