"
The men laughed in a somewhat perfunctory way, and the cards having
been dealt, the game went on. They were all members of the club except
Snaffle, and they all knew that this rather doubtful individual had no
business there at all. There had of late been a good deal of feeling in
the club because the rule that forbade the bringing of strangers into
the house had been so often violated. The St. Filipe was engaged in the
perfectly fruitless endeavor to enforce the regulation that visitors
might be admitted provided the same person was not brought into the
rooms twice within a fixed period. Some of the members violated the
rule unconsciously, since it was awkward to invite a friend into the
club and to qualify the courtesy with the condition that he had not
been asked by anybody else within the prescribed period, and it was
easy to forget this ungracious preliminary. Some few of the members--
since in every club there will be men who are gentlemen but by brevet,
--deliberately took advantage of the uncertainty which always arises
from so anomalous a regulation, and the result of deliberate and of
involuntary breaches of the rule had been that the club house was made
free with by outsiders to a most unpleasant extent.
Not yet ready to do away with the by-law, since many members found--it
convenient and pleasant to take their friends into the club-house, the
managers of the affairs of the St.
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