Read "Imprudence" by Ethel Mills online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Bobby made the acquaintance of the curate very soon after that talk. They met for the first time at the vicarage garden party, which, according to an invariable rule, was held on Mrs North's birthday. This enabled the vicar's wife to display her birthday gifts, exciting by their numerical strength rather than their quality envy in the breasts of those guests less favoured in the matter of tokens of esteem on the important day which by right of precedent we appropriate to ourselves, and causing embarrassment to the more neglectful of her visitors by this reminder of a custom ignored.
She made little self-depreciatory remarks in displaying these absurd articles, which wore in most instances an appearance of having come from some bazaar stall and a dejected air of expectation that eventually they would return thither by reason of their uselessness, and be sold and resold at extortionate prices for charitable ends.