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Look, see, says John Cole, who didn’t have the great learning I had, but had a little none the less. Well, he says, by my mother’s loving heart, we do fulfil half of that requirement.

Straight in, and there was a highly pleasant quotient of good dark wood, dark panelling floor to ceiling, a long bar as sleek and black as an oil-seep. Then we felt like bugs in a girl’s bonnet. Alien. Pictures of those fine American scenes of grandeur that are more comfortable to gaze on than to be in. Man there behind the bar, complete with chamois cloth, philosophically polishing a surface that needed no polishing. It was plain to see all was a new enterprise. There was a carpenter finishing up on the stairs going to the upward rooms, fitting the last section of a rail. The bartender had his eyes closed or he might have seen us sooner. Might even have given us the bum’s rush. Then the eyes open and instead of the drawing back and cussing at us we ex- pected this more discerning individual smiled, looked pleased to see us.

You looking for clean boys? says John Cole, a tincture pugilistic right enough, still prophesying menaces.

You are right welcome, the man says. We are? said John Cole.

You are. You are just the thing, especially the smaller one there, he says.

That was me he was meaning. Then, as if he feared John Cole might take offence and stamp out away – But you’ll do too, he says. I’m giving fifty cents a night, fifty cents a night each, and all you can drink, if you drink easy, and you can bunk down in the stable behind us, yes indeed, cosy and comfortable and warm as cats. That’s if you give satisfaction.

And what’s the work? says John, suspicious.

Easiest work in the world, he says.

Such as?

Why, dancing, dancing is all it is. Just dancing.

We ain’t no dancers far as I know, says John, flummoxed now, violently disappointed.

You don’t need to be dancers as such in the accepted dictionary definition of the word, says the man. It’s not high-kicking anyhow.

Alright, says John, lost now just from a sense aspect – but, we ain’t got no clothes to be dancing in, that’s for sure, he said, displaying his very particular condition.