he had seen poor in a shiny blue business suit being in a comer with three other failures he had gone over and been cordial why young i bear you re writing all the in now bully they recalled the good old days when used to write poetry embarrassed him by say i hate to think of how we been drifting apart i too wish you and mrs would come to dinner some night just let me know and the wife and i want to have you at the house he forgot it but unfortunately ed did not he to inviting him to dinner might as well go and get it over groaned to his wife but don t it simply you the way the poor fish doesn t know the first thing about social etiquette think of him me instead of his wife sitting down and writing us a regular well i guess we re stuck for it that s the trouble with all this class brother he accepted s next plaintive invitation for an evening two weeks off a dinner two weeks off even a family never seems so appalling till the two weeks have disappeared and one comes dismayed to the they had to change the date because of their own dinner to the but at last they gloomily drove out to the house in it was miserable from the beginning the had dinner at six thirty while the never dined before seven permitted himself to be ten minutes late let s make it as short as possible i think we ll duck out quick ill say i have to be at the of ce extra early to morrow he planned the house was it was the second story of a wooden two family dwelling a place of baby carriages old hats hung in the hall smell and a family bible on the parlor table ed and his wife were as awkward and as usual and the other guests were two dreadful families whose names never caught and never desired to catch but he was touched and disconcerted by the way in which praised him we re mighty proud to have old george here to of course you ve all read about his q and in the papers � and the boy s good looking too eh � but what i think of is back in college and what a great old he was and one of the best in the tried to be jovial he worked at it but he could find nothing to interest him in s the of the other guests or the drained stupidity of mrs with her spectacles skin and tight drawn hair he told his best irish story but it sank like cake most moment of all was when mrs peering out of her fog of nursing eight children and cooking and tried to be i suppose you go to and new york right along mr she i get to fairly often it must be awfully interesting i pose you take in all the well to ten the truth mrs thing that me best is a great big at a dutch in the tliey had nothing more to say was sorry but there was no hope the dinner was a at ten rousing out of the stupor of talk he said as as he could we got to be starting ed i ve got a fellow coming to see me early to morrow as helped him with his coat said nice to rub up on the old we must have lunch together p d q mrs sighed on their drive home it was pretty terrible but how mr does admire poor i seems to think i m a little tin and the best looking man in well you re certainly not that but � oh you don t suppose we have to invite them to dinner at our house now do we i hope see here now you didn t say about it to mr did you q honest i didn tl just made a bluff about having him to lunch some time ell oh dear i don t want to hurt their feelings but i don t see how i could stand another evening like this one and suppose somebody like dr and mrs came in when we had the there and thought they were friends of ours i for a week they worried we really ought to invite ed and his wife poor devils i but as they never saw the they forgot them and after a month or two they said that really was the best way just to let it slide it wouldn t be kind to them to have them here they d feel so out of place and hard up in our home they did not speak of the again chapter xvi thb certainty that he not going to be accepted by the made fed guilty and a little absurd but he went more regularly to the at a chamber of commerce luncheon he was regarding the of strikes and again he saw as a prominent citizen his clubs and were food comfortable to his spirit of a decent man in it was required that he to one two or three of the and prosperity lunch to the the or the to the odd red men knights of of and other secret orders by a high degree of sound morals and reverence for the constitution there were four reasons for joining these orders it was the thing to do it was good for business since lodge brothers frequently became customers it gave to americans unable to become or as high worthy and grand to add to the commonplace distinctions of colonel judge and professor and it permitted the american husband to stay away from home for one evening a week the lodge was his his pavement he could shoot pool and talk man talk and 