Mrs. Still, who lived but a few doors from the Jarrods, called upon Mrs. Jarrod the next afternoon, and after welcoming her cordially to Tamawaca and congratulating her upon acquiring pretty Lake View, invited her and Mr. Jarrod to attend a card party at the yacht club that evening. Jarrod didn't play "five hundred," but when the good-natured Stills called for them soon after dinner he complacently accompanied his wife to the club, which was located half way around the bay and was reached by one of Wilder's ferry-boats after a five minutes' ride from the Tamawaca dock. It was a pretty building, gay with electric lights. On the ground floor was a reception room filled with sailing trophies, and a big room reached through swinging doors which was devoted to the needs of thirsty men. The upper floor was one large room set with card tables, and here Mrs. Still introduced Mrs. Jarrod to a numerous concourse of merry folks who were all impatient to get at the cards and gamble fiercely for two hours or so to win a set of prizes that represented an outlay of about seventy-five cents in the aggregate. When the "prizes" were won they were usually either dropped quietly into the lake on the way home or reserved to be gambled for at some other social gathering. I knew one lady who won the same prize seven times in the same season, and likewise gave it away seven times. The only reason that she kept it then was that her guests flatly refused to accept it as a trophy, it having become sadly shop-worn. Jarrod was ushered by Geo. B. into the thirst room and introduced to a solemn group of three or four men who wore yachting caps and shirts, and had brass buttons sewn on their blue serge coats. "Howdy," said Berwin, a man with a bald head and serious eyes. "Hear you've bought a cottage, Jarrod. Want to join our Club?" "I'd like to," the lawyer replied, hesitating; "but I've--" "Ten dollars, please. That's the price for season membership." Jarrod paid it. "But I've got no sail-boat," said he. "That's all right," observed Stakes, a little fellow with a peppery and pugnacious countenance. "None of the crowd upstairs owns a sail-boat, but they're all club members, just the same. We four--Homperton, Berwin, Diller and myself--own boats, and we're the yacht club in reality. We built this shop on credit, and run it ourselves, but we let the folks upstairs support it by paying ten dollars a year. It pleases 'em to be members of a yacht club, you know, and helps us out financially. Much obliged for your donation." "Do I have a vote?" asked Jarrod, much amused by this frank explanation. "Of course; but according to our constitution only men with sail-boats can be officers of the club. So you must vote for us." "Once," remarked Diller, a fine looking chap who was intently interested in a squat bottle and a siphon, "I had money and ambition and no sail-boat. Who was I, anyhow? A landsman! A nobody! Didn't belong to a yacht club, or anything else."