sort of satisfaction, a Peñaverde,—ten to one he looked far too aesthetic to suit even the most tolerant employer. He had never entered an office without feeling the inappropriateness of his background. And now he would know for sure whether the pool he had dipped into had dyed him.
All he had in common with the genial American cashier was Harvard,—they dimly recalled having seen each other there,—but that was enough to secure him fifteen minutes conversation in private. In the end the cashier invited him to call at the apartment he shared with three other Americans, one of whom "might have an idea." One idea, thought Grover, ought not to be too severe a tax on the pooled brains of four.
He stopped at the barber's to have the chief badge of his bohemianism shorn to a more pragmatic scale, and after dining alone made his way to the address of his countrymen.
He was directed to an apartment that reminded him of a dormitory. One of the bachelors was playing the piano, and another was taking a shower-bath, their combined din being pierced by a third young man's loud elucidation of the latest international loan. Grover's friend was smoking a pipe with his feet on the mantel and a copy of the Saturday Evening Post on his knees. It was just like the Y. M. C. A.
Grover saw the role he would have to play,—he had done it often enough in the Harvard Union,—and
