[Illustration: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”]




  BETTY WALES
  & CO.

  A STORY FOR GIRLS

  _by_

  MARGARET WARDE

  AUTHOR OF

  BETTY WALES FRESHMAN
  BETTY WALES SOPHOMORE
  BETTY WALES JUNIOR
  BETTY WALES SENIOR
  BETTY WALES B.A.

  ILLUSTRATED BY
  EVA M NAGEL

  THE PENN
  PUBLISHING COMPANY
  PHILADELPHIA
  MCMIX




  COPYRIGHT
  1909 BY
  THE PENN
  PUBLISHING
  COMPANY




INTRODUCTION


MANY of the girls who will read this book have already made the
acquaintance of Betty Wales, and know all about her adventures at
Harding College, from her rollicking freshman days to the time when
she was a “grave and reverend senior”--and was always being mistaken
for a freshman, nevertheless. Mary Brooks graduated from Harding a
year before Betty, and she always considered that this gave her the
privilege of patronizing her friends in 19--, Betty’s class. Madeline
joined 19-- in its sophomore year, and Babbie Hildreth (she and her
friends Babe and Bob were known collectively as the three B’s) was
another of the shining lights of that famous class. She and Madeline
and Betty planned the tea-room, though only in fun, during a trip
abroad that came as a grand finale to their college days. You can read
all about that in “Betty Wales, B. A.,” which also tells about Mary
Brooks’s “impromptu” wedding. But you will have to go back to “Betty
Wales, Senior,” to find out how Mary’s “little friends” discovered
that she was interested in Professor Hinsdale. There are a lot of other
things that you will want to know about Betty and her friends--if you
like them--in “Betty Wales, Freshman,” “Betty Wales, Sophomore,” and
“Betty Wales, Junior.”

                                                  MARGARET WARDE.




CONTENTS


      I. UNPLEASANT DISCOVERIES                          9
     II. BETTY WALES, “M. A.”                           24
    III. THAT TEA-ROOM AGAIN                            39
     IV. PLANS AND PARTIES                              56
      V. THE REAL THING                                 74
     VI. EUGENIA FORD’S LUNCHEON                        97
    VII. MARY, THE PERFECT PATRON                      113
   VIII. YOUNG-MAN-OVER-THE-FENCE                      128
     IX. AN ORDER FOR A PARTY                          145
      X. UNEXPECTED VISITORS                           162
     XI. THE ADVENT OF THE PLOSHKIN                    181
    XII. A TRAGIC DISAPPEARANCE                        198
   XIII. MORE “SIDE-LINES”                             221
    XIV. THE REVOLT OF THE “WHY-GET-UPS”               236
     XV. A SEA OF TROUBLES                             252
    XVI. THE MYSTERY SOLVED                            270
   XVII. A MAGNATE TO THE RESCUE                       291
  XVIII. A ROMANCE AND A BURGLARY                      307
    XIX. THE AMAZING MR. SMITH AND OTHER AMAZEMENTS    329
     XX. A FINAL EXCITEMENT                            346




Illustrations


                                             PAGE

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”       _Frontispiece_
  “HOW ARE WE GOING TO WORK?”                  62
  SHE STOPPED THE GIRLS AS THEY WENT OUT      117
  “THIS TEA-SHOP CLOSES AT SIX”               148
  TRUE STORIES OF DOLLS                       190
  THEY INTERCEPTED THE PRESIDENT              303
  “COME ALONG NOW”                            325

Betty Wales & Co.




Betty Wales & Co.




CHAPTER I

UNPLEASANT DISCOVERIES


“THE very loveliest part of going abroad is coming home again!” laughed
Betty Wales, trying to kiss her mother, hug the smallest sister, and
rush into her father’s outstretched arms all at one and the same
minute. Fortunately Will and Nan had had their turns at the station,
and the smallest sister’s kitten had run away at the critical moment;
otherwise matters would have been hopelessly complicated.

“I hope you’ll always feel just that way, dear,” said Mrs. Wales.

“We’re mighty glad to have you back, child,” added father, with a queer
little catch in his merry voice.

“Have you got anything for me in your trunk, Betty?” demanded the
smallest sister, who was a very practical young person.

“Lots of things, dear,” Betty assured her gaily, “and something for the
kitten, even if she isn’t here to say ‘how do you do’ to me.”

“We’ll have dinner first,” mother insisted laughingly.

“And then we’ll all sit around in an expectant circle and watch Betty
unpack,” added Nan.

“I’ve stopped being expectant since I’ve heard the news,” put in Will.
“She’s brought back money. How’s that, dad, for one of the Wales
family?”

“Well, there weren’t any emergencies,” Betty explained earnestly. “So
of course I could save my emergency fund.”

“Seeing something that she wants in a store-window is Nan’s definition
of an emergency,” declared Will.

“What’s yours?” retorted Nan. “Besides, haven’t I turned over a new
leaf this month, and isn’t it this very next week that I’m to begin
earning my own bread and butter and jam?”

“What do you mean, Nan?” demanded Betty in amazement.

“Oh, your college course and your trip abroad have bankrupted father,”
laughed Nan; and then, seeing Betty’s expression of genuine distress,
“No, dear, only we are an expensive family and hopelessly extravagant,
as Will says, and times are bad. Anyway I’m tired of rushing around,
studying and traveling and amusing myself. So when two of the girls in
my class, who have a school in Boston, offered me a job, I jumped at
it. Don’t you think I’m likely to make a stunning school-ma’am?”

“Of course,” Betty assured her promptly. “You’re so bright. But I
thought you hated Boston, and you always said that Ethel was so silly
to drudge at teaching when she didn’t need to.”

“But can’t I change my mind?” asked Nan gaily.

“I suppose so.” Betty looked in a puzzled way around the family group.
“Only----”

“Only dinner is ready,” suggested mother again; and all through the
meal the talk was about Betty’s voyage home, with its exciting storm,
and her visit to Harding, with Georgia’s gargoyle party and Mary
Brooks’s absurd methods of housekeeping as main features of interest.
The minute dinner was over the smallest sister caught Betty around the
waist, and whispered something in her ear.

“All right, dear,” Betty promised. “You shan’t have to wait another
minute to see what I’ve brought you.” And they all, except Will and Mr.
Wales, who preferred the library and the evening papers, adjourned to
Betty’s room to help unpack.

“Such a mess!” she sighed, as she uncovered the top tray. “You see I
took out some things on shipboard, and then Mary and Roberta and Bob
and Georgia all wanted to see what we’d brought home, and of course
I was in too much of a rush to put things back straight. Besides, it
wasn’t worth while to be particular, when all my clothes need mending
or pressing or something. Move back, little sister, so I can have room
for the Katie pile. It’s going to be about all Katie pile, I’m afraid.”

“Is the Katie pile what you want Katie to fix in the sewing-room?”
inquired the smallest sister. “Because we haven’t got Katie any more,
so you’ll have to call it something else.”

“Haven’t got Katie any more!” Betty’s face wore an expression of blank
amazement. “Has Katie left?”

“I thought we could get on without her,” Mrs. Wales explained hastily.
“I have so little to do, now that my girls are all grown up. Dorothy is
going to help me mend stockings this winter, aren’t you, dear?”

The smallest sister nodded impressively. “I’ll help you mend your Katie
pile too, Betty. Katie has gone to the Elingwoods’ to live, and she
likes it, but she says it’s not the same thing, and when times are
better she’ll be glad of it, because then she’ll come right back here.”

“You see it’s this queer horrid panic, Betty,” Nan explained. “Father
hasn’t actually lost much, I imagine; but business is bad, and so we’re
trying to economize.”

“And you never told me!” Betty looked reproachfully at her mother.

Mrs. Wales laughed. “No, dear. Why should we? Anyway it’s all come up
lately, since we got back from the shore. Even now there’s really
nothing to tell, except that everybody is talking hard times and
father’s business is dull. I’m very sorry it happened this season,
because I meant you to be very gay your first winter at home, and now
we can’t do much formal entertaining.”

Betty’s face clouded as she remembered a house-party she had planned
for the “Merry Hearts.” Luckily, she hadn’t mentioned it; it was to
have been a grand surprise to everybody. Then a horrible thought swept
everything else out of her head.

“Oh, mother dear,” she began, “perhaps I ought to teach too, like Nan.
I don’t believe I could, ever in the world, but I suppose every college
girl ought to be able to, and I could try.”

“Betty Wales,” mother ordered solemnly, “unpack your trunk just enough
to satisfy Dorothy’s curiosity, and then go to bed. You’re worn out,
and as nervous as a witch. Just because I’ve decided not to keep a
seamstress in the house this winter, and Nan is tired of society and
jumps at an excuse to do a little teaching, you decide that the family
is on the way to the poorhouse.”

“It isn’t only that----” Betty stopped. She had started to say that
father looked worried, and didn’t joke back at all when you teased
him; but perhaps that only seemed so to-night because she was fatigued
herself from too much gaiety at Harding.

So she hunted out six assorted neck-bows for the gray kitten, six hair
ribbons from Paris for the kitten’s small mistress, a Dutch doll, and
a long chain strung with tiny silver charms, each with a story of
its own; and having assured the smallest sister that this was only a
beginning of the treasures she might expect, Betty went to bed and
dreamed that she had lost her emergency fund under the teacher’s desk
in Nan’s schoolroom, and had to teach a class in senior “English
Lit.” before she could get it back. But she couldn’t remember when
Shakespeare was born, and the girls stood up on their desks and waved
their handkerchiefs and screamed, and she waved too, because it was
the Harvard-Cambridge boat race on the Thames. No, it was brother Will
calling her to breakfast, and little Dorothy saying in a sepulchral
whisper, “Oh, hush, Will! Mother said Betty was to sleep over.”

“Coming! Wouldn’t sleep over for anything!” Betty called back, making a
rush for her bath.

It was such a jolly day. People kept dropping in to say welcome home,
and to tease Nan about her “latest fad,” as everybody called it. In the
evening there was a regular party of Betty’s and Will’s friends on the
big piazza, and before it was over Betty had promised to help at six
“coming-out” teas, take part in one play, be on the committee to get up
another, join a morning French class and a reading-club, and consider
taking a cross-country ride every Saturday afternoon as long as the
good weather lasted.

Up-stairs in her room she took down the rose-colored satin dress she
had bought in Paris, and examined it approvingly. But one simply
couldn’t wear the same thing at six receptions. There was her
graduating dress, of course, but styles had changed frightfully since
spring. If only Katie were here to use her magic touch on the pink lace
evening gown that Bob had stepped on at class-supper!

“I never can mend it myself!” sighed Betty. “I shall need another
afternoon dress anyway, and a suit, and I did want a new riding habit.
Mine is horribly rusty. I wonder how careful about money we’ve got to
be. And I wonder if Will thought to bolt the piazza door.”

She slipped on a kimono and crept softly down the stairs, a slim,
golden-haired ghost in a trailing robe of silk and lace. Will hadn’t
locked the door. And there was a light in the library, though it was
long after midnight.

“It’s Nan, probably, reading up things to teach. I’ll go in and bother
her and make her come to bed.”

But it wasn’t Nan. It was father, poring over a big sheet of paper
scrawled full of tiny figures. Betty closed the door after her, crept
quietly across the room, and descended precipitately upon the arm of
her father’s chair.

“What in the world are you doing here all by yourself at this time of
night, Father Wales?” she demanded gaily.

Mr. Wales looked up at her, still frowning absently, with a finger on
his place among the figures. “Nothing, daughter; just looking over a
contract that I wanted to do a little estimating on before to-morrow.”

“But it’s horribly late,” objected Betty. “Think how sleepy you’ll be
in the morning.”

Mr. Wales smiled faintly. “Shall I? Well, run along to bed, so you
won’t be sleepy too.” And he was back at his figures again.

Betty watched him for a minute, dropped a kiss on his puckered
forehead, and slipped softly away without a word.

“He’s just awfully worried,” she reflected, as she went up-stairs. “Nan
and mummy and Will don’t realize how changed he is, because they’ve
been here right along. Why, in these three months he’s a different
person!” She put the rose-colored satin dress carefully back in its
cheese-cloth covering. “I wonder if we’re really going to be poor. Why,
this may be the first and the last Paris gown I shall ever have! I know
one thing. I’m going to talk to father, and make him tell me just how
poor we are now. You can go ahead so much better when you understand
things.”

But it was such a busy week, what with catching up the threads of
the home life that had been dropped for so long, helping Nan off, and
getting Dorothy started in school, that it slipped by without the talk
that Betty had promised herself. On the evening of Nan’s departure,
however, her opportunity came. Will had an engagement, mother was
tired, and Dorothy very sleepy; so only Mr. Wales and Betty went with
Nan to her train.

It was a fine September evening, and Betty craftily suggested that
they walk home. The down-town streets were too noisy for serious
conversation, but out on the avenue Betty plunged in at once.

“Father, you’re awfully worried. Please tell me why.”

Mr. Wales threw back his head and laughed. “Goodness, Betty, but you
come right to the point! Suppose I deny that ‘awfully.’”

“You mean because it’s slang?” asked Betty anxiously. “And isn’t it a
good thing to come right to the point?”

“Wouldn’t that depend on the point, little girl? Suppose it was a point
you had never expected to come to, and didn’t want to come to,--what
then?”

Betty’s face wore its most intent expression. “But if you had come to
it all the same, father----”

“Then you’d better get away again as fast as possible, and ask little
girls not to bother their heads about you in the meantime.” Father’s
tone was very brusque and final--the one he used when he meant “no” and
was not going to change his mind, no matter how much you teased.

“All right, father.” Betty tried not to show that she felt hurt. “I
won’t bother you again. Only I thought that if I understood perhaps
I could help a little. I don’t think mother really knows how much we
ought to try to save this winter, and I’m sure Nan and Will don’t.
You’ve always been so generous and let us have just whatever we wanted.
I want lots of things just now, but I can be happy without them.” Betty
stopped suddenly, not quite sure where she had meant to come out.

There was a long pause. “Are you quite sure of that--quite sure you can
be happy without them, little girl?” father asked at last.

“Perfectly sure, if I know I’m helping you out, daddy.”

“Well, then---- But I can’t have your mother worried, not any more than
she is now at least.”

“Oh, but I won’t worry her!” Betty promised eagerly. “It will just be a
secret between us two.”

Mr. Wales smiled at her eagerness. “Not a very agreeable secret, I’m
afraid. Well, then, Betty, if you insist, here it is. My business has
scarcely paid expenses for three months, and a big investment I made
in June is going all wrong. By Christmas time I shall probably know
where I stand. Until then I need every cent of ready money that I can
get hold of, and the more things you can be happy without, the better.
That’s all, I guess.”

“Th-thank you.” Betty felt as if she had suddenly been plunged up to
her neck in a blinding fog that made all the old familiar landmarks of
life look queer and far away. “It’s rather bad, isn’t it? But I’ll be
very economical, and I’ll think up ways of making the others economical
without their knowing it. And you can have my emergency fund this very
night. That’s ready money. I meant to give it to you before, but----”
There was no use explaining that Nan had said it was foolish to give
the check back, when she would need all of it and more so soon for her
fall wardrobe.

“Keep it and make it go as far as you can,” father told her. “And don’t
think too much about these business troubles, or I shall be sorry I
confided in you.”

They were turning in at their own door. “No, you won’t be sorry,” Betty
assured him proudly. “I won’t let you be sorry. Goodness! I see one way
to economize this very minute. Mother’s got dozens of lights turned
on that she doesn’t need.” And she flitted gaily ahead to begin her
economy program. But before she had reached the door, she rushed back
to whisper a last word in her father’s ear.

“It’s mean not to tell mother too, daddy. We could have so much more
fun over it if we all knew.”

“Fun over it!” repeated Mr. Wales slowly. “Fun over it!” Then he
reached out and caught Betty in a big hug. “You’re the right sort,
little girl. You stand up and face life with a smile. Keep it up just
as long as you can, child.”

Betty considered, frowning in her earnestness. “I’ve always had the
smiling kind of life so far, father, haven’t I? But I’ve wished
sometimes that I had to get things for myself, like Helen Adams and
Rachel and K. You know I’ve told you about them, and about K.’s brother
who wants to go to college, and she’s going to help. I shan’t mind a
bit being rather poor--till Christmas,” she added prudently. “Now I’ll
go and turn out the lights and see that Dorothy is all right, and you
be telling mother.”

But father shook his head. “Not to-night, anyway. You don’t realize the
meaning of all this yet, Betty. When you do, I’m afraid it will look
very different to you.”

“I won’t let it,” declared Betty eagerly. “I said I’d help, and I will.
Just try me.”

Betty went to bed with her pretty head in a whirl. This was what they
called being “out in the wide, wide world.” “The real business of life”
that she had talked about so glibly with the B’s and Roberta was going
to begin at last.




CHAPTER II

BETTY WALES, “M. A.”


THINGS did look different in the morning. Betty sighed a little as
she considered her last winter’s suit, which she had relegated to
the position of a rainy day stand-by, in the light of a “general
utility,”--K.’s delightful name for her one street costume. K. and
Rachel had managed very well with a new suit once in two or three
years. Well, then, so could she, Betty told herself sternly. Just then
Mary Hooper telephoned to know about the Saturday rides.

“I’m afraid you can’t count on me,” Betty explained to her. “No, I’m
not too busy, Mary, but riding horses are very expensive, and I don’t
believe I can afford it.”

Mary’s curt, “Oh, very well, I didn’t suppose you had to consider that.
Good-bye, then,” stung a hot blush into Betty’s cheeks. She didn’t care
what Mary Hooper thought of her--yes, she did--well, she wouldn’t any
more.

That night at dinner mother looked worried, in her turn.

“My new cook has given notice,” she told the assembled family the first
time the waitress went out of the room, “and I thought she was going to
be such a treasure!”

“What’s her trouble?” demanded Will gaily.

“She doesn’t like living where they keep only two maids. Of course it
is difficult to manage, especially with such a big house. Maggie is too
busy sweeping and dusting and answering the bell to help at all in the
kitchen. Yesterday the cook absolutely refused to clean the silver, and
to-night she grumbled about wiping the dishes.”

“Then have the third maid back, Alice. It was only to be an experiment,
this cutting down household expenses. I simply won’t have you worried.”
Father’s voice sounded impatient, because he felt so very unhappy.

“I don’t know how I can help worrying when everything goes wrong, and
I understood that it was absolutely necessary to cut down expenses.”
Mother’s voice sounded stiff and unsympathetic, because father didn’t
realize how glad she had been to do her part.

Then in a flash everything came out. “If it wasn’t absolutely necessary
to retrench when we talked things over, it certainly is now,” father
began abruptly; “my New York broker has disappeared. It seems he’s been
on the wrong side of the market lately, and to help himself out he’s
been borrowing the securities that his customers had left on deposit
with him. That means that a good many thousands of my money have gone,
with practically no hope of recovery. I’d been holding that stock as
a last reserve. I’m afraid this spells ruin.” Father pushed back his
plate, and got up from the table.

“Please don’t go, father,” begged little Dorothy solemnly, catching at
his coat tails. “Are we going to be really and truly poor? Because if
we aren’t going to have enough to eat by and by, we ought not to waste
to-night’s dinner, that’s all cooked.”

Mr. Wales laughed in spite of himself; and then, because Maggie was
coming back with the salad, he sat down again, and somehow, between
silence and conversation about the weather, dinner was finished.

Afterward Betty got Will and Dorothy down in the furthest corner of
the lawn with the gray kitten, so that mother and father, up on the
piazza, could talk things over and come to an understanding.

“Tell me, Betty, are we going to be really and truly poor?” little
Dorothy demanded. But when Betty kissed her and said no, not really
hungry and ragged, she was quite ready to forget all about it and
devote herself to teaching the gray kitten to climb trees. That left
Will and Betty free to discuss the family crisis.

“I shall take that job Cousin Joe West offered me out at his shops,”
Will declared. “He’s awfully fussy, and father says he works his men
to death. That’s why I didn’t go last June. Father thought he could
certainly get me something better by fall, but nothing has turned up
yet, and if I go with Joe that will be one thing off father’s mind.”

Betty sighed. “It’s so easy to be poor if you’re a boy. You’ll be
earning your own living----”

“I suppose a fellow can live on what I’ll earn, if he has to,”
interrupted Will, making a wry face.

“And I shall have to spend father’s money just as usual, only not so
much of it. Oh, dear, I wish I was bright enough to teach, like Nan!”

“A penny saved is a penny earned,” quoted Will sagely. “Nan will never
save a penny, that’s one thing sure. I say, didn’t we promise the
Benson girls that we’d be over to-night?”

When the Benson girls accused Betty of being quiet and absent-minded
she laughed at them and asked if she generally monopolized the entire
conversation. But on the way home she confided to Will that she hadn’t
heard a word Sallie Benson had said about the plans for her coming-out
cotillion. For almost the first time in her life, except the night
after her famous runaway in senior year, Betty did not fall asleep the
minute her head touched the pillow. She had promised father to help and
she meant to, as much as ever she could. The hard question was how to
keep her word.

Next morning she put her plans into action. After breakfast she hunted
up Mrs. Wales, who was in the sewing-room with a huge pile of mending
on the table beside her. Betty heroically helped herself to one of
Will’s stockings, and led up to her errand.

“When does the cook leave, mother?”

“This evening, I believe. She’s packing now. I haven’t dared ask her
what she means to do about the breakfast dishes.” Mother laughed
happily. “We had such a nice talk last night, your father and I. I feel
as if I were back in the days when we were first married, and had to
count all the pennies we spent. After all, being poor isn’t so bad as
long as we have each other.”

Betty nodded sagely. She didn’t want mother to find out that any one
else had been confided in first. “I knew you’d feel so--I mean I think
it’s a lot nicer to know the worst. But are you going to get another
cook?”

Mrs. Wales nodded. “I told your father that we could get on beautifully
with a general maid, but he insists upon two. He thinks we must keep up
appearances as far as possible, as a sort of business asset.”

“But a cook doesn’t appear,” Betty suggested. “She’s behind the scenes.”

“Exactly, and that gives the second maid a chance to be in front of
them. A good many business acquaintances of your father’s come through
the city, and he wants to be able to bring them up to dinner without
worrying about its being properly served.”

“It would have to be properly cooked too, wouldn’t it?” Betty reflected
solemnly. “Well, anyhow, there’s no harm in telling you what I want. I
want to do the cooking. I hate sweeping and dusting and mending, and
the things I mend are frights. But I love to mess in the kitchen, and
I’ve always wanted a chance to do it without a fussy old cook to glare
at me and make remarks about its being her kitchen, and a lot too full
of people. I don’t know how to make very many things, except salads and
chafing-dish ‘eats,’ but I’m wild to learn. Please let me, mother. How
much does a cook cost?”

