Coltfoot did not look shabby nor even wilted, but he wore last year’s summer clothes and straw hat, and his dark, rather grim features seemed thinner.
Annan insisted that they lunch together at the Province Club. They did. Their respective reports revealed their situations since they last had met; Annan had only success to recapitulate,—Coltfoot a cordial and sincerely happy listener.
But it had gone otherwise with Coltfoot. When he resigned from the Planet because his self-respect couldn’t tolerate its policy, the business situation was not such as to make job hunting easy.
“Outside of any salary I’ve income enough to live on rather rottenly,” he remarked, “but I don’t want to.”
“You mean you haven’t a job, Mike?”
“Oh, I’ve got one—one of those stinking magazines which can be bought any day and which always are being ‘revived’ by ‘new blood.’
“I’m supposed to be that fresh and sanguinary reservoir. We may file a petition in bankruptcy or continue. There’s no telling.”
“What an outrage! A man of your calibre——”
“Don’t worry. Somewhere in dusty perspective the job I’m destined to nab is lumbering along the highway of life. I’ll hold it up when it tries to pass by me.”
“You know, Mike, that if ever you’re short——”