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 anything like this one and I'd like to get something better if I could.”

“Uh,” went on his interviewer, rather pleased by the innocent tribute to the superiority of his store. “Well, that's reasonable enough. But there isn't anything here right now that I could offer you. We don't make many changes. But if you'd like to be a bell-boy, I can tell you where you might get a place. They're looking for an extra boy in the hotel inside there right now. The captain of the boys was telling me he was in need of one. I should think that would be as good as helping about a soda fountain, any day.”

Then seeing Clyde's face suddenly brighten, he added: “But you mustn't say that I sent you, because I don't know you. Just ask for Mr. Squires inside there, under the stairs, and he can tell you all about it.”

At the mere mention of work in connection with so imposing an institution as the Green-Davidson, and the possibility of his getting it, Clyde first stared, felt himself tremble the least bit with excitement, then thanking his advisor for his kindness, went direct to a green-marbled doorway which opened from the rear of this drug-store into the lobby of the hotel. Once through it, he beheld a lobby, the like of which, for all his years but because of the timorous poverty that had restrained him from exploring such a world, was more arresting, quite, than anything he had seen before. It was all so lavish. Under his feet was a checkered black-and-white marble floor. Above him a coppered and stained and gilded ceiling. And supporting this, a veritable forest of black marble columns as highly polished as the floor—glassy smooth. And between the columns which ranged away toward three separate entrances, one right, one left and one directly forward toward Dalrymple Avenue—were lamps, statuary, rugs, palms, chairs, divans, tête-à-têtes—a prodigal display. In short it was compact, of all that gauche luxury of appointment which, as some one once sarcastically remarked, was intended to supply “exclusiveness to the masses.” Indeed, for an essential hotel in a great and successful American commercial city, it was almost too luxurious. Its rooms and hall and lobbies and restaurants were entirely too richly furnished, without the saving grace of either simplicity or necessity.

As Clyde stood, gazing about the lobby, he saw a large company of people—some women and children, but principally men as he could see—either walking or standing about and talking or idling in the chairs, side by side or alone. And in heavily draped