y-one. It was his
first job. Ambition tickled his ribs; Fame leaned familiarly over his
shoulder; Destiny made eyes at him. His name was Bunn.

There was also a smooth-shaven, tired-eyed, little man who had written a
volume on Welsh-rarebits and now drew cartoons. His function was to
torment Bunn; and Bunn never knew it.

A critic rose from the busy company and departed, to add lustre to his
paper and a nail in the coffin of the only really clever play in town.

"Kismet," observed little Dill, who did the daily cartoon for the
_Post_, "no critic would be a critic if he could be a fifth-rate anybody
else--or," he added, looking at Bunn, "even a journalist."

"Is that supposed to be funny?" asked Bunn complacently. "_I_ intend to
do art criticism for the _Herald_."

"What's the objection to my getting a job on it, too?" inquired Quest,
setting his empty glass aside and signalling the waiter for a re-order.
He expected surprise and congratulation.

Somebody said, "_You_ take a job!" so impudently that Quest reddened and
turned, showing his narrow, defective teeth.

"It's my choice that I haven't taken one," he snarled. "Did you think
otherwise?"

"Don't get huffy, Stuyve," said a large, placid, fat novelist, whose
financial success with mediocre fiction had made him no warmer favourite
among his brothers.

A row of artists glanced up and coldly continued their salad, their
Vandyck beards all wagging in unison.

"I want you to understand," said Quest, leaning both elbows offensively
on Dill's table, "that the job I ask for I expect to get."

"You might have expected that once," said the cool young man who had
spoken before.

"And I do now!" retorted Quest, raising his voice. "Why not?"

Somebody said: "You can furnish good copy, all right, Quest; you do it
every day that you're not working."

Quest, astonished and taken aback at such a universal revelation of the
contempt in which he seemed to be held, found no reply ready--nothing at
hand except another glass of whiskey and soda.

Minute after minute he sat there among them, sullen, silent, wincing,
nursing his chagrin in deepening wrath and bitterness; and his clouding
mind perceived in the rebuke nothing that he had ever done to deserve
it.

Who the devil were these rag-tags and bob-tails of the world who
presumed to snub him--these restaurant-haunting outsiders, among whom he
condescended to sit, feeling always the subtle flattery they ought to
acco