The Heart Line by Gelett Burgess — Read

At five o'clock the next afternoon Blanchard Cayley sitting at a window / of his club, opening the letters which he had just taken from his box in / the office. He had his hat on, a trait which always aroused the ire of / the older members. Beside him, upon a small table, was a glass of / "orange squeeze," which he sipped at intervals.

At this hour there were some twenty members in the large room reading, / talking or playing dominoes. Others came in and went out occasionally, / and of these more than half approached Cayley to say effusively: "Hello, / old man, how goes it? " or some such similarly luminous remark. This was / as offensive to Cayley as the wearing of his hat in the club was to the / old men. Nothing annoyed him so much as to be interrupted while reading / his letters. Yet he always looked up with a smile, and replied: