THE STORY OF IGNATIUS, THE ALMONER
THE STORY OF IGNATIUS, THE ALMONER
Though this happened at the Butler Penfields' garden party, the results concern Miss Mabel Dunbar more than any one else, except, perhaps, one other. Mabel had been invited, as she was invited everywhere, partly because she was a very pretty girl, and helped to make things go, and partly through public policy.
"So long as the dear child remains unmarried," Mrs. Fessenden had said, "we must continue to buy our tea from her."
For Mabel owed her amber draperies to the tea she sold and everybody bought because her grandmother had lived on Washington Square. In society, to speak of tea was to speak of Mabel Dunbar; to look in Mabel's deep brown eyes was to think of tea, and, incidentally, of cream and sugar.
"I used to consider her clever," Mrs. Fessenden remarked, "until she became so popular with clever men.... It is really most discouraging.... See, there is Lena Livingston, who has read Dante, pretending to talk to her own brother-in-law, while Mabel, who is not even married, walks off with Archer Ferris and Horace Hopworthy, one on each side."