the paraphernalia involved in the brewing of the draught. He was boarding
rather roughly with a landlady who, like himself, was from "down state"
and who had never cultivated fastidiousness in table-linen or in
tableware, and he sniffed at the fanciful cups and spoons and pink
candle-shades that helped to insure the attendance of the "desirable
people," as the Burrow phrased it, and at the manifold methods of
tea-making that were designed to turn the desirable people into
profitable patrons. That is, he sniffed at the samovar and the lemons and
so on; but when the rum came along he looked away sternly and in silence.

Well, the desirable people came in numbers--studios were the fad that
year--and as soon as Mrs. Palmer Pence understood that Abner was to be
met with somewhere in the Burrow she hastened to enroll herself among
them.

Eudoxia Pence was a robust and vigorous woman in her prime--and by
"prime" I mean about thirty-six. She was handsome and rich and
intelligent and ambitious, and she was hesitating between a career as a
Society Queen and a self-devotion to the Better Things: perhaps she was
hoping to combine both. With her she brought her niece, Miss Clytie
Summers, who had been in society but a month, yet who was enterprising
enough to have joined already a class in sociological science, composed
of girls that were quite the ones to know, and to have undertaken two or
three little excursions into the slums. Clytie hardly felt sure just yet
whether what she most wanted was to gain a Social Triumph or to lend a
Helping Hand. It was Abner's lot to help influence her decision.