"Explain to me again how this farce is meant to aid the poor of Orio City?" I hissed into Hal's ear as I passed, a silver pail filled with snow and three bottles of an inordinately expensive white clutched in my gloved hands.

Hal bowed (somewhat ironically, I could tell by the set of his shoulders, though I doubted any who had not roomed with him for years could see through his earnest facade) to the latest group of notables who had stopped to twitter around him at the host's podium when they entered the repurposed ballroom, and delivered them courteously into the hands of another young gentleman who was playing at waitstaff.

"Because sometimes the best way to pry money from tight pockets is to make the people attached to those pockets feel indulged and superior," he murmured, "and what better way to accomplish that than to have fellow aristocrats wait on them hand and foot for a night?"