One paid cash for luncheon or dinner. The dues were fifty dollars yearly, dumped into a locked box in cash. Of course, some one man managed the Pewter Mug. Several were suspected. But nobody in the large membership was certain of his identity. Thither strolled Barry Annan after a scorching trip uptown. Wilted members drifted in to dawdle over cold dishes,--clever youngsters who had made individual splashes in their several puddles; professionals all,--players, writers, painters, composers, architects, engineers, physicians, sailors, soldiers,--the roll call represented all the creative and interpretive professions that America is heir to. Annan’s left-hand neighbour at the long table was a boy officer whose aëroplane had landed successfully on Pike’s Peak, to the glory of the service and the star-spangled banner. On his right a young man named Bruce ate cold lobster languidly. He was going to Newport to paint a great and formidable lady--“gild the tiger-lily,” as Annan suggested, to the horror of Mr. Bruce. She had been a very great lady. Traditionally she was still a social power. But she had seen everything, done everything, and now, grown old and bad-tempered, she passed her declining days in making endless lists of people she did not want to know. She was Annan’s great-aunt. She had never forgiven him for becoming a common public entertainer. Once Annan wrote her: “I’ve a list of people you have overlooked and whom you certainly would not wish to know.” Swallowing her dislike she wrote briefly requesting him to send her the list. He sent her the New York Directory. The breach was complete. “What can you offer me that I cannot offer myself?” Annan had inquired impudently, at their final interview. “If you come out of that Greenwich gutter and behave as though you were not insane I can make you the most eligible young man in New York,” she had replied. He preferred his “gutter,” and she washed her gem-laden hands of him. But the curse clung to Barry Annan. “He’s a nephew of Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt,” was still remembered against him when his name and his stories irritated the less successful among his confrères. The conclusion of the envious was that he had a “pull.” Bruce rose to go--a dark, sleek young man, trimmed in Van Dyck fashion, with long, acquisitive fingers and something in his suave manner that suggested perpetual effort to please. But his eyes were opaque. “Tell my aunt,” said Annan, “that if she’ll behave herself she can come and live a sporting life with me in Governor’s Place, and bring her cat, parrot, and geranium.” Bruce’s shocked features were Annan’s reward. He grinned through the rest of luncheon; was still grinning when he left the Pewter Mug. Outside he met Coltfoot, hot and without appetite. “It’s ten degrees hotter down-town,” grunted the latter. “I’m empty, but the idea of food is repugnant. Where are you going, Barry?”