Here the veteran millionaires of Grand Republic, like Hiram Sparrock, played bridge or backgammon every evening, with a hot toddy exactly at eleven. If the club servants were not English by origin nor baronially trained, the Tudor architecture of the members’ faces turned them so within six months, and when any old-enough member saw a stranger in those crypts, he would summon Jeems and puff, “Who’s that fella? Throw him out.” The inner ring of the club regarded the coming of new industries to town as vulgar, and felt placidly that there was enough money in Grand Republic already.

They owned most of it.

No one had ever dared propose the names of Randy Spruce or Wilbur Feathering for membership; Curtiss Havock had been ignored, despite his father’s solidity; and Neil Kingsblood had been elected chiefly because he was the son-in-law of Morton Beehouse. It was only by a rare slip that his brother Robert had been elected also.

Nothing in the higher social events of the year in Grand Republic was more significant than the Federal Club’s Auld Lang Syne Holiday Stag, holden annually between Christmas and New Year’s, which enabled the members to escape from the young relatives who are so especially present and flippant at Yuletide, and to bask in the clear sun of male conversation. Dinner-jackets were obligatory, mutton chops were regulation, and they were never affronted by salads or ice cream. The whole affair resembled a bachelor-dinner given by J. P. Morgan the Elder to King Edward VII, but it was called Supper, and spread in the Pillsbury Grill, which had a bold atmosphere of oak tables, Flemish tiles and pewter mugs.

The Stag this year had a distinguished array of Sparrocks, Wargates, Beehouses, Grannicks, Tarrs, a Havock, a Timberlane, a Drover, a Mari, a Prutt, a Trock, a general, a commander, and an Episcopal bishop.

Neil, with his feeling of walking constantly on an icy roof-slope, did not want to go, but he had to please Mr. Prutt. He carefully brought his gold cigarette case and carefully left outside his new opinions. During the conversation before the supper, he had to skate around somewhat rapidly to avoid Brother Robert and Hal Whittick, and he took refuge with Rodney Aldwick.

After supper, they worshipped with church-warden pipes and with tankards of old bitter ale, which most of them disliked and changed for highballs as soon as it seemed reverent. Then—feet upon the table, which was also obligatory except for the sixty per cent. or so of members with arthritis—they began the canonical Auld Lang Syne Hy-Syne, an annual presentation of short, funny talks, occasionally with an important financial announcement, to be held confidential. This secrecy was almost guaranteed by the presence and the consent of Gregory Marl, the large, quiet man who had inherited both of the two newspapers published in Grand Republic.

The president of the club, Dr. Roy Drover, introduced Rod Aldwick as speaker.