never! I'm damned
if I'd have recognised you. How you've changed! I heard you were
coming back; your boy told me--fine chap that, Trojan, you've every
reason to be proud. Well, to be sure! Come in and have a whisky and
see the new club-rooms! Just been done up, and fairly knocks spots out
of the old place."

He was extremely cordial, but Harry felt that he was under criticism.
Barbour's eyes looked him up and down; there was almost a challenge in
his glance, as though he said, "We are quite ready to receive you if
you are one of us. But you must move with the times. It's no good for
you to be the same as in the old days. We've all changed, and so must
you!"

The club was magnificent. Harry stared in amazement at its luxury and
comfort. Its wonderful armchairs and soft carpets, its decorations and
splendid space astonished him. The old place had seemed rather fine to
him as a boy, but he saw now how bad it had really been. He sank into
one of the armchairs with that strange sense of angry resentment that
he had felt before in the street gaining hotly upon him.

"It's good, isn't it?" said Barbour, smiling with an almost personal
satisfaction, as though he had been largely responsible for the present
improvements. "The membership's going up like anything, and we're
thinking of raising subscriptions. Very decent set of fellows on it,
too. Oh! we're getting along splendidly here. You must have noticed
the change in the place!"

"I should think I have," said Harry--the tone of his voice was a little
regretful; "but it's not only here--it's the whole town. It's
smartened up beyond all knowing. But I must confess that, dirty and
dingy as they were, I regret the old club-rooms. There was something
extraordinarily homely and comfortable about them. Do you remember
that old armchair with the hole in it? Gone long ago, of course, but I
shall never sit in anything as nice again."

"Ah, sentiment," said Barbour, smiling; "you won't find much of it in
Pendragon nowadays. It doesn't do. Sentimentalists are always Tories,
you'll find; always wanting to keep the old things, and all against
progress. We're all for progress now. We've got some capital men on
the Town Council--Harding, Belfast, Rogers, Snaith--you won't remember
them. There's some talk of pulling down the Cove and building new
lodging-houses there. We're crowded out in the summer, and there are
more people every year."

"Pull down the C