"You'll go on reading it. But you'll have to pretty your cowboys if you make the pictures for it. Hulston usually illustrates it. He can draw a cowboy that would make a bunch of violets look coarse."
"I'm afraid I couldn't——"
"Of course you couldn't. But you'll find work. Some of the magazines are becoming reckless and printing stories of cowboys that are almost real. Come along to the club. You'll meet some fellows there. The chap that printed my book is dining with me, but he'll slip off early and we can have the evening together."
"I liked your book," Ewing ventured, when they were in the street.
"Well, that's comforting. I dare say it was easier to read than it was to write. But about this club you're going to—it's a little place we've started lately—illustrators, newspaper men, book writers and that ilk. You must join. I believe I'll be safe in putting you up."
"I never joined a club," Ewing confessed. "Are there conditions?"
"Rigid ones—you must have ten dollars for the entrance-fee, and not be a leper."
"Well"—Ewing debated—"I have the money——"
"That's all you need think about. The other part is ours. We have you in to dine and look you over. Lots of men go there with an idea that they must be witty. One fellow was turned down last week for springing 'made' jokes at the table. I believe he spoke of 'quail on trust' as we were served with that bird—and in the hearing of three members of the board of Abbots. That settled him, of course. They didn't need his imitations of a German dialect comedian, which he sought to convulse them with later. Another man was turned down lately for saying, 'Oh, how quaintly bohemian!' after he'd looked about the grill room. Another was ejected for playing 'chopsticks' on the piano with the edges of his hands. They didn't even let him get to the table. That's the sort of thing—and we're strict, even though we need the money. I'm bursar and I know. There are weird jests about my decamping with the club funds, but I've never had enough surplus yet to take me beyond Rahway."
They ascended the steps of a dingy-fronted brick house in Clinton Place, a little out of the Broadway rush. Passing through a bare, echoing hall, they entered one of the two dining rooms of the club, connected by immense sliding doors, now thrown open. They were broad, lofty rooms with stained floors, mantels of gray marble, and rich old doors of polished mahogany framed in white casements—the drawing rooms of some staid family of a bygone generation, before the trade army had invaded this once quiet neighborhood.