“Eight dollars a week, unless she’s a particularly good cook and gets
ten,” laughed Mrs. Wales. “But you’re absurd, Betty. You don’t realize
how much work it is to cook for a big family like ours. Besides, how
would you manage when we had guests? It would be very awkward.”

“Oh, I’ve thought that all out,” began Betty eagerly. “I’d wait till
the last minute and then just turn things over to the waitress,--we’d
have to find a very accommodating waitress, of course,--whisk off my
laboratory apron, and appear in the bosom of my family arrayed in my
best dress.”

Mrs. Wales shook her head. “That sounds very simple, but I’m afraid it
wouldn’t work. You’d be red in the face from bending over the fire, and
your hands would be spoiled. I’m sorry, dear,” as she noticed Betty’s
expression of disappointment, “but I’m afraid you’ll have to think of
some other more practical ways of saving money.”

Betty stabbed viciously at the biggest hole in her second stocking.
“All right, mother,” she said at last. “But please don’t say no to my
being cook just until you can find one. You haven’t found one yet, have
you?”

Mrs. Wales shook her head. “A friend of Maggie’s is coming to see me
this afternoon, but I don’t imagine she’ll do.”

“Don’t engage her unless she sounds perfectly splendid,” urged Betty,
folding up Will’s stockings and tossing them on top of the pile of
finished mending.

A few minutes later she danced back, enveloped in a long, checked
gingham apron. “The new cook, mem,” she announced, curtseying gravely.
“And the ould wan is gone, mem, so wad yuz plaze be so kind as to lave
me have the ordhers for the dinner.”

Betty’s first dinner was a great success. It was agreed not to tell
father and Will who cooked it; and when father praised the roast, and
Will loudly lamented the imminent departure of a cook who could make
such “dandy” lemon ice, Betty blushed pink with pride and pleasure.
Next morning it was only fun to get up early and dress in a hurry. But
the first relay of toast burned up, and the eggs were done too hard,
because the coffee wouldn’t boil at all and then boiled over. Will
grumbled, father read his paper in gloomy silence, and though mother
tried to smooth things over, she wore an “I-told-you-so” expression,
and Betty felt sure she would be on hand to help with the next
breakfast.

But before that there was luncheon, and Will, who was going out to see
about his new position, announced that he would come home for it. Just
as Betty was putting on her big apron to begin operations, Mary Hooper
rang the bell. Betty discovered that Maggie had said she was at home,
so she slipped off the big apron, and went down. Mary was chairman of
the play committee, and she wanted to get Betty’s ideas about the cast
and the costumes before she called the rest of her committee together.

“College girls are so clever at plays,” she explained. “I thought you
and I could save a lot of time if we got everything decided beforehand.”

This wasn’t exactly Betty’s idea of good committee work, but Mary
hadn’t asked her advice on that point, so they set to work. At
half-past twelve Mary discovered that it was raining.

“How jolly!” she exclaimed. “That lets me out of a tennis match with
the Bensons and Ted Farnum, and we can have the afternoon clear for
this.”

“Then will you excuse me for a few minutes, Mary?” Betty asked
anxiously. “Our cook has gone, and I’m taking her place. I want to be
sure that you’ll have some luncheon.”

Mary lifted haughty eyebrows. “Can’t one of the second maids see
to that?” she asked, getting up and going over to the window. “Oh,
well, if it’s going to put you out, I won’t stay. Besides, it looks
clearer already, so we may play tennis after all. Oh, no, thank you, I
shouldn’t think of staying if you’re going to make company of me, as
they say in the country. I remember at my aunt’s in New Hampshire, they
never could have any one for Monday dinner, because it was wash-day.
Well, we’ve got a good deal done. I’ll drop in at Milly’s, perhaps, on
my way home, and see what she thinks about our cast.”

Without waiting to find her apron, Betty rushed to the kitchen, fully
expecting to find Mrs. Wales and Maggie there, and lunch well under
way,--which would have been rather a disgrace to the young lady who had
begged to be allowed to act as cook, but on the whole a comfortable
arrangement. Instead, however, the kitchen was deserted.

“Oh, dear!” soliloquized Betty sadly. “I wonder what mother meant to
have. I remember now that she went out. I wonder what there is to have.
Maggie might know--but she probably wouldn’t. I’ll ask her, though, if
she’s down setting the table.”

Maggie was laying the table, but she had no ideas on the subject of
possible luncheon dishes. So Betty found some eggs, got a chafing-dish
ready, and had all her preparations made for a delicious omelette, when
Will came in, exasperated at Cousin Joe’s fussiness, and very hungry,
and reminded her that he hated eggs.

“Oh, Will! I’m so sorry! Well, anyhow you love strawberry jam.”

“Bread and jam aren’t specially filling,” grumbled Will.

“Couldn’t you begin on that?” suggested Betty bravely. “And in the
meantime I’ll find you something else that is filling.”

“When are we going to have a cook, anyhow?” demanded Will, when Betty
had taken her seat again, having instructed Maggie to slice some cold
roast beef.

“When are we going to have an experienced cook, you mean, monsieur,”
Betty corrected him gaily. In the pantry she had decided that she
should probably be cross herself in Will’s place, and had therefore
resolved to take all his faultfinding in good part. “Because at present
you’ve got me, such as I am. Suppose you give me a list of all your
favorite dishes, Will, and I’ll make them, if they aren’t too hard. And
just to relieve your mind I’ll confide to you that mother is hunting
cooks this very morning.”

That afternoon Betty got a note from Roberta Lewis.

  “I’m considering working for an M. A. at Bryn Mawr,” she wrote.
  “Father is away all day, and I don’t know enough people here in
  Philadelphia to keep me from getting lonely. Of course in some ways
  I should lots prefer going to Harding, but father wouldn’t consent
  to that. He wants me here whenever he is at home. We’re getting to
  be regular chums. We go to the theatre together, and he always takes
  me for supper afterward, because he’s heard that debutantes prefer
  theatre-suppers to almost anything. He wanted to have Aunt Nell come
  down from New York to help him give a big party for me; but I made
  him see how absurd it would be for a staid old lawyer like him and
  a quiet, stay-at-home, ’fraid-of-a-man like me, to bother about big
  fussy parties. So we just have nice little dinners for father’s old
  friends, and next summer he is going to teach me to ride horseback--I
  shudder whenever I think of it!--and to play golf, so that we can
  enjoy more things together. Write me what you think about the M. A.

                                                  “ROBERTA.”

Betty scribbled her answer at once.

  “I’m doing an M. A. myself, Roberta dearest. It surprises you to
  hear that, doesn’t it? Well, in my case M. A. stands for Mother’s
  Assistant, and so far it’s the hardest course I ever took. But if
  mother ever finds a good cook--I’m the cook at present, and I should
  love it if everything didn’t go wrong--why, perhaps it will be easier.
  The other topics in my M. A. are mending and dusting and housekeeping
  odds and ends.

  “If I am ever married and have any children, I shall bring them up
  to eat whatever there is on the table. Will hates eggs, and loves
  apple-pie. Dorothy hates pie and adores ice-cream. Father never eats
  ice-cream and likes his steak rare. Mother wants her steak actually
  burned, and nothing but crackers and cheese and coffee for desert; and
  father loves coffee, but mustn’t drink it. I am just as fussy as any
  of them, but I never shall be again. I must stop and get dinner. Pity
  the poor cook of this hard-to-suit family!

  “I think it would be grand to be able to write M. A. after your name,
  but if you want to really and truly learn something take my kind.

                              “Yours, with her sleeves rolled up,
                                                   “BETTY.”




CHAPTER III

THAT TEA-ROOM AGAIN


BETTY WALES, arrayed in her cook’s regalia, sat by the kitchen table,
one eye on the range, the other on the fly-leaf of the new cook-book
that Will had given her. It was scribbled full of figures, which
Betty added and subtracted and multiplied laboriously, with sighs and
incredulous stares at the distinctly unpleasant results.

“Three weeks’ hard work, and so far as I can see I’ve saved the family
exactly five dollars and sixty-four cents. And that Vermont maple sugar
is boiling over again!” Betty made a dive for the saucepan in which
she was cooking maple frosting for father’s birthday cake. “If it
tastes burned, what’s left of it, I shall just give up!” she declared
plaintively.

“Oh, Betty dear!” Dorothy’s shrill voice and pattering footsteps
sounded down the hall. “You aren’t forgetting the kitten’s birthday,
are you?”

“Of course not,” Betty assured her, tasting the frosting critically.
“She’s to have oysters and whipped cream. By and by you can whip the
cream, dearie, but it’s too soon now, and I’m very busy, so you’d
better run and find mother.”

“All right. I’m busy too. I’ve got to tie on my kitten’s new neck-bow,
and she wiggles so that it’s awfully hard work. And then I’m going to
give her her box of corks that I bought for her.”

Betty tasted the frosting again, decided that it was done, put it away
to cool, and went back to her figures.

“Burned steak, two dollars,” she murmured; “salty ice-cream, a dollar
and twenty cents; boiled-over coffee, thirty cents. I don’t believe
I’ve forgotten anything important that I spoiled.” Then her smile
flashed out suddenly. “But real cooks spoil things--why, of course they
do! Not so many, maybe, but some.” She began stirring the frosting
vigorously. “You always hear that figures lie. I suppose the reason is
because it’s so hard to put down all about real cooks and other real
things in figures. Anyway, I’ve tried to help hard enough. After this
I shall always be sorry for cooks. I suppose there may be worse ways of
earning your living, but I shouldn’t want to try them.”

“Here’s a letter for you, Betty!” The smallest sister was back again,
having evidently intercepted the postman. “And the kitten has got a
post-card that says ‘Birthday greetings.’ Isn’t it pretty? My chum at
school sent it to her.”

Betty declared hastily that the kitten’s post-card was perfectly
lovely, and asked Dorothy to put her letter, with the address in
Madeline’s fascinating scrawling hand, and a foreign stamp, into
the table drawer; for the cook’s fingers were sticky, the frosting
obstinately refused to thicken, and dinner-time was approaching with
alarming rapidity.

The day after Mary Hooper’s ill-timed call Betty had delivered an
ultimatum: “You’ve either got to tend up to things or leave them alone.
Hereafter, when I’m busy in the kitchen I can’t stop, no matter what
happens. Just tell people the truth, please.”

It was trying that the first thing to happen should have been an
invitation to go automobiling by moonlight; and missing the second--an
impromptu tally-ho party, with a corn-roast and a barn-dance to
follow--would have plunged Betty into the depths of woe if she had not
sternly resolved to “smile and smile and go on cooking,” as Katherine
had picturesquely advised her, no matter what happened. It was worth
the cost too, when father called her into the library to tell her, in
confidence, that he was proud of her, and that she was setting Will a
splendid example.

Will was finding Cousin Joe quite as trying as he had been led to
expect, and as he had gone through life hitherto on the easy theory
that it is foolish to put yourself out much, because the people who
expect the most of you are always cranks, nobody had thought that he
would stay long with Cousin Joe, who was certainly an ideal instance
of the theory. But though he came home every evening tired and
discouraged, and grumbled a good deal about Cousin Joe’s unfairness and
silly notions, he refused to give up his position.

“I’m no quitter. I can stick it out if the girls can,” he announced
doggedly, and on his very first pay-day he bought Betty a cook-book
inscribed “With deep respect, from a sympathetic fellow laborer,” which
meant a great deal from reserved, undemonstrative Will.

Betty suspected that Will’s admiration was at the bottom of her
mother’s tacit consent to her keeping on as cook. They had never
discussed the matter after the first interview, but Mrs. Wales had
gradually stopped visiting agencies and looking up advertisements, and
Betty was beginning to feel that she was accepted as “permanent.” And
now some bad fairy had put it into her head to see how much she had
saved father, and all she could see was five dollars and sixty-four
cents!

But that didn’t prevent the birthday dinner from being a great success.
Three weeks’ experience had wrought a wonderful change in the new
cook’s methods. Not only did she “tend up” to the business in hand,
herself, but she could plan work for Maggie, and she was no longer
too proud to call on mother or Dorothy for help if she needed it. So
things went smoothly, not by happy accident, as things had always had a
fashion of doing for Betty Wales, but because she had planned them to
go that way. The cream soup did not curdle, the roast came on hot and
done just as mother liked it at one end and as father liked it in the
middle. The salad was crisp and deliciously flavored. The pineapple ice
was not salty, and if the maple frosting was a little inclined to drip
off the edges of the birthday cake, that was due, as Will pompously
explained, to “the extreme age of the distinguished person whose
semi-centennial we celebrate, and to the consequent over-heating of his
cake by fifty burning candles.”

After dinner they went into the library to taste a wonderful cereal
coffee, which Betty felt sure father would like just as well as the
real thing that he mustn’t drink.

“Let me see, Betty,” said Will sipping his share reflectively. “This is
the sixth near-coffee that glib-tongued salesmen have palmed off on you
in three weeks.”

“It’s only the fifth,” returned Betty indignantly, “and besides they
were all free samples.”

“In that case suppose you see if you can’t discover some more brands
before we settle on one for family use,” suggested father gaily.

Betty made a wry face as she emptied her cup. “The trouble is the
directions always say ‘the whole secret of success is in the cooking,’
and ‘one trial is a gross injustice,’” she quoted so solemnly that
everybody laughed.

“Come and see the kitten eat her whipped cream,” begged Dorothy. “She
gets it all over her little nose, and she hates to stop and wash it
off. Besides, I think she ought to have more people than just Maggie
and me at her party.”

So Betty went out to the kitchen to swell the numbers at the kitten’s
party, and suddenly remembering Madeline’s neglected letter she slipped
away to read it.

  “Well, I’m coming back to my own, my native land,” Madeline wrote.
  “Father thinks he wants to sub-let the apartment in Washington
  Square. Of course he’ll jolly well change his mind before I get to
  New York, and then he’ll waste his substance cabling me frantically
  not to sub-let. And perhaps he and mother will come back too, later
  on. But I don’t mind coming along by myself. I’ve had enough of Italy
  and idleness. My head is full of tales that I want to get out of my
  system and into the magazines. I want to talk them over with Dick
  Blake. He’s a frightful cynic, and he’ll be sure to tell me that I can
  never make good. But he can’t stop me that way, not till I’ve sat on
  editors’ door-steps for a while and seen for myself.

  “Incidentally here I am in London buying china madly for the
  tea-room--yours and mine and Babbie’s, that we planned last summer.
  The plans are so lovely that we’ve simply got to carry them out. I
  ‘elect’ us to do it. I’ve written Babbie to come and spend October
  with me and help at one of my famous house-cleanings. You must come
  too, and then we can discuss it--the tea-room, I mean. I should
  hate to hear my house-cleanings discussed. And if we don’t have the
  tea-room, the china will be adorable in the apartment. It’s a blue
  Canton kind, and I’m getting mostly double-decker bread-trays, and
  little toast-racks, and mustard pots--such fascinating squatty fat
  ones--and pepper grinders. If you were here, we’d hunt up an English
  cooking school and learn to make scones and bannocks and Bath buns.
  I’ve asked a queer little English woman in my boarding-house to give
  me the recipes. Perhaps you can make them out. I can cook only by
  taste, just as I can play only by ear; and the taste of scones and
  bannocks is as complicated as Wagner. I got your letter about being
  the family cook. It will be valuable experience for the tea-room.

  “Come down early in October. Wire and I’ll meet you any day after the
  fourth, when my boat is supposed to come in. If either of you could
  get there sooner, it would be terribly jolly, because then you could
  meet me. The key to the house is at the tailor’s underneath, the cook
  left her new address on the mantle in a pink cloisonné jar, and she’ll
  bring the usual black cat for company while you wait.

                                              “Yours en route,
                                                  “MADELINE.”

Betty read it all through twice. It was so delightfully haphazard and
cheerful and Bohemian. To-day was the twenty-sixth of September. It
would be such fun to go to New York and share Madeline’s welcome home
to Bohemia. Babbie would go, of course, and they would have famous
parties to make use of the blue Canton mustard pots. And if they
should really open a tea-room! For the first time since the launching
of the economy program Betty winked back some real tears. Then she
carefully turned out the lights in the dining-room, which Maggie never
could remember about, and went back to the library to read the family
her letter, as she always did when any of the Old Guard wrote to her.
As Will said, the penalty of writing entertaining letters to Betty was
that she felt under obligation to celebrate your epistolary ability by
turning herself into a town-crier, and crying your bon mots from the
house-tops.

And the very next morning came a scrap of a note from Babbie:

  “I’m going to spend October with Madeline. Mother is off paying
  visits, so I can get away easily. Be sure to come right away, because
  we ought to get the tea-room started at once. Mother says I may do
  just as I like about it, only of course I know that I can’t stay away
  from her all the time. When she says I can do as I like she really
  means that I may have all the money I want.

  “Betty dear, if you really want to earn some money, why couldn’t you
  run the tea-room? Madeline will be too busy with her writing. Besides,
  she hates running things. I should love it, only there’s mother to be
  amused.

  “Babe is too wrapped up in her beloved John to answer any letters.
  Bob is trying to make her father start a newsboys’ home, and he says
  perhaps he will if he can have his own home back again. Bob has some
  little ragamuffin or other up there all the time. I prefer tea-rooms
  myself to newsboys’ homes or fiancés.

                                                  “BABBIE.”

  “P. S. Jack and I have had a dreadful quarrel. He was the one who came
  to see me off, you know, and I never, never dreamed we could change
  our minds. But all is over between us. Please never mention his name
  to me again.

  “P. S. Do you think we should have the tea-room in New York or
  Harding?”

This letter Betty read and reread, and finally put away in her
writing-desk without so much as mentioning it to any one. But that
afternoon she went all by herself to have afternoon tea at an
attractive little shop that had just been opened down-town. She read
the menu carefully, and finally asked the waitress if she might take
it away with her. She counted the tables, the waitresses, and the
patrons. She scanned the decorations with a critical eye. She frowned
when she noticed that there were three different kinds of china in
the tea service that the maid had brought her. Then she sat for a
long while, sipping her tea and trying to remember little details
of the fascinating Glasgow tea-rooms, and of the Oxford Street and
Piccadilly shops that the B. A.’s abroad had haunted so persistently
in the pursuit of Madeline’s “dominant interest.” Finally she tried to
compare the prices on the cards with those at Cuyler’s and Holmes’s in
Harding. And last of all, she extracted a tiny silver pencil from her
shopping-bag, and put down a few figures on the back of the menu. But
she soon gave up that. Hadn’t she just discovered that figures lie?
And besides, when you can’t even guess at rents, and haven’t the least
idea how much chairs and tables and china cost, and are even a little
uncertain about waitress’s wages, the calculating of the probable
expenses per month of running a tea-room becomes, to say the least, a
difficult matter.

At last, having remembered her responsibilities about dinner, Betty
rushed home and into her big apron--she had half a dozen big ones
now--as fast as possible. She was very quiet during dinner, but
afterward, as soon as she had helped Maggie clear the table, she put
out the lights, walked into the library, and made an astonishing
announcement.

“Father dear, if you’re willing and mother can get another cook and you
won’t all miss me too much, I want to go to New York next week to see
about running a tea-room for Babbie Hildreth. We haven’t decided yet
whether to have it there or in Harding, but Babbie thinks I could run
it, and I think so too.”

“Why, Betty, don’t be absurd!”

That was mother’s comment. Will whistled; Dorothy, scenting the loss
of her beloved Betty, came over to hug her; but father threw away his
cigar, folded his paper slowly, and pointed to the arm of his chair as
the best available seat.

“Now begin again,” he advised, when Betty had established herself
comfortably. “Your proposition does sound absurd, as mother says, but
perhaps that’s because we don’t understand it. To begin with, has Miss
Babbie Hildreth already gone into the tea-room business? I understood
from Miss Bohemia’s letter of yesterday, that so far the sole assets of
the tea-room were some double-decker bread-trays, whatever those may
be, and some very fat mustard jars, which hadn’t yet left London, and
which Miss Bohemia really wanted for her own use.”

“Oh, father, that was just Madeline’s queer way of saying it. She’s
written to Babbie, and Babbie has asked her mother for the money, and
her mother is willing. So now Babbie has written me. Of course there
are a lot of things still to be arranged,” Betty admitted reluctantly,
“but it won’t take Babbie and Madeline long to arrange them.”

“I see.” This time Mr. Wales was quite serious. “And you think that
under the circumstances--my circumstances, I mean--you would like to
join in their project. I’m afraid I can’t spare you any capital, little
girl.”

“Oh, I don’t want you to,” explained Betty hastily. “The others don’t
expect it. But I’ve thought it over and--isn’t it likely to be a long
while before business is good again, father?”

“I’m afraid it will be fully a year before I’m on my feet again.”

“Well, I want to help, to be really and truly earning something, I
mean, like Nan and Will. I should perfectly hate to teach, but I should
love to run a tea-room.”

“I don’t like the idea of my daughter’s going into the restaurant
business,” put in Mrs. Wales stiffly.

“Oh, mummy dear!” Betty abandoned her father’s chair for a seat
beside her mother on the sofa. “An adorable little tea-room isn’t a
restaurant. College girls are always running tea-rooms. Why, Mary
Hooper has a friend in Boston who does it, and Mary is always telling
about her, for all she’s such a snob.”

“Would you have to sit at a desk near the door and see that everybody
paid up before he could get out?” demanded Will, very scornfully.

Betty considered. “Why, I don’t know. I might. But if Madeline plans
things she’ll have a desk that the Queen of England would be dying to
sit at, if she saw it,” she ended gaily.

“But are you sure of making money?” demanded father dryly. “Times are
bad----”

“But even in bad times people have to eat,” Betty took him up hastily.
“And if tea is sixty cents a pound, and there are piles of cups in
that, and you sell a cup for ten cents, how can you help making money?
People do, in tea-rooms, or they wouldn’t be sprouting up everywhere.
And if it can be done I’m sure Madeline and Babbie and I can do it. I
just know we can!”

Mr. Wales’s glance traveled from Betty’s dancing eyes to her mouth with
its pleading curves. “Well, mother,” he said, “shall we let her try?”

Mrs. Wales hesitated. “I don’t like the idea at all, but under the
circumstances----”

“We’ll talk it over and let you know in the morning,” father suggested.

“Betty,” began little Dorothy forlornly, “you said I could be ’sistant
cook as soon as I learned to toast the bread and not burn it. And now
I’ve learned. If you go away and have a tea-room, I think I ought to be
something in that.”

“You can be a silent partner, mademoiselle,” suggested Will teasingly.

“What’s that?” demanded Dorothy.

“About the same thing as a company, I guess,” explained Will. “Betty
can call herself Betty Wales & Co., and you can be the Co. See?”

