Ellesworth looked pained. A “steady job” sounded to him like a “ground floor” to me.
After that I saw nothing of him for weeks. But I didn’t forget him. I looked about and secured for him a job as a canvassing agent for a book firm at a salary of five dollars a week, and a commission of one-tenth of one per cent.
I was waiting to tell him of his good luck, when I chanced to see him at the club again.
But he looked transformed.
He had on a long frock coat that reached nearly to his knees. He was leading a little procession of very heavy men in morning coats, upstairs towards the private luncheon rooms. They moved like a funeral, puffing as they went. I had seen company directors before and I knew what they were at sight.
“It’s a small club and rather inconvenient,” Ellesworth was saying, “and the horizon of some of its members rather narrow,” here he nodded to me as he passed,—“but I can give you a fairly decent lunch.”
I watched them as they disappeared upstairs.
“That’s Ellesworth, isn’t it?” said a man near me. It was the same man who had asked about him before.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Giving a lunch to his directors, I suppose,” said my friend; “lucky dog.”