“Mine came through Mrs. Sumner. She is one of the patronesses. Jack asked me last week whether I’d like one, and I jumped at the chance.”
At this point Mrs. Adams interposed a new topic of conversation, and the tongues were soon flying at the usual rate over a safe course; but Dunn’s voice, commonly the loudest and most insistent, was only heard when a question was put directly to him. He ate his dinner in moody silence, his face darkly clouded. In the middle of dessert he excused himself, leaving the ice-cream half eaten on his plate.
“It’s tough on poor Jason to get left out of the Fridays,” said Cable, as the door closed behind him.
“What in time did you want to bring it up for?” exclaimed Ben, turning reproachfully on his cousin.
“I didn’t think about it,” answered Louis. “Jason had no business butting in, anyway.”
“He’d have found out about it sooner or later,” suggested Cable. “We were all as much at fault as Louis.”
“Can’t you do something to help him out?” asked Roger. “You might get him an invitation, Ben, I should think.”
“Well, I can’t,” Ben answered impatiently. “I don’t run the things, and none of my people do, either.”
Later in the evening Dunn came into Ben Tracy’s room and sat down on the bed. “Say, Ben,” he began, “can’t you help me to get an invitation for that dancing class? I don’t care anything about the dancing part of it, but it’s going to be awfully disagreeable to hang round here all winter and be the only fellow left out. I shall be ashamed to live.”
Ben didn’t answer. He knew very well that if he took Dunn’s name to his Aunt Mary, she would want to know all about the applicant, his character, appearance, manners, habits, church relations,—all about his father, mother, relatives, acquaintances, ancestors, his father’s business and his grandfather’s. And after her nephew had undergone the cross-examination, she would probably refuse to help him and admonish him to avoid such associations.