“Of course I see,” declared Dorothy with great dignity. “And I think
I’d rather be a Co. than a ’sistant cook. Don’t forget that I’m the
Co., Betty.”

“I won’t,” Betty promised laughingly. But she gave “Co.” a hug that
made the little girl gasp for breath. The tea-room might be mere fun
for Madeline and Babbie, and father and mother might look upon it as a
foolish fad; but to Betty it was solemn earnest, and the unqualified
interest and approval of even one little girl, who didn’t understand,
helped.




CHAPTER IV

PLANS AND PARTIES


NEXT morning Mr. Wales called Betty into the library to tell her
she might do as she liked about the tea-room. His voice broke as he
explained that unless things took a sudden turn for the better they
should probably have to give up their house, at least for a year or so.

“So your present position is likely to be abolished,” he went on with a
rather forlorn attempt at gaiety, “and I heartily sympathize with your
wish to be up and doing. I hate to think that a daughter of mine needs
to work, but I’m glad she isn’t afraid to. It used to be the fashion
for young ladies whose families had lost their money to sit at home,
turning and mending their clothes and remembering better days.”

“I know--like Mary Hooper’s great-aunts,” laughed Betty. “That’s so
stupid. I’m glad I was born later. But, father, did mother come around
to the restaurant idea? Because maybe Nan or Rachel or somebody could
get me a place to teach, if mother would be happier about it. But girls
who want to work don’t all teach nowadays. Truly they don’t.”

Mr. Wales laughed. “That’s another antiquated notion, is it--that
teaching is the only ‘genteel’ calling? Your mother and I about came to
that conclusion last night. Anyway we’re quite willing that you should
try out this project. I will give you the money that your board here
would cost for the rest of the winter. You can use it as capital if
you like, but I should strongly advise holding it as an emergency fund
for personal expenses. Tea may be sixty cents a pound and ten cents a
cup, but I imagine you’ll find that’s only one very small detail in the
budget of a tea-room.”

“Of course,” agreed Betty, not daring to avow complete ignorance of the
meaning of a budget. “And thank you ever so much, father, for letting
me try. If we don’t succeed and my emergency fund gives out, will you
send me some beautiful references as a cook?”

“Certainly not, after you’ve basely deserted us with less than a
week’s notice,” retorted her father, pulling a yellow curl, and Betty
danced off, perfectly delighted at the exciting prospects before her,
to look over her clothes and make a list of other things she should
need “in her business.” But her ideas of the duties of her position
were so vague and businesslike, and clothes so very uninteresting,
that she finally decided not to waste her last week at home over them.
If Madeline thought her shirt-waists looked too frivolous, she could
overwhelm her with the six big aprons and Will’s cook-book.

Betty timed her arrival in New York a day after Madeline’s, but only
Babbie Hildreth met her train.

“Madeline’s stuck in the fog down the harbor,” she explained. “So when
I came last night I got the key from the tailor and hunted up the cook,
all by myself, and she brought the cat just as Madeline said she would.
And then that nice Mrs. Bob, the one we met before, helped me give a
party.”

“How did you happen to be giving a party?” laughed Betty.

“Because Mrs. Bob was tired of her own apartment. It’s perfectly
gorgeous, you know, since they got all that money, but she says it’s
so elegant and well-kept that it spoils the informality of things.
So the cook swept, and we dusted, and Mr. Bob invited the people and
bought the food. It was great.” Babbie gave a comical little skip to
emphasize her complete satisfaction with life. Then suddenly her small
face took on its most serious expression. “And to think how miserable
I’ve been lately. Poor mother was glad enough to let me come down here,
I’m afraid, I was so cross. I’m never going to look at a young man
again, Betty Wales, as long as I live. So there now!”

Betty patted Babbie’s arm soothingly. “That won’t prevent their looking
at you, I’m afraid,” she suggested, “at least not unless you stop
buying such becoming hats.”

Babbie frowned. “One can’t turn oneself into a frump, just on their
account. Buying becoming hats is one of the chief consolations of life.
I didn’t mean that I was going to retire from the world, but I shall
never let any one fall in love with me, never. That’s settled!”

“All right,” laughed Betty. “Now let’s settle where we’re going.”

“That’s settled too,” explained Babbie. “Mr. Dick Blake is meeting
Madeline, because I had to meet you. Then we are all to meet each other
for a grand lunch party, to celebrate Mr. Blake’s getting into his
scrumptious new offices,--the ones that your Mr. Morton arranged for,
you know. And to-night Mrs. Bob is going to take us all for dinner
to a new East Side place that they’ve discovered.” Babbie stopped to
survey Betty critically. “You don’t mind wasting to-day, do you, and
beginning on tea-rooms the first thing to-morrow? Your letter sounded
as solemncholy as Helen Chase Adams when she was a freshman.”

Betty laughed. “How dreadful! Of course I don’t mind. But you see,
Babbie, this tea-room business is just fun for you, but for me it’s
dead in earnest. If we can’t make it pay pretty well, why, next year I
may have to teach.”

Babbie nodded vigorously. “I see. That’s a prospect to make a person
solemn, isn’t it? But by next year your father will probably be rich
again. And I don’t want you to think I’m not in earnest too, Betty.
I’m going into this thing head over heels, just to show a certain
person that he doesn’t make one least little speck of difference to
me.” Babbie’s big eyes flashed dangerously. “So to-morrow we’ll pursue
tea-rooms like anything.”

But ten o’clock the next morning found the three pursuers of tea-rooms
gathered rather languidly around Madeline’s dainty breakfast table.
Mrs. Bob’s party had been, as usual, a continuous performance,
beginning at a very foreign café in Little Italy, going on, because
the Italian dessert had proved disappointing, to a glittering hotel
on Fifth Avenue, thence back to a Yiddish theatre, whose leading lady
was Mr. Bob’s latest enthusiasm, and winding up, very late indeed, at
supper near the park, after which it took so long to get home that Mrs.
Bob declared she was hungry again and made everybody come up to the
apartment for more supper.

“If everybody in New York eats as often as we did last night, there
ought to be a good chance for tea-rooms,” said Babbie, sipping her
coffee meditatively.

“If it makes them feel so sleepy the next day, they won’t do it very
often,” suggested Betty prudently.

“Yes, they will, but they’ll order breakfast at eleven instead of at
ten,” amended Madeline. “Well, now,” she went on briskly, “how are we
going to work? Having decided to start a tea-room, what does a person
do next?”

“We have absolutely decided, haven’t we?” asked Betty, to make sure.

“Of course.” Madeline waved a hand at the huge box of china that an
expressman had just delivered. “Coming over in the cab yesterday, Dick
read the story I wrote on shipboard--the one I thought was going to
make me a name instanter--and he says it’s amateurish. That’s the most
hateful adjective in the language of Bohemia, and I’ll make him eat his
words. But meanwhile I’ve got to eat something more sustaining than
words, and I’ve spent all the money I had to live on this quarter.
So I’ve got to get rid of that china. So we’ve got to take it for a
tea-room.”

“If you think this tea-room is being started to confirm you in
your extravagant habits, Madeline Ayres----” began Babbie, in mock
indignation.

[Illustration: “HOW ARE WE GOING TO WORK?”]

“Well, the point is that we’ve decided to start it,” pursued Madeline
calmly, “and I might add that the china designated as my latest
extravagance is likely to be its chief charm, if not exactly its reason
for being. Now I should say the next question is where to have it. And
as it’s such a glorious day, let’s go out and explore.”

The exploring expedition, being conducted by Madeline in true Bohemian
style, bid fair to degenerate into a progressive course luncheon,
leading from one of her favorite tea-shops to the next.

“But it’s very instructive,” she declared in answer to Babbie’s
protests. “I’ve made a beautiful collection of menu cards for us to
consider to-night. I’ll get Bob Enderby to do us a design that will
make a regular hit by itself. What’s that, Betty? Of course a menu
design isn’t the principal thing. But it will be a beautiful feature,
like the china. Well, this is the sixth cup of tea I’ve had, so I
don’t mind stopping now. If you girls don’t like my methods, suggest
something else. I think we’ve had a most entertaining morning, and
garnered in loads of valuable ideas.”

“Well, but what have we actually decided?” demanded Betty, the
matter-of-fact.

Madeline told off the points solemnly on her fingers. “To have
waitresses with soulful eyes and, if possible, adorable French accents.
To remember that it is the special features that people tell their
friends to go and see, but the food must be passable too, or they’ll
never come twice. To have immaculate linen, and china that matches. To
provide dusky corners for romantic couples.”

Babbie sniffed. “I hate romantic couples!”

“They order recklessly,” Madeline argued. “Therefore, for mercenary
considerations, they must be encouraged.”

“But aren’t those things we would have done anyway?” pursued Betty. “I
think we ought to find a place and get started, and then look out for
the features.”

Madeline considered. “That sounds sensible. Well, then, let’s discuss
sites.”

“Wouldn’t it be a good plan to know something definite about rents?”
suggested Betty, who foresaw that Madeline’s next move would be a
leisurely promenade up Fifth Avenue, which would be very pleasant but
productive of no tangible results.

“Rents--of course. I’ll tell you what!” Madeline had had another
inspiration. “I know a man who is in real estate--the one we rent our
place from. I’ll call him up and ask him if he’s too busy to enlighten
us this very afternoon.”

Madeline came back from the telephone in high spirits. “He will be
dee-lighted to see us. Oh, dee-lighted is out of fashion, isn’t it,
since I went away? Well, proud and happy then. Come along. It’s only a
little way from here, and we can do up the whole thing before dinner.”

But “the whole thing” proved much more complicated than Madeline had
supposed. The agent treated them in a businesslike way, which was
really very nice of him, Babbie said afterward, considering their vague
and even childlike ideas on the subject of what they wanted. He had
half a dozen suites on his books that seemed to Madeline suitable, and
she went over them easily, suggesting their respective advantages to
the other two girls, who were less familiar than she with the ins and
outs of New York life.

“This is really the best, I think,” she decided at last, pointing to a
Fifth Avenue address.

“It’s a rather expensive location,” suggested the agent politely. “But
perhaps that’s no object”--with a glance at Babbie’s exquisite little
figure.

“Oh, yes, it is,” Betty assured him solemnly. “You see we want to make
a lot of money. How much is the rent, please?”

The agent’s figures fairly took the girls’ breath away. “And I believe
they prefer a seven years’ lease,” he added.

“Seven years!” repeated Babbie incredulously. “Why, we shall all be
mar--dead in seven years, probably. A month’s rent at that rate would
take up about what I think mother meant to give me. But then she’ll
have to give me more. Which is the very cheapest place, please?”

The agent pointed it out, but it was only cheap by comparison.
And then, as if matters were not bad enough already, he made a
disheartening suggestion. “You ought to have at least capital enough
to keep you going for a year,” he said. “You couldn’t hope to make
much the first year, you know. That’s usually reckoned a dead loss, in
conservative business estimates, I believe.”

The girls exchanged glances of consternation.

“We’re very much obliged,” said Babbie, with a fine combination of
dignity and her sweetest smile. “But I’m afraid we can’t decide on
anything to-day. We may be back----”

“That’s all right,” the agent cut her short. “Always very glad to be of
service. Good-day.”

“He doesn’t want us to come back,” Babbie declared hotly, outside the
door. “He’s afraid we wouldn’t pay the rent on time.”

“We probably shouldn’t, any such rents as those,” Madeline assured her.
“We acted like babes in the wood, I suppose. Never mind. We’ll ask Bob
Enderby and Dick. They’ll know what to do. You were jolly right, Betty,
about beginning on the essentials.”

That night Mrs. Bob’s sitting-room was the scene of a solemn council
of war. Dick Blake was scribe, Henri, the Enderbys’ cook, who had once
conducted what Dick irreverently described as the slowest quick lunch
place in town, was called in as an expert, along with the girl in the
top flat, because her two cousins had had a tea-room, until one of them
discovered that drawing caricatures of the customers paid much better
than selling them sandwiches and tea.

“But it was a splendid thing--that tea-room,” explained the girl
earnestly, “because Arline never knew she could draw until then. She
sat at the desk, you see, and took checks, and there wasn’t much she
could do, so she got to sketching and thought it was fun, and went
into an evening class, and now she’s got two things in the big autumn
exhibit.”

“Listen to that,” cried Mr. Bob with enthusiasm. “Which of you is going
to sit at the desk?”

“I suppose I am,” confessed Betty, “and I haven’t the least talent for
drawing, so there won’t be any great artist discovered in our tea-room.”

“Well, my other cousin got married through the tea-room,” explained
the girl from the top flat, naively. “They sold candy there, and she
married the man they bought their candy boxes of. He’s a millionaire.”

“Hear! Hear!” cried Mr. Bob. “Now which of you is going to get the
millionaire?”

“Come, Bob, do be serious,” begged Madeline. “We want to get at the
facts.”

“A millionaire is a very valuable fact,” objected Mr. Bob flippantly.
“That’s all, Henri, except that we shall want an extra fine supper
by and by. Now, Miss Andrus, tell us some more about the profits of
tea-rooms, the legitimate ones, if Madeline insists upon it.”

But Miss Andrus was vague about “legitimate” profits. She only knew
that her cousin had had a darling shop, and had hated to give it up.
Then she went over to the piano and played dreamy music, while Richard
Blake and Mrs. Bob and the girls struggled with their estimates.

When they had finished, Madeline’s brow puckered. “It’s going to be
too big for us to swing, I think. Mrs. Hildreth might give you all
that money, Babbie, but I don’t think we ought to take it.” She swept
the papers together. “Enjoy our society while you have it, ladies and
gentlemen. To-morrow we’re going up to Harding to open a tea-room.”

“But, Madeline,” began Betty, “are you sure----”

“I’m not sure of anything except that rents are lower there, because it
would be absurd if they weren’t, and that those college girls eat and
eat, and they appreciate stunty features beyond anything. Now Cuyler’s
isn’t stunty and Holmes’s isn’t stunty. With that china and the menu
card that Bob is going to do for us--I forgot to ask you before, Bob,
but of course you will--and all the other features that we can easily
think up, why, at Harding our fortune is made. I can’t see how we ever
hesitated!”

“But if you go up there we can’t patronize you,” objected Mrs. Bob
forlornly.

“Oh, yes, you can,” Madeline assured her promptly, “you can motor up.
And Dick can see that your escapade gets into the society columns of
all the leading dailies. In a month it will be the fashion to motor up
from New York for a cup of tea.”

“Madeline,” said Dick severely, “you’re a persuasive sophist. Who holds
the controlling interest in this tea-room, anyhow?”

“Babbie, I suppose,” admitted Madeline cheerfully. “Because she
furnishes all the money--or all that’s worth mentioning, at least. But
Betty furnishes the sense, and I furnish the inspirations. Now what’s
the matter with that combination?”

“Aren’t you about through with your business?” demanded Mr. Bob
irrelevantly, from his place by the piano. “Because Miss Andrus is
hungry, and I’m starved.”

Betty partook of Henri’s famous club sandwiches and Turkish coffee in
forlorn silence. She ought not to have come. She ought to have realized
that Madeline’s haphazard methods were splendid for getting up college
“shows,” but not to be relied on when one’s bread and butter had to be
earned. Madeline was in a corner by the fire talking earnestly with
Mrs. Bob, who was saying something that made Madeline hug her and
presently rush over to Betty and Babbie to explain.

“The lovely Mrs. Bob wants to invest in our tea-room,” she told them.
“You say your mother spoke of four hundred, Babbie. Well, Mrs. Bob says
she’ll put in the same, and after Betty’s salary is paid and the other
expenses, the profits are to be divided--that’s what you said was
right, isn’t it, Dick?”

“But half my profits go to Madeline,” Mrs. Bob took her up, “for the
inspirations.”

“Then I know mother will want half hers to go that way, too,” put in
Babbie, “and I shall take the other half, to pay her up for being
pessimistic about profits. She just laughed when I spoke of them.”

“Well, it will be all kinds of fun, anyway,” said Madeline. “Goodness,
but I feel as if the worst was over now! Does any one know about early
trains up to Harding? By the way, father hasn’t cabled, so I suppose
this domicile is to let. Just spread the report, please, everybody,
and I’ll come back in a few days to see about it. It’s just as well,
because I suppose I’ve got to live in Harding now. I never could manage
long-distance inspirations.”

The three girls departed early to pack and telegraph Mary Brooks
Hinsdale that her “standing invitation” to come and visit her should
stand no longer unheeded by her little friends of old.

So perhaps it hadn’t been a wasted day after all, Betty thought,
falling asleep while Madeline was still busily discussing where they
should live in Harding, and how much they ought to pay the tea-shop for
their meals, if they ate them there.




CHAPTER V

THE REAL THING


MARY’S “beamish” smile was dimmed when she met her guests at the
station.

“I’m just terribly glad to see you all,” she explained, “and to-morrow
we can begin to have some fun. But to-night I have an awfully
particular faculty dinner-party on, and what do you think? My cook has
gone and caught the jaundice.” Mary’s tone was positively tragic.

“This is what you get for marrying a distinguished member of the
faculty,” Madeline told her, patting her shoulder sympathetically. “But
don’t you give that very particular dinner-party another thought, my
child. What’s the point of having a full-sized catering company invade
your happy little home if you don’t make use of them?”

“A catering company?” Mary stared. “There isn’t such a thing in
Harding.”

“Well, a tea-shop corporation then,” Madeline amended briskly. “We are
that, you know. We’ve come up here to establish ourselves. Meanwhile we
are not above displaying our talents for the benefit of our very best
friends. Betty says she can cook, and Babbie and I are bursting with
ideas for original menus and beautiful table decorations. Have you a
waitress?”

“Yes, but she’s very green and needs piles of coaching. Betty, please
explain a few of Madeline’s riddles.”

“Come up to Cuyler’s first,” suggested Babbie. “It’s such a very long
story.”

So the story was told, in all its ramifications, over many cups of
Cuyler’s hot chocolate, and Mary went into ecstasies over the idea of
a tea-shop in Harding, and into more ecstasies over the prospect of
having Betty, and probably Madeline, so near her. Then she returned to
the subject of her dinner.

“Would you really cook it, Betty?”

“Would you really trust her to cook it?” jeered Madeline.

“Yes, because there’s absolutely nothing else to be done,” said Mary,
so dismally that everybody else shrieked with laughter.

“Very well then,” agreed Madeline. “You and Betty go and do your
marketing, and Babbie and I will examine tea-room sites. We ought not
to lose any time, you know,” she added impressively, with a sly glance
at Betty.

“Don’t decide everything without me,” begged Betty innocently.

“Of course not,” Madeline promised, with a very solemn, responsible
air. “Come on, Babbie. Oh, I say, is that Polly Eastman going into the
bookstore?”

“Not at all likely,” laughed Babbie, rushing off. “I never knew Polly
to buy a book.”

The pursuit of Polly ended all serious business for that morning. It
transpired that she had just been elected a member of the senior play
committee, and she had resolved to buy a set of Shakespeare in honor
of the occasion. First Babbie and Madeline must help her choose the
books, then they must explain themselves, and as that was “such a long
story,” they all retired to Holmes’s to talk it over and have ices.
Then Polly had to hurry back for a noon recitation, and it would be a
shame not to rush up to the campus with her and say hello to Georgia
Ames. And Georgia, who also had a twelve o’clock class, begged them,
with tears in her big brown eyes, to hang around till one, and then
have “eats” with her down-town. So Madeline wrote a note to Mary, who
would be relieved not to have so many people to lunch, and bribed
a freshman friend of Georgia’s to deliver it on her way home. And
she and Babbie sat on the steps of College Hall in the warm October
sunshine, surrounded by a crowd of friends, old and new, to all of whom
Madeline confided, under the strictest pledges of secrecy and with much
delightful mystery as to where and when and by whom, the fact that a
new and particularly “stunty” tea-shop was to be started right away in
Harding.

“I should make my fortune as an advance advertising agent,” she told
Babbie complacently, as they hurried up to Mary’s after lunch. “Getting
everybody properly excited is awfully important, but I’m afraid Betty
won’t appreciate that, and will think we ought to have found a place.
Did you happen to notice any that would do?”

Babbie considered. “Why, any place down on Main Street would do well
enough, I should think, but they’re all full, aren’t they? I don’t
suppose any store would move out to let us in.”

“There must have been some vacant places that we didn’t notice,” said
Madeline cheerfully. “We’ll just tell Betty that we think she ought
to choose, as long as she’s going to run it. That will throw the
responsibility on her.”

“I don’t see how it will find us a place, though,” said Babbie
gloomily. “And we’ve forgotten the water-color paper for Mary’s
place-cards.”

Mary embraced her guests almost tearfully when, the dinner-party having
taken its staid departure, the cook and her assistants returned to the
“realms of day,” as Madeline poetically designated the library.

“I had awful times explaining,” Mary told them. “They pricked up their
ears at the place-cards. The soup got them seriously interested,
and the salad positively went to their heads. I muttered something
about a new cook, and I could see every woman at the table privately
resolving to get her away from me forthwith.” Mary chuckled. “When you
get ready to establish a catering branch, I’ll write you a screaming
advertisement like this:

               “_Remember Mrs. Hinsdale’s Dinner and how
                          Envious it made you
            And Patronize her Caterers, Betty Wales & Co_.”

Betty smiled and then sighed. “We can’t establish branches until we’ve
started, can we? And we can’t seem----”

“Reproach us not, fair maiden,” Madeline broke in. “You are hereby
elected committee on rooms, isn’t she, Babbie? You go ahead and choose,
and we’ll agree to anything you decide.”

Next morning the committee on rooms announced her plan for a systematic
campaign. “I wish you two would come and help look, but if you do,
remember that we can’t stop to talk with Georgia or any one else we
meet, and we can’t do any shopping or eating until after half-past
twelve.”

But a brisk walk the whole length of Main Street only served to confirm
Madeline’s and Babbie’s fears. Every building was occupied.

“We’ll go in somewhere and ask what to do when you want to start
something,” Betty decided, bound not to lose faith in systematic
procedure. “You do the talking, Madeline.”

“Why, you might persuade some property owner to build for you,”
suggested the jeweler’s clerk, whom Madeline rushed in upon with her
question.

“Thanks, but we want to move in about day after to-morrow,” Madeline
told him grandly.

“Well, I presume you’ve all heard the old saying, ‘If wishes were
horses every Harding girl would ride,’” retorted the clerk with a grin
and a wink.

“Horrid thing!” said Babbie, when they were outside. “He thinks we’re
college girls off on some kind of a queer lark. We’ll show him! Where
next, Betty?”

Betty was staring up the hill with an air of profound discouragement.
“I think we ought to look at the side-streets,” she decided at last. “I
don’t believe it’s any use considering up-stairs rooms.”

