Of course she asked Mrs. Veneer to one of her afternoon-teas, and made much of her, for she was wealthy, pretty, and presentable, and at a glance Mrs. Cordial perceived that it was Mrs. Veneer’s ambition to become a social personage. So she took upon herself the pleasant, and not altogether unprofitable, task of showing Mrs. Veneer about, and introducing her here, there and everywhere, a service which the wealthy manufacturer’s wife recognised in many substantially generous ways. Mrs. Cordial, at the same time, was able to become a benefactress of singers and instrumentalists of the benefit-concert order, for Mrs. Veneer, having at present few engagements for which she had not paid, was, at the instance of Mrs. Cordial, a prolific purchaser of tickets for concerts and recitals, in addition to charity bazaars and amateur theatrical performances. As Mrs. Cordial always took care to impress upon the _bénéficiaires_ the extreme financial importance of Mrs. Veneer’s acquaintance, they eagerly sought the honour of an introduction, which flattered her as a would-be patron of the arts, and generally secured them engagements to sing or play at her little dinner-parties or afternoon-teas. And these were the germs of her present “crushes”, yet was her social progress not rapid enough to satisfy her ambition. So Mrs. Cordial proposed that her _protégé_ should invite to dinner the chairman of a company of which her husband was an influential director and who was an impecunious lordling of high degree, while she would send invitations to some of the most distinguished of her own acquaintances, on Mrs. Veneer’s behalf, to meet his lordship. At the same time she recommended, as being more stylish, the addition of the prefix Vere to the patronymic Veneer. And a very gorgeous dinner-party it was; for Gunter’s had _carte blanche_. I do not know why I was among the guests, except that Mrs. Vere Veneer wanted to show Mrs. Cordial that she, too, had friends of her own who knew something of London and its people. I took into dinner an antagonistic old lady, who seemed to think that nobody who had not been in the army or the diplomatic service had any social existence whatever. I candidly confessed I had been in neither, and apologised for the abominable impertinence of existing in spite of it, and then she relaxed sufficiently to ask me, “Who _are_ these Vere Veneers?” As she was their guest, like myself, the question surprised me, but I replied that they were a lady and gentleman from the Midlands, whereupon she informed me that she knew nothing of them, but had come there to oblige her friend, Mrs. Cordial. When the ladies had left the table, a man drew his chair up to mine, and essayed a commonplace remark or two, then asked me, “Who _are_ these Vere Veneers?” He also had come to oblige Mrs. Cordial, and so had three-fourths of the guests.