Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/107

 had proposed Floyd's name at the Avalon Club soon after his birth, in fact, the day after his christening, and as a consequence of this wise forethought Floyd had found himself, after graduating from college, on the active list of membership. His grandfather had taken him to lunch at the club once or twice in the early summer, and had introduced him to one after another of the lawyers and business men, all of whom had a friendly enough greeting for young Halket. But Floyd had been too much oppressed by the dignity of the place and the age of its members to venture there very often alone, even had he had the opportunity. One Sunday morning in September, however, a craving for a view of more complex civilization than that which was his daily portion seized him; he remembered with an uncommon zest that the chef at the Avalon Club was the most distinguished of his profession; and, having scrubbed and scoured his hands and put on a new suit of clothes, he took a trolley car for the city.

The club was an old house on one of the downtown streets, hemmed in now among stores and office buildings, but retaining the dignity that had made it twenty years before the first "mansion" of Avalon. It was a red brick house with a large bay window swelling out on each side of the wide entrance, and with wrought-iron grills curving up to the middle sashes on each of the six lowest windows; between these the passer-by might have a glimpse, at almost any hour, of gentlemen reading newspapers and smoking cigars or looking idly out upon the street. Floyd, approaching, caught sight of two such venerable heads,