“I feel like the senior play committee,” said Madeline, as they began
their conscientious tour, hoping against hope that they should find
just the right thing lurking around some corner off Main Street. “We
read all the impossible Elizabethan dramas that anybody could hear of,
we hunted up Hindu plays, and made frantic efforts to hunt up Japanese
ones; and some particularly earnest member even wrote a play herself.
And all the time we knew as well as anything that Billy Shakespeare was
our man.”

“Well, if that’s the way you feel about this, where, please, is our
Billy Shakespeare?” inquired Babbie a trifle irritably.

Madeline smiled mysteriously. “We shall find him before the set of
sun,” she declared oracularly. “I have a leading to that effect.”

“Couldn’t you make it before high noon, just as well?” sighed Babbie.
“I’ve got on new shoes.”

Betty looked troubled. “Go home and rest, Babbie dear,” she begged.
“Two of us can do this just as well as three.”

So Babbie went off, after a few polite protests, and Madeline and
Betty finished up the cross-streets without seeing anything that could
possibly be turned into a “stunty” tea-room.

“Well, can there be anything up nearer the college that we haven’t
noticed?” asked Betty, trying to keep up the businesslike air
appropriate to systematic research, but feeling very silly and
completely discouraged.

“All boarding-houses, isn’t it, right down to the theatre?” said
Madeline.

“Shall we go and look?” suggested Betty timidly. “I can’t quite
remember what’s between the florist’s and that little white house that
a crowd of juniors had last year.”

“Nothing,” returned Madeline promptly, as they started up the hill.
“Don’t you know--there’s a wide lawn, and you go back across it to
that big barn that the riding man had for his horses? He’s moving
out, by the way. I met him yesterday, and he assured me that ’e
missed them queer moon-lighters most hawfully. He’s going to move
somewhere where he can have a big ring and some hurdles in a meadow.
I’m afraid I rather led him to suppose”--Madeline looked properly
conscience-stricken--“that we might be up this afternoon to have a
lesson in jumping. But it looks as if we should be too busy.”

“Do you think there’s any use hunting much longer?” demanded Betty,
who was fast losing courage.

“Of course,” Madeline shot back unhesitatingly. “Something will turn
up; it always does--if you turn it. Let’s make perfectly sure about
this nearer-the-campus proposition.”

But there was nothing there, and Madeline, not daring to suggest
refreshing themselves at Cuyler’s, after Betty’s strict prohibitions,
led the way up the high terrace to the back steps of Science Hall,
where they could rest and consider what to do next. Right across from
them was the little white house with the big barn looming up behind it.

“What a shame that isn’t a house,” said Betty sadly. “How did such a
tiny house ever happen to have such a big barn, I wonder?”

“It didn’t,” explained Madeline. “The barn went with the house over
on that other street--the one that used to be a big mansion--and now
is only part of a factory. But if the barn were a house, Miss Wales,
the riding-master wouldn’t be moving out of it. It would have been
appropriated long ago by some thrifty boarding-house keeper, and we
shouldn’t be sitting here staring at it and wondering whether the owner
could be persuaded to make it over into a house in hurry-up order.”

“I wasn’t wondering that,” said Betty simply. “I was wondering if we
could possibly use it as it is. There’s nothing else that I can see,
and it’s an awfully nice barn. Don’t you remember how Mr. Ware showed
us through once when he first moved in, and how proud he was that it
was all paneled in solid oak, with those lovely great beams in the
ceiling? And afterward the pickle heiress’s father wanted to buy the
beams for his library, and he would have, too, only the owner was in
Europe and the pickle man couldn’t wait to cable.”

“Yes, I remember,” agreed Madeline. “It’s a beautiful barn, but it’s
a barn nevertheless, with stalls and mangers and grain-bins and----”
Madeline paused abruptly and stared across at the barn through
half-shut eyes for a long minute. “Why, of course it will do,” she
announced briskly. “Of all the idiots--to sit here gaping! Come on!”
And grasping Betty’s arm, she dragged her in a headlong race down the
terrace, across the road, and up the drive to the big barn.

“Oh, I’m so glad it’s open,” she exclaimed breathlessly. “Now I can
show you. I see it all myself plain as anything. Long narrow tables in
the stalls--ideal nooks for romantic couples. Big sociable round tables
out here. Ferns and oak branches in the mangers. Bins transformed into
linen and china cupboards. Old sporting prints on the walls--father
has some beauties tucked away somewhere. Gargoyles and candlesticks
and Flemish lamps scattered around in dark corners. Lights--let me
see--oh, yes, carriage lamps for lights. An open fire--we simply must
have that--it’s the one thing lacking. Why, Betty Wales, there’s
nothing like it anywhere! People will go crazy over it, and we shall
make our everlasting fortunes. See, this little room back here--it’s a
harness-room, I suppose--is just the thing for the kitchen. Why, it’s
perfect, and the rent will be a mere song. Come and tell Babbie this
minute.

“And to think that it was Betty and not I who had the inspiration!”
Madeline sighed, as she ended her enthusiastic recital to Babbie and
Mary. “When Mrs. Bob and Mrs. Hildreth are paying me for supplying
them, too. It’s disgraceful.”

“But, Madeline”--it was the first chance Betty had had to get in a
word--“I only said I wondered if it would do, and I’m not sure yet.
Where could we put the range and the sink in that harness-room? Barns
don’t have furnaces, do they? Even if there could be an open fire, that
wouldn’t make it warm enough in winter; and I doubt if carriage lamps
would make it light enough. Those things are even more important than
your beloved features.”

“Betty,” said Madeline severely, “what is the matter with you? You
ought to be dancing around on one foot in your childish glee. You’re
not a practical person. You weren’t, I mean, when I knew you.”

“She’s growing up, silly,” Mary Brooks answered, with an arm around
Betty. “And it’s very lucky she is, if you’re going into this thing
seriously. Now you telephone your riding-man to see who owns this
stable, and then we can make sure it’s not already rented again, and
that the rent isn’t beyond you. And if everything is all right so far,
Betty and I will go and look the place over in the true scientific
spirit. You and Babbie can come along if you like, but I don’t consider
it necessary.”

“Hear the experienced-housekeeper-wife-of-an-experimental psychologist
talk!” jeered Madeline. “Run along and cast your evil eye on my scheme
if you want to. But it will work, practical or not practical. It’s
simply too lovely not to work.”

“I adore your logic, Madeline,” declared Mary admiringly. “You’d better
come too, after all.”

So, first having assured themselves about the rent, the four set out.
Babbie sniffed daintily as they went inside.

“Everything is to be varnished over,” Madeline explained, “walls,
floor, everything. Some of the rough places should be planed down a
little, but we’ll leave the dents alone. It will be a stunning effect
in the lamplight--quite like an old English castle.”

“The stalls are too narrow for two rows of chairs and a reasonably
wide table,” announced Mary, from the depths of one of them. “The
romantic couples will knock plates.”

“Then don’t have chairs. Build in benches on the sides, and take away
the mangers in some stalls to make more room for big parties who prefer
to be by themselves--the getting-into-societies celebrations and all
that kind of thing.”

“That sounds possible. Now about the kitchen,” pursued Mary. “Betty,
come and look at this harness-room again. I believe it might do.
There’s running water here and----”

Babbie sat down on the steps leading to the loft. “I’ve only said ‘oh’
and ‘ah’ so far, like the chorus in a Greek play, but just watch me
work at getting us started. And I may have a bright thought some day.”

Just then the agent arrived, Mary and Betty came back, and all four
girls fired questions and suggestions at the poor man so fast and
furiously that he lost his head and yielded every point, promising to
shellac the whole interior, put up a stove that would “heat the place
red-hot,” and carriage lamps with reflectors that would make it “blaze
with light,” and a big fireplace at one end of the room, since Madeline
declared it to be an absolute necessity. And he guaranteed to have
the barn swept and garnished and ready for occupancy within ten days.
Meanwhile the girls could install the kitchen fittings, and order their
furniture.

“And engage a cook and decent waitresses,” added Mary portentously.
“And if you do that in ten days I shall be green with envy.”

But Babbie did it, without, as she expressed it, lifting a little
finger. She happened to meet Belden House Annie on the campus, and
during their interview it developed that Annie had a pretty sister
Nora, who would gladly come and be waitress, and an Aunt Bridget, who
could “cook to the quane’s taste, or the prisidint’s.”

“We’ll have ‘quane’s’ style Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays,” suggested
Madeline, “and ‘prisidint’s’ style the rest of the time. That is, if
that idiotic carpenter ever gets the tables right.”

The carpenter, Madeline declared, was wearing her to a thread; but
Babbie, who was pricking her pretty fingers hemming table-linen, and
Betty, immersed in lists of pots and kettles, groceries and silverware,
heartlessly refused to come to her rescue.

So Madeline relieved her mind by much grumbling, and in the intervals
of her supervision developed new “features” with a joyous abandon that
threatened to reduce the Hinsdales’ scholastic ménage to chaos. Dr.
Hinsdale came home one afternoon to find his study darkened, the floor
and table strewn with bits of multi-colored paper and paste-board,
and Madeline, in a studio apron, trying the effect of her latest
inspiration in candle-shades on the desk lamp.

“I’m going to make a different design for each stall,” she explained
cheerfully, without looking up when the door opened. “That will be more
interesting to make, and when a thing is interesting to make it’s more
likely to turn out well, isn’t it now? Oh, I thought it was only Mary!
I beg your pardon. I know I shouldn’t have come in here, but they had
table-cloths and dish-towels spread around everywhere else. The first
day it rains we’ll treat you to a free lunch, Dr. Hinsdale, to pay up.
Oh, you’ve got--there’s some one else! Why didn’t you tell me?”

As Madeline fled precipitately, she heard “Prexy’s” pleasant laugh.

“We’re disgraced forever,” she announced tragically to the
sewing-party. “Prexy will probably proclaim a boycott upon us at
to-morrow’s chapel.”

But he sent word instead, by Professor Hinsdale, that he wanted to be
counted in for the free lunch.

“He may, if he’ll let us tack our posters on the campus trees,” agreed
Madeline calmly.

“Posters!” cried Betty and Babbie in a breath.

Madeline nodded. “I’m designing one. It’s stored under the sofa in
Mary’s pink and gold reception room. I’ll get it. It’s all done but the
name.”

“Why, we haven’t any name!” cried Babbie.

“I thought you called yourselves Betty Wales & Co.,” put in Mary.

“That’s what we are, of course,” agreed Madeline, reappearing with
her poster, “so we’d better call ourselves something else, hadn’t we?
Everybody can see that Betty is a regular feature. A name should bring
out unexpected qualities. Besides, Betty wouldn’t want her name to be
stuck up on a sign.”

“That’s a good theory about the unexpected qualities,” said Mary, “but
I’d like to see you work it.”

Madeline sighed plaintively. “As if it was anything against a theory
that you can’t work it. I furnish the theory. It’s only fair for some
one else to furnish the name.”

“Old Barn Tea-Shop,” suggested Mary.

“Sounds sentimental,” objected Babbie.

“And rickety,” laughed Betty.

“The Coach-and-Four Tea-Shop,” from Mary again. “That’s certainly the
height of elegance.”

“But it’s humpy to say,” Madeline told her, “and possibly a little too
elegant for us to live up to.”

“The Saddle and Stirrup,” was Dr. Hinsdale’s offering.

“That’s lovely,” declared Madeline, “just like a quaint old English
inn. But it’s too--well, too sophisticated for us. College girls
wouldn’t take to it.”

“Tally-ho Tea-Shop sounds rather neat,” said Babbie reflectively, “but
I don’t know that it brings out any of Madeline’s unsuspected features.”

“Why, yes, it does,” Madeline declared. “It suggests dash and pleasant
glitter and snap--and general stuntiness.”

“And ear-splitting horns,” added Mary sarcastically.

“But college girls love to blow horns,” Betty reminded her.

Mary grinned. “I adore it myself,” she admitted, “but I try to live up
to the dignity of my position.”

Madeline had been sketching in some letters rapidly on her poster.
“Tally-ho Tea-Shop fills the space I left most beautifully. I’ll copy
this in oils on thin wood, and we’ll nail a gargoyle to the big tree
in our front yard and let the sign dangle out of his mouth. Mary, be a
jewel and lend us your gargoyle. Ours are all needed inside.”

It was certainly a strenuous week.

“If anybody had made us slave the way we have over this tea-shop,”
Babbie declared, “we should have called it cruelty to animals and
children. And I don’t believe we could have done it except up here at
Harding, where everybody throws things together between classes.”

Just to be sure that everything was “thrown together,” they gave a
private view, on the evening before the opening day, for the Hinsdales,
Georgia, Polly Eastman, and a few other chosen spirits, who pronounced
the Tally-ho Tea-Shop “very neat,” “a gem,” “adorable,” “too cute for
words,” or “truly stunty,” according to their favorite adjectives.
The open fire, the carriage lamps, and the darkened oak gave just the
effect of dim splendor that Madeline had wanted. The bits of old brass
tempted one to exploring expeditions; the double-decker bread-trays
made one long to order them filled and eat them empty.

“When we get the prints and the candle-shades, it will be about
perfect,” declared Madeline, surveying the scene complacently.

“You need a horseshoe over the door for luck,” suggested Dr. Hinsdale.

So Georgia rushed out to a near-by stable to get one, and Dr. Hinsdale
nailed it up while the girls sang:

  “Here’s to Betty Wales & Co.!
    Drink ’em down!
  Here’s to Betty Wales & Co.
    Drink ’em down!
  Here’s to Betty Wales & Co.
  They’ll be sure to make things go!
    Drink ’em down,
    Drink ’em down,
    Drink ’em down, down, down!”

Betty, standing with Georgia’s arm around her, gave a little shiver.

“What’s the trouble? Are you catching cold?” whispered Georgia
anxiously.

“No, nothing,” Betty whispered back. Well, there wasn’t--anything at
least that you told people, except perhaps Miss Ferris, who had been
kept from the private view by an important department meeting. It was
only what K. had once laughingly dubbed “growing pains,”--the same
frightened feeling that you had the first time your brother teased
you to swim out over your depth, and you weren’t a bit sure he could
rescue you if you went down. Also, it had taken Betty the whole long
afternoon to clean and fill the carriage lamps that every one was
exclaiming over. Cleaning lamps didn’t come under the head of either
waiting on table or cooking. Betty wondered, with a tired little sigh,
who would do it all the other days.




CHAPTER VI

EUGENIA FORD’S LUNCHEON


THE success of the Tally-ho Tea-Shop’s opening day left the amazed
proprietors somewhat aghast. When Babbie Hildreth arrived at twelve,
in a plumed hat and a trained gown, and with a lunch party of six in
tow, things were already at such a pass that after a whispered word
with Betty she shoved her guests hastily into the one empty stall,
pinned up her train, tucked her plumed hat under one of the benches,
and proceeded to take Betty’s place as cashier, so that Betty could
go to the rescue of her well-nigh distracted cook. At twelve-fifteen
Madeline appropriated Polly Eastman’s runabout and drove at a gallop to
the Hinsdales’ to borrow Mary’s waitress and a fresh supply of linen
and silver. At twelve-thirty Georgia Ames appeared, very hot and hungry
from a strenuous game of tennis, only to be mercilessly seized upon by
Babbie and rushed off for more oranges and bananas.

“They cry for fruit salad like children for castoria,” declared Babbie
fiercely. “And they have nothing but five dollar bills. Bring me all
the change you can carry.”

At one o’clock the real rush began. Girls sat on the broad steps or
swarmed over the lawn waiting for vacant tables. At half-past one
Madeline went out to them and explained that nearly everything was
gone, except tea and bread-and-butter sandwiches; and some of the girls
went off, after having engaged tables for next day. At half-past five,
when the last of the afternoon tea drinkers had departed, the managers
of the Tally-ho Tea-Shop held a solemn conclave in the front stall,
their aching feet tucked comfortably under them on the long benches.

“It was a fright,” said Babbie. “I took three hundred checks, and money
enough to pay the rent till Christmas. I hope I made right change some
of the time.”

“It’s great,” sighed Madeline, “simply great! There’ll be perfectly
huge profits for Mrs. Hildreth and Mrs. Bob and me.”

“If this is going to keep up,” put in Betty, “we’ve got to have more of
every single thing. I’m afraid we’ve killed off Bridget already.”

“Send her home in a carriage,” suggested Madeline recklessly. “Let’s
all go home in a carriage. Speaking of home, I’ve got to take the
sleeper down to-night. Poor Mrs. Bob has telegraphed twice. You see
I told her to advertise the apartment, and the would-be tenants are
standing on the door-steps shrieking to get in. I’ll be back here the
first minute I can, though.”

Betty looked at Babbie. “Didn’t you say your mother had changed her
plans and come home?”

Babbie nodded. “I’ve got to fly back to her or she’ll get blue and rush
me off to Palm Beach for the whole winter. You’ll be all right without
us, Betty. You must have all the extra help you want, and if we’re
going to do such a tremendous business I think you ought to have more
salary.”

“So do I,” chorused Madeline, “which is very sweet of me, considering
how it will wipe out profits.”

“We’d better wait and see whether this rush keeps up,” advised Betty
wisely. “Maybe those that came to-day didn’t like it and won’t come
again.”

“Everybody was perfectly crazy over it,” declared Madeline. “I’m sure
it’s all plain sailing, now that we’ve got started.”

Betty, tucking a complicated marketing list into her shopping-bag with
a still more complicated memoranda of “things to be attended to,” said
nothing. She wasn’t afraid of hard work, but the responsibility and the
thought that perhaps she couldn’t possibly get through it all worried
her a good deal. She could have hugged Georgia Ames next morning, when
that brisk young person, having banged persistently on the tea-shop
door, finally climbed in the kitchen window.

“Found you a room,” she announced breathlessly, “in that little white
house in front. Woman has a big beauty left over, and you can have
it cheap, because it’s so late in the season. With or without meals.
Heard you say you wanted one. Now send me on more errands. I’ve got
a free morning--no classes till twelve, and then only a snap course
in psychology. What? You silly! As if I wouldn’t do anything for you
after the way you treated me last year.”

It was Georgia who suggested applying to the Students’ Aid for more
waitresses and who, when the Students’ Aid insisted that it couldn’t be
expected to provide them on less than a day’s notice, sought out the
spendthrift Dutton twins and pressed them into Betty’s service.

“They’re always poor after the second of the month, aren’t you, my
children?” she asked them, as they presented themselves in two of
Nora’s aprons, flushed and giggling, for Betty’s inspection. “Your hair
is in a mess, as usual, Fluffy. Remember, Straight, your right hand is
the one you take notes with--if you ever do take notes. Now run out to
the kitchen, and Bridget and Nora will show you where things are. And
remember it’s only a lark to you, but you mustn’t queer the Tally-ho
Tea-Shop.”

These instructions they faithfully obeyed, seeking out Betty later to
tell her so.

“And we think we ought to have our lunch extra,” the fluffy-haired
twin explained, “because all our little pals came in to see us do our
stunt.”

“And we egged them on to have all sorts of expensive things, more than
they’d meant to order,” added her straight-haired sister. “Besides, we
want to save our wages for lucky pieces.”

But while they were eating the lunch that was “extra,” Lucile
Merrifield came in, and being noisily invited to join them, ate up the
lucky pieces and much more, while she listened to the twins’ joyous
account of their new “stunt.” “So the lunch wasn’t exactly extra after
all,” said the fluffy-haired twin as she paid the bill, “because we
egged Lucile on too. Extravagance is a good quality in a waitress,
isn’t it, Miss Wales? I shall write my father that. It may tickle him
so that he’ll raise our allowance, and if he does we’ll be right down
here giving a party.”

After the first fortnight things began to settle themselves into a more
businesslike routine. The girls Betty knew, having recklessly indulged
themselves during the tea-shop’s first week, were obliged to be content
with campus fare for a while. One noon she realized with a little
start of amazement that there wasn’t a girl that she knew in the room.
Some of them doubtless knew her. Most of them had probably heard that
she was a Harding girl, who was suddenly obliged to earn her living.
Well, wasn’t she? And hadn’t she wanted to go into a really and truly
business, and been almost sorry that in Harding everything was too much
fun to seem like real work?

“We’ve been waiting a perfect age,” announced somebody over her
shoulder. “Will you send a waitress, please, right away? You ought to
give good service, you know, when you’re just starting in.”

The speaker was a tall, overdressed girl, with a scowl and a mouth that
drooped at the corners. Betty remembered distinctly having seen her
come in only a minute before. But she said, “I’m sorry,” and took the
order out to the kitchen herself.

When Bridget had served it in a hurry, Betty heard the tall girl laugh
disagreeably. “Wasn’t that neat?” she demanded of her companion. “I can
always get what I want. Maybe she did see us come in; she couldn’t say
so. That’s the way to treat tradespeople, even if they have been to
college.”

That very afternoon, while the tall girl’s speech still rankled in
Betty’s memory, recalling other petty slights and snubs, Miss Eugenia
Ford rustled in to order a luncheon for twelve for the next noon.

Eugenia Ford was small and fair, and as exquisitely dainty and delicate
as a French doll. She was universally conceded to be the prettiest girl
in the entering class, and the petting she had received had gone to her
head.

“If her grandmother dies before long, she may get a little real
expression into her face, and then she’ll be the college beauty,”
somebody had said about her.

“It will take heaps more than losing her grandmother to put any
expression into Eugenia’s face,” Georgia Ames had retorted wisely.

At present Eugenia was certainly as vain and frivolous as she was
pretty, and very badly spoiled indeed.

“Good-afternoon, Miss--Miss Welch,” she began in businesslike tones.

“Wales,” suggested Betty, smiling at the child because she was so
pretty, and because she had been so comical about gargles and gargoyles
at Georgia’s party.

“Wales.” Eugenia accepted the correction gravely. “I want a table for
twelve persons to-morrow, for a one o’clock luncheon. This is the menu
that I want served. I shall have my flowers sent here, and I suppose
you can arrange them. Here are my place-cards, and this list gives the
order that I want them arranged in. I want the front stall.” Eugenia
completed her directions without relaxing one iota of her unsmiling
dignity.

“I’m sorry,” Betty told her, “but the front stall is engaged for
to-morrow. You can have the third--that’s just as large--or the big
round table out here.”

“But I like the candle-shades in the first stall better,” announced
Eugenia calmly. “Change them to the third, and give me that. And please
serve us very promptly, because some of the girls have afternoon
engagements.” And Eugenia started off.

“I’m sorry, Miss Ford,” Betty called after her, “but the girl who
engaged the first stall particularly wanted those candle-shades. They
are understood to belong to the stall, you know.”

Eugenia’s smooth white forehead puckered itself into a disagreeable
frown. “Very well,” she said crossly, “but you ought to have two sets
of that kind of shade. They’re the only pretty ones in the place.” And
she rustled off, annoyance in every line of her dainty little figure.

