“That’s news to me,” said Mauney. “I appreciate getting in on a little gossip like this, too. Who’s your friend here, Miss MacDowell?”
“I haven’t any,” she said. “Nutbrown Hennigar fusses over me at times. But I’m here just because François met me in the east corridor this morning and told me I had to come up for dinner. I never made any bids for getting in with this crowd. I don’t fit, anyway. But François insisted, and then Madame ’phoned me, so what could I do?”
“They seem like a friendly bunch of people, though,” Mauney remarked.
“Friendly!” she returned. “Why not? They’re pretty nearly all related. There is Alfred Tanner—he’s a real fellow—but he married Senator Hennigar’s other daughter. Everybody else here, if not related to Hennigar, has a very special stand in. It’s the great eternal family compact. I’ll mention that in my hand-book, too.”
“But the senator seems to be a good old chap!”
“Certainly. I admire him. You know how he made all his money, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Jam,” said Miss MacDowell simply. It was apparent from her animation that she loved talking about the man. Mauney wondered at her, nevertheless, for it struck him that she was ill-advised to say so much to a stranger. Fortunately, everything she had said, thus far, had struck home with unusual force and greatly appealed to him. But how could she take the risk of committing herself so freely?
“You see, it’s just like this,” she said, lowering her voice and smiling with the mischievous glee of a child consciously undertaking some deviltry, “Hennigar discovered early in life that plums and ginger-root blend in a manner most gratifying to the palate. He persevered with his formula. With the austere self-denial of the specialist, he worked hard and became the arch-confectioner. He pyramided profits into advertising—”