From the desolate, uninviting hall, Oliver passed into the large meeting-room of the club fronting the street, now filled with members, many of whom had dropped in for half an hour on their way back to their offices. Of these some of the older and more sedate men, like Judge Bowman and Mr. Pancoast, were playing chess; others were seated about the small tables, reading, sipping toddies, or chatting together. A few of the younger bloods, men of forty or thereabouts, were standing by the uncurtained windows watching the belles of the town in their flounced dresses and wide leghorn hats, out for an afternoon visit or promenade. Among these men Oliver recognized Howard Thom, son of the Chief-Justice, poor as a church mouse and fifty years of age if a day. Oliver was not surprised to find Thom craning his neck at the window. He remembered the story they told of this perennial beau--of how he had been in love with every woman in and around Kennedy Square, from Miss Clendenning down to the latest debutante, and of how he would tell you over his first toddy that he had sown his wild oats and was about to settle down for life, and over his last--the sixth, or seventh, or eighth--that the most adorable woman in town, after a life devoted to her service, had thrown him over, and that henceforth all that was left to him was a load of buckshot and six feet of earth. Oliver bowed to those of the members he knew, and wheeling one of the clumsy mahogany chairs into position, sat down to await the arrival of Colonel Clayton. Meanwhile his eyes wandered over the desolate room with its leather-covered chairs and sofas and big marble mantel bare of every ornament but another moon-faced clock--a duplicate of the one at the bank--and two bronze candelabra flanking each end, and then on the portraits of the dead and gone members which relieved the sombre walls--one in a plum-colored coat with hair tied in a queue being no other than his own ancestor. He wondered to himself where lay the charm and power to attract in a place so colorless, and he thought, as was his habit with all interiors, how different he would want it to be if he ever became a member. His fresh young nature revolted at the dinginess and bareness of the surroundings. He couldn't understand why the men came here and what could be the fascination of sitting round these cold tables talking by the hour when there was so much happiness outside--so much of light and air and sunshine free to everybody.