Betty smiled sadly after her. “I suppose she’s forgotten that she ever
met me. Freshmen have so many people to remember. Madeline will be
pleased to know her opinion of all those candle-shades that she’s so
proud of.”

Betty arranged Eugenia’s roses herself, and inspected every detail of
the table with great care. Last of all she put around the place-cards
in the order that Eugenia had specified. Georgia’s name was on one, and
Lucile’s, and Polly’s, and the fluffy-haired Dutton twins’--the one
who wrote such cunning verses and was sure to go into Dramatic Club
the first time. It was plainly what Katherine used to call a “polite,
politic” luncheon.

Unfortunately for Eugenia she was late in arriving--or her guests were
early. When she hurried in, looking prettier than ever because her
cheeks were flushed with her quick walk down the hill and her eyes
sparkling in anticipation of a triumphant occasion, she found Georgia,
Polly, Lucile, and the Dutton twins all hanging over Betty’s desk, so
absorbed in their conversation that they entirely failed to notice the
advent of their small hostess.

“Oh, here you are,” began Eugenia, with a vague little nod toward the
group. “Shall we go and sit down while we wait for the others? Our
table is all ready, I think.”

“Come on, Betty, and give us the rest of it while we’re waiting,”
coaxed Lucile, pulling Betty toward Eugenia. “She’s been telling us
how Babe the man-hater fell in love. It’s a joyous tale. You met Babe,
Eugenia, when she was up this fall--and you’ve met Betty Wales, of
course.”

Eugenia looked gravely at Betty. “Yes, I believe I’ve met Miss Wales,”
she said.

“Of course, at my gargoyle party,” put in Georgia. “Go on, Betty, about
that fascinating Paris pension, and their rubbering out into the garden
and planning to have breakfast together every morning.”

Betty, watching Eugenia, shook her head, with a brave little smile.
“Some other time. I’m busy now. That is, I can’t desert my post to play
with you, as I’ve told you all sixty times before.”

“Shall we go and sit down?” asked Eugenia again, sweetly. And as they
filed off, her clear high voice came back distinctly to Betty. “I
didn’t ask her to come,” she was explaining to Georgia, “because I
think it’s much better not to mix business and society, don’t you, Miss
Ames? Of course if I saw her up on the campus I should be nice to her.
But here it’s rather awkward, because some of my friends would think it
was awfully funny to be introduced to the cashier.”

Betty couldn’t hear Georgia’s low, emphatic retort, but she could
guess at its tenor, and later, when Polly Eastman leaned around the
edge of the stall, wearing her widest, most provoking smile, and waved
her handkerchief, she could imagine how she and Lucile and the Dutton
twins were making poor Eugenia’s life a burden to her by those subtle
methods of persecution that had won the trio their reputation for
being the best friends and the worst enemies that a Harding girl could
have. It was four to one, and Betty pitied poor Eugenia, who felt the
hostile atmosphere--without in the least understanding what it meant,
and spent the afternoon writing a tearful letter to her boarding-school
chum, all about the hatefulness of Harding upper-class girls who were
“too sweet for anything” one minute and “perfectly horrid” the next.
She thought she would leave at Christmas time, she wrote, even if her
father had said she couldn’t keep changing her mind. Then she made out
a check to the Tally-ho Tea-Shop for her luncheon and mailed it, with a
disagreeable little note, complaining of the waitress’s awkwardness and
too much pepper in the soup. “The table wasn’t decently laid, either,
and the flowers were a mess,” she concluded, and addressed the note to
“Miss Welch.”

“That’s what Georgia Ames gets back for calling me an idiotic little
snob,” muttered Eugenia, as she posted her letters.

Eugenia’s note, which Betty couldn’t find time to read until late the
next afternoon, was the last straw in the load of a very hard day. The
week before, business had been so dull that Betty had reluctantly
decided to dispense with two of the Students’ Aid waitresses, and,
having tried to choose the ones who could best do without the money,
she had screwed up her courage and explained the situation. They had
both cried, and now, the very day after they were gone, the Tally-ho
Tea-Shop was crowded to overflowing, and poor Nora and her one
remaining assistant fairly ran back and forth between the kitchen and
the stalls in their efforts not to keep impatient customers waiting.
Then everybody had been seized with a mad desire for English muffins
just on the very day when Bridget had decided only to make up a few,
and the sandwiches that there never had been enough of before were all
left over. Several people had complained that they could never get
what they ordered, and some had gone away. Betty stood it until five
o’clock, and then, confiding to the Students’ Aid waitress that she
felt as if she should fly, she left her in charge and went up to see
Miss Ferris.

“What’s the trouble now, little girl?” demanded Miss Ferris, when she
had established Betty in a big easy chair by the open fire, with a box
of chocolates at her elbow.

“Nothing,” said Betty bravely, “or at least there oughtn’t to be
anything. What would you do, Miss Ferris, if things that you knew
oughtn’t to bother you, bothered you awfully all the same?”

Miss Ferris considered. Anybody else would have said, “What things, for
instance?” but Miss Ferris never asked stupid questions like that. She
only smiled back at you and read what she wanted to know in your face.

“Well,” she began slowly after a minute, “I’d go to bed very early,
so as to get well rested, and next morning I’d look around to find
somebody with a big, real trouble that I could help, perhaps--or try to
help anyhow. And first of all I’d take off my hat and stay to dinner at
the Hilton.”

When Betty bid Miss Ferris good-night after a merry evening in the
Hilton House parlors, she was her smiling self again.

“I’m all right even without the going-to-bed-early part,” she declared
eagerly. “The things I can’t help I won’t worry about. The things
I oughtn’t to mind I won’t mind--not one little speck. I guess that
disposes of all my troubles, and the first thing to-morrow I’ll begin
hunting for somebody to help. I don’t believe I’ve thought much about
helping lately--except helping father by earning this money. Things are
so different----”

“No, they’re not,” Miss Ferris cut her short, “because you’re the very
same Betty Wales.”

“Am I?” Betty wondered, as she buttoned the coat of her last year’s
suit and ran down the hill. “I suppose I am. Now there’s Rachel--she
couldn’t be any dearer if she owned a gold mine. Besides, I promised
father I wouldn’t care and I won’t.”




CHAPTER VII

MARY, THE PERFECT PATRON


MADELINE had been gone for three weeks and never sent so much as a line
of “inspirations” back to the Tally-ho Tea-Shop, when the expressman
drove up one morning with a great mahogany writing-desk for Betty,
with “Sent by M. Ayres” on the shipping ticket. On one of the lovely
old-fashioned brass knobs was tied a note, and Betty stopped unpacking
the desk to read it.

“The chief joy of having a tea-shop,” Madeline wrote, “is that it grows
on your hands. I never was quite satisfied with your desk. A harness
cupboard, with a covered watering trough underneath it, ought to have
made a picturesque and Tally-ho-ish effect, but some way it didn’t.
Yesterday I went out into the country to meditate on my Literary
Career, and at the little old inn where I lunched I saw the very thing,
which I enclose herewith. (That’s what I say to all the editors about
my stories. I hope you’ll like the enclosure well enough to keep it,
which is a thing no editor has done yet.)

“Isn’t the inlay lovely, and don’t you adore the bulgy little
compartments? There’s also a secret drawer--not the fake kind that
anybody can open after a little hunting, but the real thing. I got all
these fascinating features for a song, with the recipe for the most
luscious cake thrown in--literally thrown in, Miss Betty Wales. Open
the secret drawer, and you’ll find it. (Ha! ha! A lively hunt you’ll
have first.) It’s called Aunt Martha’s cake, and if it doesn’t make a
hit for the Tally-ho, I shall lose faith in the Harding appetite.

“Now don’t look solemn and sigh over the wild extravagance of all good
Bohemians, Betty dear. If you feel that the Tally-ho can’t afford the
desk just now, why, Mrs. Bob Enderby is crazy about it, and she’ll give
the firm exactly twice what I paid. Get little Mary Brooks to bidding
against her, and we shan’t have to worry over dull times.

“I am sending this with the desk, because my Literary Career takes all
the postage stamps I can afford,--and then some. Dick Blake says that
writing is exactly like painting. You’ve got to learn how. He calls
my stories ‘beginner’s daubs--promising, but daubs.’ I’ve talked to a
lot of other discouraging people, and I’ve got hundreds of plans, and
several inspirations for B. W. & Co., so I’m coming back to-morrow to
settle down for what Katherine calls a little spell of work.”

“Goodness, but I shall be glad to see her and talk things over!” Betty
said to herself, and looked up to find Mary Brooks standing in the
door, smiling in her vague, near-sighted fashion.

“Oh, it is you,” she said, as Betty hurried to meet her. “Are you all
by yourself? Where are the members of the ‘Why-Get-Up-to-Breakfast
Club’?”

Betty laughed and then looked sober. “It’s almost as nice a name as the
‘Merry Hearts,’ isn’t it? They’ve stopped coming here lately. I wish I
knew why.”

“Give them buckwheat griddle-cakes,” advised Mary promptly. “Cuyler has
nothing but wheat ones. Tell Lucile to tell everybody that yours are
heaps nicer. What’s that in the crate?”

Betty explained, and Mary, who adored old writing-desks and had been
hunting for years for one just to her liking, pulled off her gloves
in great excitement and helped unpack the desk, move it into a sunny
alcove between the front door and a window, and hunt for the secret
drawer.

“It’s exactly what I want,” she declared rapturously, after they had
spent half an hour without finding any trace of the recipe for Aunt
Martha’s cake. “I’ll give you ten dollars more than your Mrs. Bob
offered. But you mustn’t sell it to either of us, Betty. A secret
drawer is a splendid tea-room feature. It suggests all kinds of
romantic mysteries.”

Betty nodded. “Of course, I should just love to have it here, but we
can’t afford it. We haven’t done a bit well lately, Mary.”

“Try the buckwheat griddle-cakes,” Mary called over her shoulder, as
she hurried off to meet her husband at the end of his eleven o’clock
class.

[Illustration: SHE STOPPED THE GIRLS AS THEY WENT OUT]

But directly after luncheon she was back again. “I’m bound to find that
drawer before Madeline comes, so we can crow over her,” she explained.
“Besides, George Garrison Hinsdale is writing a paper for a
philosophical society with a name a yard long, and he’s most dreadfully
cross. So I thought that as I can’t help talking and looking frivolous,
I’d better go away. Shall I bother here?”

Mary hunted for the secret drawer in the same sociable fashion in which
she evidently expected Dr. Hinsdale to write a paper for his learned
society. She stopped the girls as they went out, to ask if they knew
anything about secret springs, and she soon had an animated, admiring
group around her, eagerly examining the points of Betty’s treasure,
and incidentally revealing to the astute Mary their opinions of the
Tally-ho Tea-Shop and drinking in her casual references to delicious
crispy brown buckwheat griddle-cakes and to the wonderful new recipe in
the desk, that would certainly come to light before long.

About four o’clock, in the lull between lunch and afternoon tea, Mary
detached herself self from the girls around the desk and buttonholed
Betty in a secluded corner.

“I always knew I had a head for business,” she began modestly. “The
reason they don’t come in to feed isn’t because they don’t like
the eats, but because they’re saving up money for Christmas. Don’t
you remember how we used to do that? At least,” added Mary, with a
reminiscent smile, “I used to mean to save, but in the end I always
sent home for an extra check.”

“I know,” agreed Betty. “But what can you do about it? It’s just one of
the drawbacks of the tea-room business, isn’t it?”

Mary surveyed her smilingly. “Don’t you really see what to do?” she
inquired impressively. “Why, my child, it’s as plain as two and two.
Open a gift-shop department, of course.” Mary paused for the full
splendor of her idea to dawn upon Betty.

“But--but this is a tea-room,” began Betty doubtfully.

“Of course it is,” Mary took her up, “and if people won’t buy enough
tea, you have to give them griddle-cakes, don’t you? And if they don’t
jump at griddle-cakes, you’ve got to find out what they will jump at.
That’s business. What you want is their money. You’ve got plenty of
room for a long table of fol-de-rols over there in the corner. They’ll
hear about it and come in to buy Christmas presents, and they’ll see
Aunt Martha’s cake melting in their friends’ mouths and have to have
some. While they’re eating, they’ll remember that they haven’t bought
a thing for their own dear Aunt Martha. So they’ll hop up and pick out
more Christmas things. See? That’s Association of Ideas, my child.
George Garrison Hinsdale is writing his paper about it. I’m going home
this minute to tell him that I know how it works, and also to give
him his tea, which is an idea that he associates with me. I’ll be in
to-morrow, to see if you’ve found the drawer.”

The more Betty thought of the gift-shop department the better she
liked the idea. They could make a specialty of Tally-ho candle-shades
and one or two other things that Madeline could be trusted to think
up. The Students’ Aid girls that she had been obliged to dismiss
could take charge of the table--“I shan’t have it look a bit like a
counter,” Betty reflected, remembering the unpleasant remark about
tradespeople--during her own busiest hours. Some of the other girls who
were earning their own way might like to put work on sale there.

“Pretty things would surely sell better here than from the
bulletin-board in the gym,” Betty decided swiftly, “and that’s a way
to help. We might take orders for mending and copying and such things,
too. The girls who come here are the very ones who have money to spend,
and I’m sure lots of them don’t bother to hunt up Students’ Aid girls,
when they want work done. Why, this is more helpful than I ever could
be when I was in college! Miss Ferris was right--she always is. We’ll
do it! I must consult Babbie and Madeline first, of course.”

But Mary, appearing bright and early the next morning, scoffed at
delays.

“George Garrison Hinsdale looked as if he wanted to put me in storage
till lunch time,” she explained, “so I can work for you the whole
morning if you’ll only decide now. Anyway, we know Madeline is for it.
Don’t you remember she said in her letter that she liked tea-rooms
because they grow on your hands? Well, this is a beautiful example of
growth. And you and Madeline are a majority, though I’m sure Babbie
will be for it too. Now I’ve thought of a lovely new kind of Tally-ho
candle-shade with little bunches of oats for fringe. I’m going to fix
up a workroom for the gift-shop department in the loft. I’ve brought
down oceans of things in here,” and Mary emptied paste, paints and
brushes, scissors, a sewing kit, and a miscellaneous collection of
scraps of paper, which she explained were designs for Christmas cards,
out of a very stylish shopping-bag, borrowed Betty’s biggest apron, and
proceeded to improvise a work-table out of two sawhorses and an old
storm door. But having laid out her implements on it, she discovered to
her dismay that the workroom would be plainly visible to the inmates
of the third stall, and she came down to consult Betty about the most
artistic color for a curtain to screen her from the curious public
below.

“For this gift business is to be a secret, you know,” she explained to
Betty, “until you’re ready to spring it on them. Not exactly a dead
secret, but the interesting half-way kind. Madeline knows how to manage
secrets. And speaking of Madeline, here she comes.”

Madeline approved the new departure so vehemently that she would hardly
wait to shake hands before she was up in the loft investigating Mary’s
arrangements, and emptying the miscellaneous contents of her suit-case
out on the floor, to find a “spook” candle-shade, that the little
artist, whose cousins had once had a tea-room, had designed for the
new adventurers in the same field. When you examined it, you saw just
a confused mass of red, blue, green, yellow, and white spots separated
by broad black lines; but with the light behind them the spots resolved
themselves in a big yellow Tally-ho coach drawn by white horses, who
pranced grandly up to a red-roofed inn on the next panel, with a green
lawn in front of it and green trees and blue sky behind.

“Isn’t it too cute?” Betty declared enthusiastically. “It ought to be
our very specialest specialty, oughtn’t it, Mary?”

“I suppose so,” agreed Mary grudgingly. “They’ll take loads of time to
make, though. There’ll be more real profit in mine. I must get some
oats for my kind, while I’m out buying the curtain. Why, it’s noon
already--I must fly! Madeline, come down and show us the secret drawer
before I go.”

Madeline had appropriated a piece of Mary’s cardboard and was tracing
the design of the “specialest specialty” on it.

She shook her head absently. “It’s a trade secret, only for members of
the firm. Perhaps, if you don’t call me ‘my child’ too often, and make
us some terribly cute shades and cards, we’ll let you into it by and
by.”

“You ought to let her in right away,” declared Betty loyally. “I was
getting just dreadfully blue, with you and Babbie away, and first she
thought of buckwheat griddle-cakes and then of this.”

“Yes, I’m the very Perfect Patron,” Mary chimed in eagerly, “and I ask
you where any business would be without patrons? They’re as necessary
as the firm, if not more so.”

Madeline stopped work to smile benignly at her. “Mary, the Perfect
Patron,” she repeated, “your logic is irresistible. Your distinguished
husband ought to be very proud of you. I’ll tell you what, Betty, I’ll
make out a set of Rules for the Perfect Patron, and if Mary agrees to
abide by them she shall be duly initiated with the rite of the Secret
Drawer.”

“I agree to anything, if you’ll only show me that drawer right off,”
begged Mary.

But Madeline was inexorable. “It is the present duty of the committee
on Inspirations to see if it can copy this candle-shade,” she said.
“And I may add that it is the duty of the Perfect Wife to be on time
for meals. And the moral of that is----”

“Goodness gracious!” supplied Mary, who had been consulting a
diminutive watch, and now rushed down the stairs murmuring sadly, “It
must be fast, but I thought it was slow this morning.”

“I’m not at all sure that I can find that drawer again, myself,”
Madeline confided to Betty, when they were alone. “It’s an awfully
complicated arrangement.”

But that night just before they closed the tea-room, Madeline found the
combination, after a little preliminary fumbling, and proudly entrusted
to Betty the much-vaunted recipe for Aunt Martha’s cake.

“Let’s see.” She went over the formula. “First you press a spring that
opens this panel. Then you pull out that drawer. There’s a second
spring back of that, and a false bottom that comes up, and then a
spring to open the secret drawer. I shan’t forget it again. The woman
who sold the desk to me said she thought there was some way of working
the whole combination at once, but I don’t believe there can be.”

“We mustn’t put anything in there if you’re ever going away again,”
Betty declared, “for I never could get it out, unless you write down
the rules for me.”

Madeline shook her head vigorously. “Don’t you see, dearie, that
the whole idea of a secret drawer is not to have the rules written
down where anybody can get at them? Sometimes things get lost in
secret drawers for a generation or two, and it’s so lovely having
your grandfather’s will or your great-aunt’s love-letters, or your
wicked uncle’s confession of a murder he committed, tumble out some
day unexpectedly, just because you touched a spring that you didn’t
even know was in existence. But the rules for the Perfect Patron
are a different matter. I shall devote my evening to composing
them.” Madeline sighed deeply. “I suppose I ought to devote it to my
Literary Career. I simply mustn’t neglect that, Betty, even to make
extra-special Tally-ho candle-shades.” She sighed again. “The trouble
with a Literary Career is that you work on it for ages, and you’ve got
nothing to show for your trouble but a story that ten editors have
turned down. Whereas a candle-shade is a candle-shade, and a Rule for
a Perfect Patron is sure to be amusing at least to yourself. Let’s
see--‘First Rule for the Perfect Patron: Don’t act patronizing to the
Firm; confine your patronage to the menu.’ How’s that, Betty?”

“Lovely!” declared Betty with enthusiasm. “Only Mary never can do it.
She loves to call us my children.”

“That’s the point of the rule,” explained Madeline sagely. “Little Mary
has got to work hard before we initiate her into the rite of the Secret
Drawer. If I can think up enough joyous impossibilities for rules we
might organize a Perfect Patrons’ Society, limited to six members.”
Madeline threw aside her pencil and paper and curled up comfortably on
Betty’s couch. “I foresee,” she announced blandly, “that the secret
drawer is going to be our prize feature. First rule for tea-rooms:
Take care of the features, and the patrons will take care of you.”




CHAPTER VIII

YOUNG-MAN-OVER-THE-FENCE


THE only trouble with the gift-shop department was that it went too
well. When Madeline and Mary had each made a dozen candle-shades and
Betty had decorated some cards and blotters and secured a few pretty
samples from needy undergraduates, Madeline painted a “postscript sign”
to hang like a pendant from the big one in the gargoyle’s mouth, and
tacked a gay poster, announcing the Tally-ho’s new departure, on to
the barn door. By five o’clock that night all the shades, except those
reserved for samples, and nearly all the cards were sold, and there was
an order list for the “extra special” shades that Madeline declared
would be the utter ruin of her Literary Career. The workshop in the
loft fairly hummed with activity. Mary Brooks was its presiding genius.
Dr. Hinsdale continued to work on his learned paper, so it was a mercy,
Mary said, waving aside Betty’s thanks, that she had something to work
on too. Every morning and nearly every afternoon she fluttered in, to
see how things were getting on.

“I’ve thought up a splendid idea,” she would call, as she climbed the
stairs.

Or, “Dreamed a scrumptious rhyme in the night, Madeline, for the cards
with the half wreaths on them.”

Or, “I’ve heard of a girl who makes the loveliest stenciled things.
Will she be reliable about filling orders? How in the world should I
know about that, Betty Wales?”

That was Betty’s part--to make the undergraduates fill orders according
to their agreements, to keep accounts for them and for Madeline and
her assistants, to sift Mary’s “splendid ideas,” discarding the
impractical and arranging to have the useful ones carried out, to spur
on Madeline’s enthusiasm, and to help, whenever she could find a spare
moment, with the actual work of making the pretty novelties for sale.

“Let’s stop. We’ve earned lots of money now, and I’m tired to death of
cutting queer-shaped holes in cardboard,” Madeline would complain at
least once every day.

“That wouldn’t be business,” Betty insisted firmly. “It isn’t but three
weeks now before Christmas, and then we shall have to stop for a while
at least. I’ll hire some girls to make the shades and you can show them
how and then do cards for a while. No, think up some perfectly new
thing. The new things take best.” Betty tactfully didn’t add “and keep
you interested and at work best.”

“But I’ve got an idea for a story,” Madeline would grumble.

“Can’t it wait? Think of all the stamps you can buy with this money,”
Betty suggested craftily.

“I’m getting to be dreadfully diplomatic,” she confided to Mary Brooks.
“I used to hate the girls who were like that--Jean Eastman and her
crowd. But now I scheme in all kinds of ways to get Madeline to do as
I wish, and to keep Bridget good-natured, and make the customers think
they’d a lot rather have English muffins, if the sandwiches are all
gone.”

“You are developing a hard case of executive ability, my child,” Mary
told her. “It’s perfectly comical, because you look so young and
innocent with all that curly hair. By the way, Betty, hasn’t Bridget
a recipe for cookies that you can christen ‘Cousin Kate’s’? I’ve been
talking to ever so many girls about their relatives, and it seems as if
they all had a Cousin Kate. And then by association of ideas, you see,
they’d buy more presents.”

