Mr. Gilfeather's saloon was not on Avenue C, in spite of the fact that the Licensing Board tried to confine all institutions of the kind to that historic boulevard. Mr. Gilfeather's saloon, to use his own words, was a "high-toned and classy place." In consequence of that fact and perhaps on the condition implied in the term, Mr. Gilfeather was permitted to conduct his high-toned and classy place on a street where he would have no competition. It was a little side street, hardly more than a court, and there was no church within several hundred feet and no school within several thousand. The little street was called Gilfeather's Court, and not by its own name, which I have forgotten; the narrow sidewalk from Main Street to Mr. Gilfeather's door was well trodden; and that door was marked by day by a pair of scraggy and ill-conditioned bay trees and by night by a modest light, in addition. Mr. Gilfeather may have been grieved by the condition of the bay trees, which were real trees, if trees which have their roots in shallow tubs can be called real. At all events, he had resolved to add to the classy appearance of his place, and to that end he had concluded arrangements with the Everlasting Decorating Company for certain palms and ferns, duly set in tubs of earth,--the earth was not important except as it helped in the illusion,--which ferns and palms were warranted not to be affected by heat, dryness, or the fumes of alcohol, and to require no care except an occasional dusting. The men of the Everlasting Decorating Company had just finished the artistic disposal of these palms and ferns--as ordered--about the little mahogany tables, giving to each table a spurious air of seclusion, and had gone away, smiling and happy, having been treated by Mr. Gilfeather, very properly, to whatever they liked. Mr. Gilfeather wandered now among his new possessions, changing this palm by a few inches and that fern by the least fraction of an inch and, altogether, lost in admiring contemplation. What if the glossy green leaves were nothing but varnished green paper? What if the stems were nothing but fibre with a covering of the varnished paper here and there? What else were the real stems made of anyway? And the light in the interior of Mr. Gilfeather's was rather dim, having to filter in through his small front windows after passing the tall blank wall of the building opposite, and--well--his admiration was not undeserved, on the whole. He came back and leaned against the bar. The bar was by no means the feature of the room. It was small and modest, but of solid San Domingo mahogany. Mr. Gilfeather did not want his customers to drink at the bar. He preferred that they should sit at the tables. "How is it, Joe?" he asked, turning to the white-coated barkeeper. "Pretty good, eh?" The silent barkeeper nodded.