“Hasn’t Dr. Hinsdale finished his paper?” laughed Betty. “Because if he
has you mustn’t bother too much about us, Mary. You’ve helped us now
more than we can ever thank you for. You certainly ought to take the
money for your candle-shades.”

“Remember you three girls made me famous as a hostess, through the
length and breadth of Harding,” Mary told her. “I’ve got to even up for
that. And Madeline has half promised that if I’m a very Perfect Patron
indeed till Christmas she’ll show me the secret drawer. I think I’ll go
up and make her promise me fair and square before I go to work on this
new order-list.”

It was rather early for afternoon tea drinkers, but Betty didn’t like
to follow Mary and leave the tea-room alone; and Nora was busy in the
kitchen helping Bridget to transform chicken salad left over from
lunch into “our special tea-sandwiches.” So she sat down at her desk
and was soon so deep in the auditing of her weekly accounts that she
didn’t hear the door open, nor see a tall young man stop just inside
to look around the room with an appreciative smile and then cross
hesitatingly to her desk, his smile growing broader as he found himself
still unnoticed.

“Is there a sign anywhere: ‘No men allowed within’?” he asked, finally.

Betty looked up with a little gasp of surprise, and the tall young man
bowed to her over the desk, still smiling reassuringly.

“Oh, no, there isn’t any sign of that kind,” Betty explained hastily.
“The one on the door is about our new gift-shop department. The
snow-storm last night washed it almost out, and we haven’t had time
yet to make a new one. I suppose I might at least take it down.” Betty
started toward the door, but the tall young man barred her way.

“Let me take it down for you,” he suggested, “while you get me some
tea. Because if there isn’t any sign--but perhaps you just depend on
the general understanding that seems to pervade this manless town.”

“Oh, no,” Betty assured him hospitably. “We’re very glad to have men
come here. They often do--or at least,” she added truthfully, “several
have since we opened.”

“That’s good,” said the young man gaily. “All right then, since I may
stay, I should like a pot of tea--a very big pot, please, with lots of
hot water, and lots of cream, and lots of crackers spread very thick
with strawberry jam. Now I’ll pull down the sign while you’re getting
the tea.”

“Very well,” said Betty demurely. “Which table do you prefer?”

“This,” said the young man promptly, pointing to the small one in the
alcove, close to Betty’s desk.

When she came back after having left his order with Nora, he was pacing
up and down the room, examining the old brasses with interest, peering
into each stall and nodding approvingly as he whirled the double-decker
bread-trays, patted the fat mustard jars, and inspected all the
different varieties of candle-shades.

“I say,” he began, when he saw Betty, “if you put in those nails on the
door, you did a very good job. I can’t get them out. Have you a hammer?”

It was zero weather outside, and the young man had no overcoat. When
he came in again with the remains of the poster under his arm, he was
shivering with the cold. Betty, who was sure that he was a gentleman,
even if he did have rather a queer way of talking, felt that the least
she could do was to bring a chair close to the fire and poke the logs
into a blaze for him; and of course he insisted upon doing the poking
for her, and that led to more conversation.

“It’s a jolly little place you’ve got here,” he said, leaving the
fire to examine the motley array of pretty trifles that covered the
gift-table. “I saw it yesterday as I drove up from the station, and I
realized that it would probably save my life. You see, I’ve been years
in England, and I’m awfully addicted to afternoon tea. If I had my way,
we’d serve it regularly at the factory, but a lot of more important
things must come first, so I shan’t queer myself by mentioning anything
so frivolous as tea yet a while--especially when I can just climb the
fence and drop in here. I say,” he added quickly, “you don’t mind my
coming in over the fence, do you? It’s licks shorter.”

“Over the fence?” repeated Betty slowly. “Why, I didn’t know there was
a fence.” She glanced out of the front window, interrogatively.

“Oh, not over there on the college side,” explained the young man
impatiently. “Behind, between you and the stocking factory. I’m not a
new college professor. I’m attached to the stocking factory.”

Nora brought in his tea just then, and he drank it very fast and quite
in silence.

“I shall be in to-morrow,” he told Betty, as he paid his bill, “and I
shall want the same things, except orange marmalade instead of the jam.
Could you have it all ready for me at four? You see this break in the
middle of the afternoon is--er--rather unauthorized, so I can’t be gone
long.”

Betty promised and he hurried off, while Madeline and Mary, who had
been listening and peeping surreptitiously from behind their curtain,
rushed down to tease Betty and watch her visitor climb the fence. It
was five feet high and of solid boards, but he vaulted it easily,
and they watched him sprint up the snowy slope on the other side and
disappear through a basement door into the great factory that crowned
the hill.

“Who in the world can he be?” demanded Mary excitedly. “I didn’t
suppose that kind of man worked in a factory. He might be the owner,
but apparently he’s only just come upon the scene for the first time.”

“A new manager, probably, of a very superior brand,” Madeline
suggested. “He certainly has some authority, because he talked about
making changes. But he didn’t act a bit businesslike. We’ll just have
to call him Young-Man-Over-the-Fence and await developments. Hist!
Customers approach, and must not discover me in my work-apron.” And
Madeline rushed headlong up the stairs, and slipped behind the curtain
just in time to escape a merry party of freshmen seeking refreshment
after a “regular terror” of a written lesson in Latin.

“I was going to have tea to-day myself,” Mary told Betty, “but I think
I’ll wait till to-morrow--at four exactly. Young-Man-Over-the-Fence
must learn not to expect a tête-à-tête thrown in with the tea.”

But the gentleman in question appeared not at all put out, when he
arrived next day punctually on the stroke of four, to find a dainty
little lady, who smiled demurely down into her teacup, in possession
of his chosen table, and a white-capped maid ready to intercept his
progress to Betty’s desk with the information that his tea would be
served in one minute, at the table by the fire or in one of the stalls,
just as he preferred.

He didn’t even glance in Betty’s direction as he slipped silently into
a chair by the fire, looking tired and dejected somehow, and staring
gloomily into a dusky corner straight ahead of him while he waited. But
he had a sudden smile and a “thank you” for Nora when she hurried back
with his tray, and he ate and drank with evident enjoyment.

“You don’t ask enough for your tea,” he told Betty, after having
carefully ascertained from Nora that one always paid one’s bill at
the desk. “I ought to be charged three prices for such a very big
pot. Did you say I have been charged an extra big price?” He shook his
head dubiously. “I don’t believe you make enough then. And I say, is
it permissible for customers to make suggestions--not complaints, you
understand, but hints for improvements? Well, in my father’s English
stables the name of each horse and a picture of it is nailed up at the
head of the stall. Don’t you think that would take well here?” He waved
his hand toward the stalls. “Winona, Prince, Down-and-Out, Vixen, King
o’ Spades--you get the idea? And little colored prints fastened just
below the names.”

“I think that would be splendid,” Betty told him cordially. “It would
be a real feature, to be able to order your lunch served in Vixen’s
stall or Prince’s, instead of just in the third or first. I’ll tell
Madeline--I mean Miss Ayres--and I’m sure she’ll see to it.”

“Is she the decorating committee?” inquired the young man. “Because if
so, she’s certainly to be congratulated. And does she also make the
pretty things on that table? I’m coming over here for lunch some day,
and then I shall have time to select Christmas gifts. Marmalade again
to-morrow, please. Good-bye.”

The next afternoon he came carrying a handful of scarlet pepper
berries. “I had a lot sent on from California,” he explained, “to
brighten up our barracks over there. They’ll fit in beautifully here,
won’t they?”

“He’s heard about the Perfect Patrons’ Society,” Mary declared, “and
he’s trying to qualify for membership. Let him in on condition that he
explains himself. I’m simply bursting with curiosity.”

But Young-Man-Over-the-Fence came for his tea, calmly oblivious of the
interest he had aroused. He generally arrived tired and listless, and
he always hurried out smiling.

“You will save my life yet,” he told Betty gaily one day. “I generally
forget to go to lunch, but I never pass up my tea. If ever I should,
Nora must run up the hill and remind me--no, that would be a lot of
trouble for her, because she couldn’t climb the fence, and it’s further
round by the street.”

“Then you mustn’t forget,” Betty insisted. “And I’m sure you oughtn’t
to miss your lunch either,” she added gravely. “It must be very bad
for your health. Is the stocking business so absorbing?”

The young man laughed good-humoredly. “It’s not the stocking business
exactly that’s absorbing; it’s the people who make the stockings.
There’s a little Italian boy whose hand was caught in a machine
yesterday morning. He was responsible for my passing up yesterday’s
lunch. And there are two old men--Russians--who know hardly a word of
English. They’re terribly forlorn and lonely. And then the girls, and
the miserable little children----Oh, it’s a paradise compared to our
mills in the South, of course, but--I’m afraid I’m boring you. Perhaps
you aren’t interested in such things.”

“Oh, yes, I am,” Betty told him earnestly, “only I don’t know very much
about them. Are you--do you----”

“I try to see that the workers are all safer and happier,” he helped
her out. “It’s very hard to accomplish much. The manager thinks I’m
crazy, and the workers won’t trust me because I’m my father’s son. It’s
my father’s mill, you understand. If I plan a dance or a concert they
think it’s some new kind of trap to lower wages or get in non-union
workers, or to make them buy a lot of new clothes at the Company’s
store.” He smiled sadly at Betty. “I suppose the tea-room business
isn’t all roses, but I can tell you it looks like long-stemmed American
beauties compared to my job. I must be off. Next time it will be your
turn to grumble.”

But when the hour of Young-Man-Over-the-Fence struck the next day,
Betty had a friend beside her desk--Babbie Hildreth, just arrived in
response to a despairing summons from Betty, who had found the keeping
up of the gift-shop department through the Christmas rush, with Mary
off to hear Dr. Hinsdale read his famous paper, Madeline tired and
worried over her neglected stories, and the college girl helpers
overwhelmed with end-of-the-term papers and festivities, a good deal
more than she could manage.

“Of course we oughtn’t to stop now,” Babbie agreed eagerly as she
listened to Betty’s account of the situation. “I’m ready to pitch in
day and night. I haven’t had anything on hand that I absolutely had to
do for so long that I feel half asleep. Who’s the long-legged man,
Betty?”

Betty explained. “We don’t know his name,” she concluded, “so Madeline
calls him Young-Man-Over-the-Fence.”

Babbie nodded comprehendingly. “Of course he can jump fences, but if he
couldn’t he’d get over them all the same--witness his chin. He’s got
nice eyes and a nice smile, but I hate a chin like that.”

“You’ve got quite a determined chin yourself, Babbie Hildreth,” Betty
reminded her laughingly.

“Probably that’s why I hate them for other people,” Babbie admitted.
“Well, I’m going up to let Madeline set me to work.”

The “nice eyes” of Young-Man-Over-the-Fence followed her graceful
little figure absently, as she climbed the stairs. He had dawdled an
unprecedented time over his tea, watching the pretty picture that she
and Betty made, absorbed in their merry, animated talk.

“Some day I think you might let me go up-stairs,” he told Betty, as he
paid his bill. “I’ve noticed that all your very nicest customers do
it. I’m a very regular customer--if that counts in any one’s favor.”

“Babbie isn’t a customer,” Betty explained. “She’s one of the firm.
Mrs. Hinsdale is a customer, but she helps us make things. The
gift-shop workroom is up there, you know.”

“Is it? Well, I’ll help make things too, if you’ll let me come,” he
promised. “You keep it up evenings, don’t you? I was at the factory
last night, and I saw your light going up there. I thought seriously
of coming over to protest against your infringing on the working man’s
rule for an eight-hour day. If I had, would you have let me in?”

“I presume so,” Betty admitted laughingly, “because we should have
thought it was Georgia Ames come to say good-night, or some college
girl, who had filled orders for us, bringing the things.”

Young-Man-Over-the-Fence nodded approvingly. “Then the next evening
that I find myself perishing of loneliness I shall try it.” And he
rushed for the door so violently that he almost ran down a pair of
little freshmen, who were chattering too busily about their senior
crushes to look out for human whirlwinds coming along in the opposite
direction.




CHAPTER IX

AN ORDER FOR A PARTY


“I SUPPOSE people do sometimes have to be away from their homes on
Christmas day.” Betty held the “extra-special” shade she had just
finished up against the light, and gazed pensively at the prancing
horses and the hospitable red roof of the inn.

“It has been done,” gurgled Madeline, her mouth full of pins, “and it
will be done again, with the Washington Square homestead rented and
Sorrento, Italy, a little inaccessible from Harding, U. S. A.”

“Poor, lonely lady! Come and eat your Christmas dinner with mummy and
me,” urged Babbie sympathetically. “Is it Tuesday or Wednesday that
college closes?”

“Not till Wednesday,” murmured Madeline, “and then it’s me for freedom
and the literary life!” She took the pins out cautiously, one by one.
“It’s dear of you to ask me for the vacation, Babbie, but I’ve got to
improve the shining hours. While the tea-room is shut, and Betty,
the cruel slave-driver, has gone to be clasped in the arms of her
adored and adoring family, I shall turn our palatial apartment into an
author’s paradise--papers everywhere, genius burning, and positively
no dusting allowed. If the wallpaper gets on my nerves I shall come
over and start a fire here, and try the effect of a desk with a secret
drawer in it on the imagination that Dick Blake rudely says I haven’t
got.”

“I’m sorry, Madeline, but I don’t think I can go home.” Betty was
swallowing hard to keep back the tears. She had thought it all out in
the night, and made up her mind not to care, but telling it made it
seem more final some way, and consequently worse. “Some of the orders
can’t be filled until the last minute, and some will surely be late
and have to be mailed. I haven’t made any payments to outsiders for
two weeks, because I couldn’t take time to go over the accounts. I
shouldn’t enjoy Christmas with all those things hanging over my head.”

“Then stop making those everlasting candle-shades and go to work on
the accounts this very minute,” commanded Babbie, with a tilt of her
determined chin.

“But if I do that,” Betty objected, “we can’t possibly fill our orders.
Besides, I don’t believe the tea-room ought to be closed during the
vacation. A good many girls stay over, and anyway it won’t seem
businesslike.”

“I’ll keep it open then,” declared Madeline magnanimously.

“Oh, you couldn’t ever manage, Madeline. You’d make a mess----” Betty
stopped short, with a swift effort to be tactful. “You’d ruin your
imagination, I mean, thinking up new sandwiches and paying grocer’s
bills.”

Babbie and Madeline exchanged despairing glances.

“I won’t dust our room, Madeline,” Betty promised, “not once in the
whole two weeks, and you may scatter papers wherever you like. And you
mustn’t think I mind terribly, Babbie. You’ve got to tend up to things
you do for a living or else---- Oh, dear! who is that knocking?”

“I’ll go,” Babbie offered, “because I’ve just washed the paint off my
hands.”

So Babbie Hildreth and not Betty, who had been sympathetic about lonely
evenings, opened the door for Young-Man-Over-the-Fence, and after a
frigid “Good-evening” stood frowning in disapproving silence while she
waited for him to explain himself.

“I came to ask--that is, I wanted to see about placing an order. I
suppose I shouldn’t have come this evening, only I was in a hurry to
get things settled right away. Is Miss--the young woman who sits at the
desk--could I see her?”

“I’m not sure,” Babbie told him coldly. “You can’t have dinner here,
you know. This tea-shop closes at six, and it’s nearly eight now.”

“I’m very sorry,” murmured Young-Man-Over-the-Fence contritely. Babbie
Hildreth in a blue gingham studio apron, with a distractingly becoming
dinner-gown peeping out from underneath it, was a sight calculated
to inspire contrition in the breast of any man who had unwittingly
incurred her displeasure. “I’ll come back in the morning--no, in the
afternoon,” he added humbly.

[Illustration: “THIS TEA-SHOP CLOSES AT SIX”]

“If it was an order for Tally-ho candle-shades,” Babbie told him,
still icily, “we’re not taking any more. We have all the work that we
can finish for Christmas already.”

“No, it’s not candle-shades,” Young-Man-Over-the-Fence assured her
blandly. “It’s a bigger thing than that.” He paused impressively and
was rewarded when a gleam of curiosity crossed Babbie’s impassive
little face. “I’ll come back to-morrow afternoon,” he repeated.

“Wait a minute,” Babbie commanded swiftly. Betty had inspired her
with a sense of the importance of being businesslike, and here was a
big order that ought, perhaps, to be treated with special respect and
consideration. “I’ll tell Miss Wales that you’re here and possibly she
can see you more conveniently now. The name, please?”

“Robert Thayer, Junior, from the stocking factory,” he told her. “And
say, please, that I’ve come on business, about a Christmas party that I
want to arrange for.”

“I don’t think we do catering for parties,” Babbie told him, “and I
believe we are to close for the Christmas holidays. But I’ll tell her.”

A minute later Betty was shaking hands with Young-Man-Over-the-Fence,
alias Mr. Robert Thayer, Junior, of the stocking factory.

“It’s lucky I didn’t just cut in here to be cheered up, as I’d intended
to,” he explained with a sigh of relief. “That other member of the
firm is a suspicious person--or perhaps you’d warned her against me.
But her theories were unfounded. May we sit down? You see I’ve had an
inspiration, and I couldn’t wait to get it going.”

“That’s just like Madeline,” laughed Betty. “She wakes me up in the
middle of the night with her inspirations. Once she even wanted me to
dress and come over here with her to see whether we could make a big
horseshoe out of oats.” Betty pointed to the one over the fireplace.
“And then when I wouldn’t, she was days and days getting around to it.”

Mr. Thayer laughed appreciatively. “I understand that perfectly.
There’s everything in being in the right mood for things. Now to-night
I’m hot on the trail of a Christmas party. I was over in my office
directing invitations--they like to get formal invitations, you
know--when it suddenly struck me that if I had a regulation Christmas
party it would naturally be a regulation failure, like the others I’ve
tried. So I racked my brains for something extraordinary, and nothing
came. Then I looked over here and thought of all the extraordinary
things you’ve planned, and here I am to place an order for one
extraordinary party, with food, all guaranteed to please three hundred
assorted factory hands.”

Betty stared at him in amazement. “I don’t understand----” she began.

Young-Man-Over-the-Fence smiled his merry, reassuring smile. “As your
tea-shop is to the regulation kind of tea-shop, so is the Christmas
party I want to the regular thing. I want it to look something like
this room, to be--well----”

“Stunty,” supplied Betty quickly.

“Stunty--that’s a new one on me, but if it describes all this----” He
waved his hand comprehensively at the fire, at a grinning gargoyle with
its hanging lantern, and across to the dusky line of stalls.

“Features, Madeline calls the queer little touches,” Betty broke
in again. “I understand what you want. You want a party in Harding
style,--that will go off the way the spreads and Hallowe’en things and
freshmen frolics do. Madeline could think up something lovely. But I
don’t see--how did you happen to come to us?”

“Because I felt sure you could get me what I wanted.”

“But we don’t do things like that,” Betty objected.

“Then you ought to,” he told her. “There’s a field for it.” He laughed
merrily. “I’m the field. And--I dislike to mention anything so sordid,
but it pays very well, much better than tea and candle-shades, I’m
sure. In London once I remember my sister paid twenty pounds to a firm
for planning her a cotillion. I’d thought that would be about right for
this party.”

“Twenty pounds--why, that’s a hundred dollars!” cried Betty
incredulously.

The young man nodded. “That doesn’t include the refreshments, you
understand. It’s for the design only--the design for a stunty party
with features. And then think of all the pleasure you’ll be giving.
But--I forgot; the young lady who let me in said you were going to
close your shop for Christmas. Perhaps that means that you won’t be
here to run a party on Christmas eve.”

Betty smiled sadly. “We were just discussing that and we’ve decided--at
least, I’ve decided, to keep open during the holidays. But we’re very
busy.” She considered, frowning. “It all depends on whether Madeline
likes the idea,” she decided at last. “I’ll call her down, and you can
tell her about it.”

“Oh, wait one minute,” he begged, as Betty started off. “Tell me how to
make her like it, please. Is she the one who let me in?”

“No,” Betty told him, “but of course Babbie will have to approve too.”
She stopped to consider again. “I’d tell you how to make Madeline
like it if I knew myself, but I don’t. It just depends on how a thing
strikes her.”

But when Madeline and Babbie appeared, Betty did help by breaking the
ice, for she gravely presented “Mr. Fence” to the other members of the
firm, whereupon Madeline promptly told him about his pseudonym at the
Tally-ho, and then, rather abashed by her own temerity, lit the candles
in the stalls to show him how she had named them that very evening,
according to his suggestion.

So they were all, except Babbie, very friendly, when they sat down
again to discuss Mr. Thayer’s order; and Mr. Thayer seemed to have
decided that it was safest to ignore Babbie, for he addressed himself
entirely to Madeline, as he explained again what he wanted.

And of course, because it was absurd and unexpected, Madeline liked
the idea. She forgot how busy they were already, and how she hated
conducting rehearsals and working out details. She threw her Literary
Career to the winds.

“You want it on Christmas eve?” she began briskly. “Then we’ll have
a masque of the Christmas stockings to start off with. Isn’t that an
appropriate touch for the stocking-makers’ Christmas party? How old are
your youngest stocking-makers, please?”

“They say they’re fourteen, as the law requires,” explained Mr. Thayer
grimly, “but you’d never know it. Anyhow they’re small enough to do
beautifully for a masque of the Christmas stockings.”

“And then,” Madeline went on, staring hard at the shiny tip of Babbie’s
slipper, “and then--well, Twelfth Night isn’t till the sixth of
January, but probably the stocking-makers won’t object to anticipating
the date a little. We’ll have a pageant of Twelfth Night cakes and
Twelfth Night bakers. And we’ll choose and crown a King and Queen of
the Revels, in accepted Twelfth Night style. Does that sound promising
to you, Mr. Thayer?”

“It sounds great,” he assured her enthusiastically, “and I’m sure it
will be as good as it sounds.”

“The invitation card,” Madeline ordered calmly, “is to have a
beautifully frosted cake at the top and a stocking with a Santa Claus
head sticking out of it at the bottom. You’ll just have to throw away
the ones you got ready to-night. I’ll come around some time to-morrow
to look over my children.”

“Thank you. That will be great,” said Mr. Thayer eagerly, and suddenly
turned to Babbie, who had listened in silence to all Madeline’s
enthusiastic planning. “Won’t you please come too? It’s a queer place.
I think you’d like going through it.”

“I shall probably have to come,” Babbie told him rather ungraciously,
“because Madeline can’t go alone, and Betty will be too busy.”

“I’m sorry that I should be the means of inconveniencing you,” Mr.
Thayer told her gravely, holding out his hand. “Good-night.” And he was
gone, with only a nod for the others.

“Goodness, Babbie, but you’re chilly,” Madeline protested.

“Well, you’re absurd,” Babbie retorted. “You can never make such a
thing go in the world, Madeline. That sort of people won’t know how to
carry it through.”

“Of course not,” Madeline conceded. “I’ve thought of that. Some of
the children will do for Stockings, but for the Cakes and the Jester
and all that, I’m going to have college girls who stay here over the
holidays. I think I’ll go up now to see Georgia about who’ll be here.”

“Oh, what a splendid idea!” cried Betty eagerly. “I’d been wishing we
could make a Christmas for the left-overs.”

“I don’t believe they’ll want to bother with anything like this,”
objected Babbie. “Besides, only freaks stay over Christmas.”

“Bother!” Madeline took her up. “They’ll jump at it--the freaks
particularly, because they don’t get in on such gay doings very often.
Now, Betty, don’t you worry about my helping on the ‘extra-special’
order-list. I was afraid Mr. Thayer would be scared off if I explained
that I meant to dump all the finishing touches on the left-over girls.
They can make the costumes, too, Wednesday night and Thursday.”

“If he knew you better, he would have been sure that you’d never bother
with any finishing touches yourself,” Babbie remarked crushingly.

“How can you expect a person who has such splendid ideas to bother with
fussy little details?” put in Betty, who had listened in wondering
admiration to Madeline’s offhand suggestions. “I’m sure the college
girls will like to help. The only trouble is, if they do most of the
work who ought to have the hundred dollars?”

“What hundred dollars?” chorused the other two, and Betty explained
that the financial side of the Tally-ho’s biggest order was being
entirely overlooked.

“It ought not to be put in with the tea-room profits, except the bill
for the refreshments,” Babbie declared, “and I certainly ought not to
have any of it. I shan’t be any help. You and Madeline can divide,
because you made friends with him first, and she thought up the
entertainment.”

“But if the others sew for us----” began Betty.

“Oh, let’s wait and see how it comes out,” Madeline suggested easily,
slipping on her ulster. “You two can be planning Twelfth Night cakes
for refreshments, while I’m gone. Did you ever see them in London,
Babbie? They’re fearfully and wonderfully concocted.”

At the door she came back to make another suggestion. “All big
businesses have their pet charities. We might have the stocking people
for ours. We could just ask Mr. Thayer to pay the expenses, and make
him spend the rest of the money for a club-house--well, keep it toward
a club-house then, Miss Betty the practical.”

Next morning Madeline came back from her visit to the factory more
enthusiastic, if possible, than before. She had talked to the Italian
boy with the bandaged arm--he came down every day to have it dressed
by the company’s doctor--and he was from Sorrento and knew her father,
had posed for him once in the olive orchard behind the villa. Even
Babbie had been interested in the children, Italians, French, Poles,
Bohemians, Greeks, dark-eyed, swift-fingered, chattering eagerly to
“da pretta lada” in broken English, and all agog over the mysterious
Christmas party.

“They live all together down there somewhere.” Babbie pointed vaguely
off behind the kitchen. “They were nearly all brought over to this
country three years ago, when the factory was opened. It’s a real
foreign quarter, Mr. Thayer says, with old-country customs and pitiful
poverty and ignorance. It’s queer that we never knew anything about
them, isn’t it? The college is on that hill, and the factory on this,
and yet they’re so far apart that one has hardly heard of the other.”

“So the stocking people weren’t so terribly unpleasant after all?”
asked Betty slyly.

Babbie blushed faintly. “Well, you and Madeline made me cross. You gave
in so to his chin. I suppose I was disagreeable, but I was perfect
to-day, wasn’t I, Madeline?”

“Depends on what you mean by perfect,” Madeline told her. “If you
mean that you made everybody in the place from the social secretary,
or whatever Mr. Robert Thayer, Junior, calls himself, to the smallest
cotton-spinner of them all fall madly in l----”

Madeline and the rest of her sentence found themselves smothered under
a huge cushion, which Babbie pummeled viciously.

“Don’t bother me about that,” she commanded wrathfully. “One minute you
say I’m haughty and disagreeable, and the next----”

“The next,” Betty told her comfortingly, “we only say you’re such a
darling, that people can’t help seeing it, you silly child.”

“I don’t care,” sniffed Babbie tearfully. “I shan’t go over there
again, and I shan’t be here for his old party. So now!”

After which declaration of rights, Babbie did her hair low in her neck,
donned her most becoming afternoon dress, and asked a dozen adoring
freshmen to tea with her in the stall named “Jack o’ Hearts.” As
Babbie sat in the most secluded corner of the stall, it is doubtful if
anything but the tip of her ear, a nodding plume, and an absurdly small
hand stretched out to press more of Cousin Kate’s cookies upon a hungry
freshman, could have been visible to the staid young gentleman who had
his tea at a small table in the alcove opposite.

“He’s the new history professor,” one of the freshmen announced in a
sepulchral whisper. “Isn’t he handsome?”

“No, he isn’t,” snapped Babbie. “Isn’t the new history professor, I
mean. He’s something or other in a factory. So don’t be making plans to
move into a history course after midyears, Susanna.”




CHAPTER X

UNEXPECTED VISITORS


MADELINE composed the Masque of the Christmas Stockings in the
first frenzy of her enthusiasm, and then, declaring that genius
wouldn’t burn any more, she left the Pageant of Twelfth Night Cakes
until so late that Betty was in despair; and she persistently forgot
the Christmas Stockings’ rehearsals until Babbie, rallying to the honor
of the Tally-ho, took them in charge.

“Don’t you wish you were going to stay for the party?” Mr. Thayer asked
her, at her last rehearsal, while Madeline, who had come to take over
the reins again, was giving her final directions to the children. In
the intervals of the rehearsal, she had scribbled off some songs and
speeches for the Cakes, which were so clever that Babbie had been
compelled to drop what Madeline had wickedly dubbed her Perfect Manner
and laugh heartily over them, as she and Mr. Thayer read them together.
Her Perfect Manner was quite different from the one that she had
hastily called perfect on the day of her first visit to the stocking
factory. Madeline had written the other B’s about it, describing it
deftly as “Sweetness from a Long Way off.”

So now Babbie answered with distant courtesy, “Of course I’m very much
interested in the party, but I shouldn’t think of not going home for
Christmas.”

“Oh, certainly not,” Mr. Thayer agreed hastily. “I shouldn’t either,
only I haven’t been sufficiently urged. I had a letter from my father
yesterday saying that the laws I got passed last month by the state
legislature were going to ruin him, so now I’m not even expecting a
present.”

“Why do you go to work and have laws passed that your father doesn’t
like?” inquired Babbie severely.

“You wouldn’t want me to have any passed that could possibly please
him, would you?” Mr. Thayer retorted, and when he caught the flicker
of interest in Babbie’s eyes he went on, “You see, Miss Hildreth, my
father has the wrong point of view. He always thinks of the dollars,
where he ought to think of the workers. He holds to the old-fashioned
theory that the man who toils hasn’t any feelings. He’s never seen any
of his factories. He sits in an office in New York, at a shiny mahogany
desk with twenty nice little pigeonholes in it, one for each of his
factories. When a manager’s report shows fat profits, he smiles and
tucks it into its pigeon-hole. If the profits go down, he sends for the
manager--or bounces him without sending for him. When I left college he
gave me a pigeon-hole.”

“This factory, you mean?” asked Babbie.

“Not at first. He’s changed my pigeon-hole several times. First he
gave me a mill in South Carolina, and I went down and wrote about the
appalling conditions there for one of the prominent magazines.”

“That was rather unkind of you, wasn’t it,” Babbie demanded, “when he’d
just given you the factory?”

The young man smiled. “My father thought it was, but I maintained that
I could do as I pleased with my own property. Anyhow he took back his
little gift and sent me to a beet-sugar plant out in Michigan, and told
me to see if I could keep out of mischief there. Well, the railroads
were all giving us special freight rates, and we were fairly coining
money and crushing all our competitors to the wall. I told them they
must play fair, or I’d expose them. My father was furious,--but I think
he was just a little proud too, to find that I couldn’t be taken in. So
we had a big pow-wow about the duty of sons and fair play in business,
and he finally agreed to give me a free hand here, at the least
profitable factory he owns. Whatever profits there are I am to have to
improve conditions with, and I can take as long as I like to show my
father that it pays to treat your men like human beings.”

“I don’t see the use of fussing so much to prove that,” Babbie told
him coldly. “If they don’t like working for him, they can leave, can’t
they?”

“If they enjoy starving they can,” Mr. Thayer told her grimly. Then
he smiled the smile that Babbie always warmed to in spite of herself.
“You’re a capitalist and an employer yourself, Miss Hildreth. If you
have such mistaken ideas on the labor question, I think I ought to
stop patronizing your firm. You may be abusing the cook.”

“I’m afraid she is overworked days when there’s a rush,” Babbie
admitted soberly. “But if she says she’s tired, we always send her home
in a carriage, and she calls us all ‘me darlin’.’”

Mr. Thayer threw back his head and laughed. “Then I can certainly
patronize you with a clear conscience. I’m so relieved. It would be
terrible to have to call off the Christmas party.”

It would indeed have been tragic to call off the Christmas party, with
three hundred eager factory hands, not to mention twenty-five homesick
college girls, looking forward to it as the great event of the holiday
season. The whole college had heard about it, and took a deep and
envious interest in the proceedings.

“Just mean of you to give it when I can’t come,” grumbled Georgia.

“Madeline, let us repeat the Pageant of the Twelfth Night Cakes for
Dramatic Club’s January meeting,” begged Polly Eastman.

“Make him have another party when we’re here,” put in the
fluffy-haired Dutton twin. “It’s hateful of you to keep him all to
yourselves.”

College closed at noon on Wednesday, and lunch hour at the Tally-ho was
a pell-mell rush of happy, hungry girls, loaded down with suit-cases,
running out between courses to look for “that dastardly cabman who said
he never in his life was late,” or hailing a passing car with a frantic
wave of a sandwich wrapped in a paper napkin. “And it’s all I’ll get
till eight to-night,” they assured Betty joyously, for lunch is a small
thing when you’re going home for Christmas. Betty reveled in the rush
and the gay confusion. She helped little Ruth Howard spirit Lucile
Merrifield’s suit-case into a secluded corner to tuck in a mysterious
little package tied with holly ribbon. She took orders for belated
gifts, repacked bags that simply wouldn’t hold their owner’s left-over
note-books and last purchases until she took them in hand. She looked
up trains, promised to forward trunk checks that hadn’t come in time,
and was here, there, and everywhere until, when she heard the far-away
whistle of the two-fifteen, she gave a little sigh of relief and
declared that she felt like the distracted centipede in the nonsense
rhyme.

And then a dismal quiet descended on the Tally-ho Tea-Shop. Madeline
was up-stairs with a bevy of Cakes, who were rehearsing and working on
their costumes. Betty refused to join them until she had straightened
out her accounts; she had a horror of being behind with them. So she
was sitting quite alone working busily, when Eugenia Ford came in.
Eugenia’s pretty face was tear-stained, her eyes were swollen half
shut, and her whole appearance was as limp and woebegone as it usually
was alert and aggressive. She hesitated for a minute, and then crossed
quickly to Betty’s desk.

“Good-afternoon, Miss Ford,” Betty said cheerfully, tactfully ignoring
the tear-stains, and then she waited, not knowing how to go on.

But Eugenia only nodded and stared at her in dumb misery, evidently
afraid to speak lest the tears should start again.

So, “Won’t you sit down?” Betty suggested cordially. “Or did you want
to go up and see Madeline and the Cakes? They’re behind the curtains
in the loft, rehearsing.”

Eugenia dropped into a chair. “I’m not going home for Christmas,” she
announced tremulously.

“Oh, aren’t you?” Betty began comfortingly. “Well, then you must
certainly have a part in the Masque of the Cakes. You’d make a lovely
Sugar Cooky, and I heard Madeline say they needed more.”

“I--I look like--a fr-fright,” choked Eugenia, stifling a sob, “if
that’s how a sugar cooky looks, and I don’t want to see anybody b-but
you.”

“All right,” Betty assured her hastily, “then you shan’t. There won’t
be a soul in here now for a while. Please don’t feel so unhappy, but
tell me what I can do to help you.”

“I’ve been warned in three different studies.” Eugenia’s voice was
weighted with the tragic significance of her words. “And I th-thought
I was doing beautifully,” she added, while two big tears rolled
slowly down her soft cheeks. Eugenia dabbed at them with a very damp
handkerchief.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” cried Betty sympathetically, racking her brains,
meanwhile, to think why in the world Eugenia Ford had come to her
with her tale of woe. “It’s the worst thing about freshman year,
I think--the not being able to tell how you’ve done, nor what the
teachers expect of you. I worried fearfully, I remember.”

“Were you warned too?” demanded Eugenia with the frankness of despair.

“N-no.” Betty was really sorry at the moment that she hadn’t been. “But
lots of my friends were,” she added consolingly.

“My father and mother think I ought to have known that I wasn’t
studying enough,” Eugenia explained. “You see, I didn’t pass my
prep. school exams one year and my father thought that was perfectly
dreadful, so he’s extra cross now. I had to write home about it,
because of all the money I shall need for a tutor, and when I did that,
my father said I should stay on here through the vacation and w-work.”

“It’s hard now not to go home, but you’ll be glad you didn’t next term,
I guess,” Betty suggested. “The time just flies, from the day college
opens again to midyears.”

“Well,” continued Eugenia gloomily, “then my tutor changed her mind at
the last minute and went off and left me, and Miss Ferris--she’s our
class officer--told me to come to you. I said I didn’t think you ever
tutored, but she said to come all the same and she sent you a note. Oh,
I ought to have given you the note first!” A big tear splashed down on
the address, as she handed Miss Ferris’s note to Betty.

  “Dear little helper,” Miss Ferris had written, “here’s a chance for
  you to cultivate the right kind of college spirit. That’s what Miss
  Ford needs. She seems bright enough to keep up with her class easily.
  You must inspire her with pride in her work and determination to do it
  justice. I needn’t tell you that she’s a dreadful little snob. Some
  day you must tell me why she begged me most pathetically to send her
  to anybody else but you.

                                             “Merry Christmas,
                                                  “MARGARET FERRIS.”

Betty read it all through twice, while Eugenia, huddled in a forlorn
little heap, watched her eagerly.

“Oh, dear, I just can’t,” she began at last. “Miss Ferris has forgotten
what a stupid I was. And if you should be----” She had started to
say “flunked out at midyears,” and paused in blank dismay at her own
thoughtlessness.

“Oh, but I won’t,” Eugenia took her up earnestly, reading Betty’s
thoughts in the light of her own guilty conscience. “I promise I won’t
be horrid. I was--the other day--I was--well, I’m awfully ashamed of
it now, Miss Wales, and I just hated to come and ask a favor of you,
after having been so disagreeable, but I couldn’t actually disobey Miss
Ferris, could I? If you’ll only take me, I’ll do just as you say, and
work awfully hard, and try not to be much bother.”

Betty gave a deep sigh, and then a comical little laugh. “I’m sure you
will,” she said. “And I shall have to do it. Don’t you see I shall?
Miss Ferris has gone away for the vacation, hasn’t she? Well, I can’t
disobey her either, or disappoint her. But just imagine me tutoring
anybody!” Betty sighed again resignedly.

“Miss Ferris said you’d be the best one she could possibly pick out
for me,” Eugenia told her, smiling wanly through her tears. “When shall
I come, so as to be the least trouble, Miss Wales?”

They arranged an hour, and then Betty asked Eugenia, as a great favor,
to help her make tea for Madeline and the Cakes, because Bridget and
Nora had both gone to a wedding, and their long talk had made her
late with the preparations. And by the time the sandwiches were made,
the lemons sliced, and the tea served, Eugenia’s face looked merely
interestingly pale and care-worn, and she was planning her Sugar Cooky
costume with positive enthusiasm.

Of course, Mr. Thayer’s party was a grand success. Had any party of
Madeline’s planning ever been otherwise? First the little Stockings
hopped merrily on to the stage that Mr. Thayer had had built at one end
of the big social hall on the top floor of the factory. Hopping was
their only means of locomotion, for each of them was tied securely into
a mammoth stocking, its toe stuffed with paper to give it the proper
shape, and its top gathered around the neck of its small occupant,
whose head peered inquiringly out above. There was a Mother-Stocking,
a Father-Stocking, a Good-Little-Willy-Stocking, and a Bad-Little-Billy
one; there was a fireplace, and a Santa Claus, who, being a jolly
fellow, relented even toward Bad-Little-Billy, and loaded the whole
family with comical gifts--for in Stocking Land Santa Claus is not the
mysterious, secretive apparition we know of, but a friendly visitor,
who slaps you familiarly on the back and lets you come up the chimney
and pat the reindeer. The frantic race of Billy and Willy Stocking to
get up the chimney with their costumes intact ended the Stockings’
performance, and left the audience tearful with mirth.

Then the Cakes appeared. Sponge Cake led the procession, in a
corn-colored gown trimmed elaborately with fringes of tiny sponges. She
wore a festoon of sponges in her hair, and carried before her a sort
of baton with the biggest sponge you could imagine stuck on the end of
it. After her came Chocolate Cake, with ruffles of brown and white, and
a necklace and bracelets made of chocolate candies. Next came Bride’s
Cake, all in white, with a veil and orange blossoms, and Wedding Cake,
with garlands of raisins, and wedding bells that tinkled when she
moved. Devil’s Cake, adorned with all the little red devils that could
be found on the Harding campus--relics of a fad that had prevailed
in Betty’s senior year--drove a regiment of Sugar Cookies before
her--yellow-haired girls, each carrying a huge cooky, whose framework
was a hoop, plentifully besprinkled with a glittering sugary paste.
Last of all came the Doughnuts, very big and beautifully browned, worn
like life-preservers around the shoulders of their representatives. The
Cakes sang and discussed their respective merits. The Sugar Cookies,
being challenged to show what they could do, had a hoop-rolling, in the
course of which all the sugar fell off them. Then the Twelfth Night
Bakers came in, in white caps and long white aprons, and the Sugar
Cookies, no longer sugared, reproached their makers, and were placated
with wonderful new Twelfth Night decorations in the shape of toys,
birds, and flowers.

Finally the Bakers produced a huge cake, and, served by the plebeian
Doughnuts, sat down to eat it. Hidden in it were a bean, a pea, and a
clove, and the three Bakers who were lucky enough to find these Twelfth
Night emblems in their portions of cake had the privilege of naming the
King and Queen of Revels, and the Twelfth Night Jester.

The King and Queen had really been chosen beforehand from the mill
hands, and they had nothing to do but sit on gilt thrones and look
imposing, while the Jester, a queer freshman who was wonderful at
sleight-of-hand tricks, gave a performance in which cakes and stockings
replaced the conventional rabbits and eggs.

It was all absurd and inconsequent and certainly quite different from
the usual mill party, even to the way the refreshments were served, for
the Cakes moved about among the audience carrying trays of ices, and
the Bakers peddled their wares in the shape of little cup-cakes whose
fantastic decorations rivaled those of the live Cakes in variety and
grotesqueness.

“Shure an’ they ain’t fit fur civilized humans to ate at all,” Bridget
had announced, as she surveyed them indignantly, “an’ it’s a shamefu’
waste of good material, not countin’ me slavin’ two days solid on ’em.”

But Betty had consoled her with explanations about the “foreignness” of
the mill people, and their consequent love for queer things. Betty felt
capable of consoling anybody that day. She fairly danced as she packed
the cakes on the afternoon of the party, and her infectious gaiety in
the evening was one of the best reasons why everything went off so well.

“It has been just lovely, girls,” she said to the group of Cakes who
crowded around her begging her to tell them how they looked and whether
they had done their dance well. “Those little Italian girls in the
front row told me they never knew a party could be so beautiful, and
their mothers almost cried when they thanked Mr. Thayer. We’ve had lots
of fun ourselves, but the best of it is that we’ve given them a good
time they’ll remember as long as they live.”

But Betty had a special reason for feeling happy. For two letters had
come in her morning mail. The one she opened first was directed in the
smallest sister’s round, painstaking hand.

  “Darlingest Betty,” she began, “mother says I may come to see you.
  She said I could go to see Nan. I love Nan, but I am your compiny. A
  person who is compiny always comes to see you. I will be a good girl
  and always run away when you are busy.

                                                  “DOROTHY.”

“The dear little midget,” laughed Betty, and tossed the letter to
Madeline. “She wanted to help with the tea-room, so Will told her she
could be a silent partner--the company in the firm. And now she wants
to come and see me because she’s my ‘compiny.’”

“She says she is coming,” Madeline corrected her. “Is that her own
idea, or is she really going to make us a visit?”

“I don’t know.” Betty was deep in her mother’s letter. “Why--oh, dear!
Father is going away off to Mexico, and he’s going to take mother with
him! He may have to stay all the rest of the winter. It’s some land
he’s going to see about, and he hates to go alone. He and mother are
such old lovers! oh, and he hasn’t been very well, and he hates to go
alone, and mother can’t bear to have him. He says that her fare now
will cost less than a doctor later, and she can just as well board down
there as in Cleveland, if I can manage Dorothy.”

“Well, you can, can’t you?” inquired Madeline placidly.

“I can, can I?” Betty’s eyes sparkled. “It’s plain, Madeline Ayres,
that you’re an only child. You haven’t the least idea how it feels to
get a letter like this from that cute youngster. Mother says they tried
to make her go to Nan’s school, but she wouldn’t come to any one but
me. Can I manage? I can manage anything with a dear little sister to
play with. Oh, Madeline, I’ve been homesick, and I never knew it till
now!”

“That’s a good brand of homesickness to cultivate,” laughed Madeline.
“She’ll have to go to school here, won’t she?”

Betty nodded. “Mother says she can go to the public schools in a nice
little town like this, but I shan’t have her. I’ve saved lots out of
my salary and my share of the gift-room profits, and I shall pay her
tuition at Miss Dick’s. She can prepare for college thoroughly there.
And some day, if we keep on having such good luck at the Tally-ho, I
can help put her through Harding. Won’t that be perfectly splendid,
Madeline Ayres?”




CHAPTER XI

THE ADVENT OF THE PLOSHKIN


IF you are busy enough, you usually don’t discover that you are
homesick--especially if, whenever you do take time to think of your own
private affairs, you can run to the calendar to count the days before
the coming of the smallest sister. And between work and fun, Betty and
Madeline were very busy indeed.

First there was Christmas dinner at Mary’s--as gay and lively as all
Mary’s hospitalities. Next day there was a select lunch party at the
Tally-ho, at which Mary was the only guest, and at the end of which,
with much pomp and ceremony, she was officially designated the One and
Only Perfect Patron, and initiated with the rite of the Secret Drawer.

“You’re not opening that the way you did before, Madeline,” Betty
declared, as the three bent their heads together over the desk, while
Madeline pressed one after another of the tiny, hidden springs.

“Oh, yes, I am,” Madeline assured her. “There couldn’t be but one way
to open it. First you press this spring and take out this drawer; then
you press another spring in the side wall, and out flies your secret
compartment.”

“You did at least two more things before,” insisted Betty.

“Well, the woman I bought the desk of thought one push would do it
all,” Madeline reminded her. “Before long we may discover the one magic
touch.”

“Oh, I hope not,” sighed Mary rapturously. “I like to have it
complicated, so that you forget exactly how it goes between times, and
have to fuss and fumble around. Now please shut it and let me find it
again all by myself.”

“No, that is the second rite,” Madeline told her severely. “Come back
in a week, a day, and an hour. Meditate, meanwhile, on the Rules for
the Perfect Patron, and concoct at least one beautiful new feature for
the tea-shop. Then, and not till then, are you permitted to touch these
mystic springs. For to-day all is finished, and your long-suffering
husband is waiting sadly for his tea.”

Though it was vacation time, the Tally-ho Tea-Shop found plenty of
patrons. Besides Mr. Thayer, there were all the left-over girls,
who, having discovered that they could have a good time if they
kept together, organized breakfast and lunch parties and afternoon
tea-drinkings, with skating, snow-shoeing, and sliding expeditions for
appetizers between times. Betty and Eugenia had to seek the privacy of
the loft for their lessons, while Madeline spread her Literary Career,
in the shape of a heterogeneous litter of half-finished stories, over
Betty’s desk, and good-naturedly combined the duties of cashier and
manager with the toils of authorship. The best thing about a Literary
Career, she confided to Mr. Thayer, when he came in one day for his
tea, is that you can pursue it in any reasonably quiet corner.

“Who publishes your things?” Mr. Thayer inquired interestedly. “I must
read them.”

And Madeline was forced to admit that so far she had no publishers.
“But I’m going to keep on till I do,” she declared hopefully. “I could
learn to paint easier, I know, because that runs in the family, but
I don’t want to. I’m bound to write, and I’ll keep at it until I
succeed.”

“And I’ll back you to make a big hit,” Mr. Thayer declared solemnly.
“Anybody that could write those Cake songs, and that Stocking Act----
By the way, please ask the real cashier to send me a bill for my party.”

Madeline promised, and wasted the next hour considering whether she
should spend her share of the December profits for a trip to Bohemia,
New York, or a set of Dickens in morocco bindings. The worst thing
about a Literary Career is the ease with which one’s mind wanders away
from it.

Eugenia Ford cheered up a little over the Pageant of the Cakes, but
when that was done with she relapsed into her former state of tearful
melancholy. She was too busy to join in the fun the other girls were
having, and besides, as she explained carefully to Betty, they weren’t
any of them in her crowd. Betty received this statement in discreet
silence. She believed in taking things one at a time, and Eugenia’s
complete ignorance of the history of early English literature, her
hopeless wonder at the intricacies of geometrical figures, and her
perfectly appalling ideas about the principles of exposition, as
exhibited in her themes, were certainly all that could be attended to
in a two weeks’ vacation. Betty had been “good” in solid geometry; she
could glean the main facts of the literary history from the text-book
and the notes that Eugenia had thoughtfully borrowed from a friend who
was a “Lit. shark”; the themes she could easily see were poor enough to
secure their author a warning, but what the exact trouble was she could
not tell.

“I don’t believe I could do any better myself,” Betty confided to
Madeline. “Please tell me what to tell her.”

Madeline read through a few of Eugenia’s stupid little efforts, and
called Betty’s attention to the marks in blue pencil at the end.

“‘No sequence of thought, no progressive logic, no relevant detail.’
That’s the trouble with them all. ‘Poor paragraphing; no development
of the central idea.’ Her instructor gave her plenty of hints, but she
blissfully ignored them all.”

“She didn’t understand them, I suppose,” Betty defended Eugenia.
“Anyway I don’t, and you’ve got to explain till I do, Madeline Ayres.
I’m sorry to bother so, but I’ve got her on my hands, and she shan’t be
flunked in composition if I can help it.”

“All right,” laughed Madeline. “Now just what is it that you don’t
understand?”

At the end of an hour’s careful explanation Betty declared that
she thought she could coach Eugenia in theme-work. “You might have
explained straight to her instead of to me,” she added, “only she cries
such a lot. It’s awfully embarrassing, until you get used to it, to
have to talk to a fountain.”

But if Eugenia wept copiously, she listened attentively, and worked
hard, and gradually both she and Betty were conscious that their
efforts were telling. Betty was more relieved, if possible, than
Eugenia.

“You’ve certainly improved a heap in geometry,” she told her pupil,
toward the end of the second week. “And you know that table of dates
in ‘Lit.,’ and your themes are a speck better. Your regular tutor will
have to put most of her time on those.”

“My regular tutor!” Eugenia’s tone was terror-stricken. “Oh, Miss
Wales, I want to keep on with you, of course.”

“No, you don’t want anything of the kind,” Betty assured her
emphatically. “I was second choice, remember, and besides, I don’t do
tutoring. I only did it through vacation to oblige you and Miss Ferris,
but just as soon as she gets back and the tutor, and----” Betty paused.
Eugenia had not cried for three days, but now she was winking hard.
“Well, we’ll talk it over with Miss Ferris,” Betty told her hastily. “I
really must go now. I’ve got to take the two-fifteen to the Junction to
meet my little sister.”

Eugenia’s face softened and brightened suddenly. “Is she really
little?” she demanded. “Because I had--I mean I love little girls.”

“Yes, she’s really little,” Betty laughed. “She’s eleven and very small
for her age.”

“Mine would have been----” began Eugenia, and stopped again, the soft,
sweet look still in her eyes.

“You wouldn’t care to come and meet her too?” Betty asked hesitatingly.
“Madeline was going with me, but some girls have engaged tea here, so
she’s staying to see to it.”

“I should perfectly love to,” declared Eugenia enthusiastically. “I’ll
be company for you on the way down, but on the way back I’ll sit in
another seat and--and do theme outlines. It’s lovely of you to ask me,
Miss Wales.”

But Eugenia did no theme outlines that afternoon. The smallest sister
was a very friendly little person. She flew into Betty’s arms--Will,
who had brought her, was going straight to Boston on business for
Cousin Joe--and having hugged and been hugged “’most to pieces”
she turned to Eugenia, held up her face for a kiss, and snuggled
confidingly up to her new friend while Betty went to see about the
baggage, and later sat in the car with one arm around Betty and the
other around Eugenia.

Eugenia smiled rapturously at Betty. “It feels so good. You see I had
a little sister, Miss Wales, and she--I miss her every day of my life.
May I please come and play with yours sometimes?”

Betty assured her that she might come whenever she pleased, smiling to
herself as she remembered how she had meant to warn little Dorothy that
girls like Eugenia Ford were too busy to bother with smallest sisters.

It seemed as if nobody was too busy to amuse Dorothy. Miss Dick’s
school did not open until a week after Harding, and by that time the
smallest sister had become a regular--if very restless--feature of the
Tally-ho Tea-Shop. Polly and Georgia and Lucile and the fluffy-haired
Dutton twin had each had her to dinner on the campus, and the
straight-haired twin, who was a basket-ball fiend, had secured her
as mascot for the sophomore team, thereby plunging Eugenia, who took
no particular interest in basket-ball and so had not thought of the
freshman mascot, into the depths of woe. But no amount of flattering
attention could supplant Eugenia in Dorothy’s affections. Eugenia knew
how to talk to little girls. She had a way of appearing when Betty was
busy and Dorothy was thinking hard of mother. Her stories were almost
as nice as Madeline’s, and she was never too busy to tell one. It soon
got to be a regular thing for her to slip down from the campus in the
dusk of the afternoon, when Betty was always busiest in the tea-room,
and it was too cold and dark for a little girl to want to play outdoors
by herself. That was Dorothy’s lonesome time--or it would have been,
but for Eugenia.

First Eugenia told “true stories” of dolls and canary birds that she
had had when she was little, and of a tame toad that lived under the
door-step at home. Then she invented the ploshkin, and after that she
had to tell how to catch and kill a ploshkin every night for two weeks.

“Do you know how to catch and kill a ploshkin?” the story began, and
the answer to that was an anxious “No,” even after you knew quite well,
by heart, how the deed was done.

“The ploshkin is a sad little soul,” Eugenia went on solemnly, “and it
lives in the middle of the bay.”

“What bay?” demanded Dorothy.

[Illustration: TRUE STORIES OF DOLLS]

“The bay of the ploshkin, of course. It lurks in the deep round hole
that you see exactly in the middle of the bay. So you must row out
there in a skiff, taking with you a pail of mortar.”

“What a funny thing to take,” giggled Dorothy each time.

“The only thing,” Eugenia announced severely. “And when the skiff is
exactly in the centre of the bay you must fasten the prow to the top of
a wave, with a pink shoe-string.”

“Who ever heard of a pink shoe-string?” demanded Dorothy gleefully.

“You have--now,” Eugenia told her. “Where was I? Oh, yes, tie the prow
to the top of a wave with a pink shoe-string, and then you must wait
and wait and wait and wait, till by and by the ploshkin will come up to
drink.”

“I should think he could drink enough down where he was. Don’t you mean
come up to breathe?” inquired Dorothy acutely.

“I mean come up to drink. The ploshkin has an ingrowing face and he
drinks up, not down. Now shall I go on with the story?”

“Please,” begged Dorothy.

“Well, when he comes up with a flip of his tail, you must jump for the
pail of mortar and sprinkle it on him, and he’ll be so mortified that
he’ll die of mortification.”

“And must you hold him by the tail? You said ‘catch and kill,’” Dorothy
reminded her.

Eugenia nodded. “But it’s never been done yet. The tail is prickly, you
see, and slippery between the pricks, and the pink shoe-string gets in
your eyes.”

“How could it?” demanded Dorothy.

“It’s enchanted,” Eugenia assured her with the air of finality that
little girls love. “And so this is how you catch and kill a ploshkin.”

“Could you please make me a picture of a ploshkin?” asked Dorothy on
the third night of the story.

“I can’t draw pictures, dear, but Miss Ayres will, I’m sure,” Eugenia
told her, and that was how Madeline heard of the ploshkin, and fell so
in love with its name, its ingrowing face, and its prickly, slippery
tail, that she spent a whole morning making sketches of it, when she
should have been pursuing her Literary Career.

Dorothy displayed the sketches to all her friends, and the exact
appearance of the ploshkin began to be vigorously discussed in college
circles, and pictures of it adorned the fly-leaves of note-books and
the margins of corrected themes. The fluffy-haired Dutton twin, who
took modeling, even made a comical little clay ploshkin and presented
it to Dorothy, who thanked her and tactfully refrained from mentioning
that she had forgotten the prickly tail. But Madeline was not so
reticent, and she and the Dutton twin together modeled another figure
that made Dorothy fairly dance with delight. It had, besides the
prickly tail, one wing, held coquettishly before its “ingrowing face,”
which was rather like a fish’s, except for a “sunny Jim” smile around
the mouth; and there was something inexplicably fascinating about the
grotesque huddle of its posture.

“That’s a real touch of genius--that makes you feel like laughing
whenever you look at it,” explained the Dutton twin triumphantly, “but
it won’t help me any if I cut again in Elocution. Good-bye,” and she
was off, singing, “Midyears are coming, tra-la, tra-la,” with a joyous
disregard for time and tune.

While the others were still admiring the new ploshkin Mary Brooks
appeared.

“It’s two weeks, and two days, less two hours,” she explained, when
she had kissed Dorothy and examined the ploshkin. “I couldn’t come at
the proper time, because my Uncle Marcellus has been to visit us--the
one that gave us the desert island for a wedding gift, you know.” Mary
sighed deeply. “A desert island is a lovely thing to own, but when it
involves an Uncle Marcellus I’d advise anybody to think twice. Well,
he’s gone at last and here I am, to open the drawer.”

“Why didn’t you bring your Uncle Marcellus in to lunch?” demanded
Madeline severely. “You haven’t been any kind of a patron lately. And
where’s your new feature for the shop that I told you to think up?
You’re trying to shirk your responsibilities, little Mary.”

“Uncle Marcellus,” said Mary calmly, “is a vegetarian with dyspepsia.
Of course I didn’t bring him in here to find fault with everything.
New rule for the Perfect Patron: Keep the dyspeptic vegetarian away
from the Tea-Room. As for features, I’d thought of something. Let me
see--oh,--why, of course! Make ploshkins.” Mary smiled her beamish
smile at the two proprietors.

“Now, Mary, you thought that up on the spur of the minute,” began
Madeline. “It’s not fair----”

“Nonsense,” Mary denounced her affably. “You’re always preaching the
advantage of impromptu inspirations.”

“But why should we make ploshkins?” demanded Betty.

“Why indeed?” Mary beamed. “Have you forgotten the day when the Gibson
girl hung over every desk on the Harding campus? And after that came
the Winged Victory. Last year it was red devils, wasn’t it? Well, now
it shall be ploshkins. The Harding girl must have her little idol, and
the Tally-ho Tea-Shop may as well have the Harding girl’s money.”

“But they’d take ages to make,” objected Madeline. “Fluffy and I spent
two long and weary afternoons on this one.”

“Don’t be so literal, child,” advised Mary. “Have them made, I mean, of
course. Get one of those plaster statuette places in New York to turn
them off for you. Let me see--three--five--order five hundred. Three
hundred girls will rush to buy them, and two hundred out of the three
will get that wing broken off before June and sorrowfully buy another.”
Mary smiled blandly. “I ought to have been the wife of a shopkeeper,
oughtn’t I? Now may I play with your secret drawer?”

Being of a fickle disposition, Mary had no sooner received full and
free permission to play with the drawer whenever she liked, than the
secret springs lost their tremendous attraction for her. She had just
got the drawer open when Georgia Ames appeared and Mary promptly
deserted her new plaything to secure Georgia’s advance order for
ploshkins, and then to help her concoct a beautiful little notice about
them to be circulated discreetly through the college.

“Zoology classes, Attention!” it ran. “The ploshkin is as instructive
as the grasshopper, and you should lose no time in observing its
anatomy. To be had, without the trouble of catching it in the Bay, at
the Tally-ho Tea-Shop. Order early.”

“The name and that senseless touch about the Bay will get them,” Mary
declared, and went home to tell George Garrison Hinsdale all about it.
So the secret drawer stood open all day long--for Betty, who would have
noticed it, had had an exasperating struggle with the stove, on top
of a particularly irritating time over the carriage lamps, and went
home early with a headache, leaving a message for Eugenia, who still
insisted upon coming for lessons. Madeline found the drawer, when she
was straightening up the tea-room for the night, and shut it in hot
haste. For what is the use of having a secret drawer at all if you
leave it wide open all day for every one to look at?




CHAPTER XII

A TRAGIC DISAPPEARANCE


“I THINK we ought to send for Babbie,” declared Madeline Ayres a day or
two later.

“To talk ploshkin?” asked Betty. The ploshkin project was still, to
Mary’s great disgust, being discussed pro and con.

“Yes,” assented Madeline, “and to have a say about our keeping the
tea-room open for dinners. Also, and most important of all, to save
Young-Man-Over-the-Fence from an early grave.”

“Oh, yes, we ought to decide right away about the bill for his party,”
agreed Betty innocently. “At least, we have decided, haven’t we, that
it was too much fun to take pay for? But we ought to let him know.”

“Yes, we undoubtedly ought, but Babbie hasn’t a thing to do with that
party,” Madeline reminded her.

“That’s so. Then what----” Betty had a sudden inkling of Madeline’s
meaning. “Do you think he’s really interested in Babbie?” she
demanded. “Because Babbie doesn’t like him, and she perfectly hates
having men fall in love with her.”

“She says she does, you mean,” corrected Madeline, “and perhaps she
even thinks she does. But she doesn’t. No girl does, if the man is
worth anything. I like Young-Man-Over-the-Fence myself, probably
because he’s so optimistic about my literary ability, and I’m sorry I
queered him with Babbie by my premature announcement of his devotion. I
don’t know how I can help matters now, though.”

Betty laughed. “He’ll help them himself, if he wants to, I guess. He
isn’t the kind to give up easily. The very reason Babbie was prejudiced
against him was because of his determined chin. I’ll make out his bill
for the food and the other expenses right now, before I forget it.”

When Mr. Thayer came in for his tea that afternoon and was informed of
the Tally-ho’s decision, he objected vigorously.

“Suppose those girls from the college did help you a little,” he said.
“Give them a spread, if you like, to square things up, and take my
check for yourselves. You really must, you know.”

Betty explained that it had been only fun for everybody, and Madeline
presented her plan for a club-house.

Mr. Thayer smiled sorrowfully. “I’ve thought of that, and I want them
to have one; but if they have a club-house they must have clubs. They
must have clubs anyway, for do you know”--his voice took on a tragic
intensity--“not much over half of them can read and write. Last month I
got a law passed that prohibits their working in this state unless they
can read simple English and write little things like their own names,
and now I find there are no evening schools in this benighted town,
and if there were, what would old men and grown women do in a regular
evening school?”

“Was that the law your father didn’t like?” asked Betty.

Mr. Thayer nodded gloomily. “It’s a perfectly good law, but it’s making
me no end of trouble. Miss Wales, I’ve noticed that you always seem to
come to the rescue of despairing mortals. Can’t you suggest something?”

Betty shook her head thoughtfully. Instead of coming to any one’s
rescue she had got to dismiss her extra waitresses again. Nobody
had time for lunches and teas just before midyears, and even if the
tea-shop should decide to serve dinners a little later, she might be
able, with the longer hours, to get on without extra help. Then she
remembered something funny that had come in her morning mail.

“I must be queer,” she declared, “because people--despairing
mortals--want me to do such funny things for them. This morning I had a
letter from a father whose daughter isn’t popular in college, wanting
me to show her how to make friends. And I never even heard of the girl
before!”

“Well, you’ll do it,” Mr. Thayer declared, preparing to take his
leave, “and you’ll help me out somehow, too. I’ve got three months’
grace from the factory commission, before my employees must begin to
attend school. Meanwhile I shall put an architect to work on plans for
the club-house you’ve compelled me to build by your hundred dollar
donation. And by building the club-house I put you under obligations
to help me with the clubs. That’s even. Good-bye.”

“We’ve gotten ourselves into a lovely fix now,” said Betty solemnly,
staring after him.

“You have, please say,” Madeline corrected. “He doesn’t expect me to do
anything about his old clubs, after the way I piled the Stockings off
on Babbie.”

“I should love it if I had time,” sighed Betty. “It’s the only kind of
teaching I know enough to do, just the plain three R’s,--and you could
feel as if your work counted for something, when they must learn and
can’t in any other way.”

“It would be splendid practice,” added Madeline. “I should almost think
some of the college girls who are going to teach might like to take
classes a night or two each week.”

Betty gave a little cry of pleased assent. “Why, of course! Why didn’t
you think of that when he was here, Madeline? I know they’d like it,
and girls who don’t mean to teach would, too--Fluffy Dutton and Georgia
and their kind. They’d like the queerness of it.”

“I might even take a class myself,” Madeline conceded, “if I were
allowed to choose my pupils. I hereby speak for my fascinating little
Italian boy.”

“It will be a fine chance to practice modern languages, too,” cried
Betty eagerly. “Some girls will like it for that. But the classes
wouldn’t get on very fast, studying only a night a week; and every
night would be a good deal to give. Oh, Madeline, I know what! He could
hire some girls for the big stupid classes that would have to come
several nights a week, and that would help with the Student’s Aid work.”

“You’re worrying about those waitresses again,” said Madeline
accusingly. “I believe you care more about them than you do about
tea-room profits.”

“You don’t really think that, do you, Madeline?” demanded Betty
solemnly, “because the tea-room pays me for looking out for its
profits, and if I didn’t put that ahead of anything else, I shouldn’t
be honest.”

“Of course I don’t think it,” Madeline told her quickly, with a loving
little hug. “You’re altogether too honest, and you work lots harder
than you ought to. If we decide to serve dinners, I shall insist on
your having an assistant. And that will be more help for the Student’s
Aid,” she added mockingly, and went off to Dramatic Club’s dress
rehearsal of the Masque of the Twelfth Night Cakes.

A few moments later the carriage lamp above Betty’s desk flickered
uncertainly and grew dim.

“Oh, dear, I never filled one lamp this morning!” sighed Betty. The
stove and the lamps were the hardest things in her winter’s experience.
Bridget had announced, soon after her arrival, that she couldn’t be
“bothered wid ony ile lamps,” and Nora had remarked pointedly that
nowadays you needn’t expect any girl to fuss with those old-fashioned
ways of lighting. So Betty, valuing Bridget and Nora too highly to take
any risks, had quietly assumed the care of the lamps and later of the
stove. She didn’t dare to carry a light near the kerosene can, and in
groping her way to it she tore her sleeve on a nail and got a sliver in
her finger. She had pinned together the tear and taken out the sliver,
and she was sitting by the open fire, trying to finish up the repairs
by smoothing out her ruffled temper, when Eugenia Ford appeared,
looking provokingly spick-and-span and elegant in new furs that her
father had just sent her.

“He knew he was mean to keep me here over Christmas,” said Eugenia,
when she had duly exhibited her treasures. “Is your headache all gone,
Miss Wales?”

Betty laughed. “I’d forgotten that I ever had one. That was two days
ago, wasn’t it? I was sorry to make you miss a lesson.”

“Oh, it didn’t matter,” Eugenia said easily. She was in a very
complacent mood to-day. “I told Miss Ayres that it didn’t matter. I’ve
had two ‘very goods’ said to me in geometry recitations this week, and
I wasn’t sat upon in Lit. to-day. That’s the most of a compliment you
can hope for in Lit. unless you’re a perfect wizard.”

“Well, don’t get careless and let things go,” Betty warned her
solemnly. “And when you’re cramming, if you find one single little
thing that you don’t understand, you’d better come and let me explain
about it.” Betty flushed uncomfortably. The financial side of such
affairs she found very embarrassing. “It won’t be anything extra; it
will just be a favor to me. I shall feel so nervous until I know you’re
through all right.”

Eugenia nodded brusquely. “I suppose they’re always dreadfully down on
people who’ve had warnings, but I guess I shall get along.” She seemed
restless and ill at ease somehow, saying almost nothing, answering
Betty’s questions at random, not even noticing the ploshkin that she
had gone into raptures over when she had seen it before, or inquiring
for little Dorothy, as she did invariably whenever she came in.

“She’s probably worried to death and too proud to let me see it,” Betty
decided; but that was an absurd supposition, considering all the tears
that Eugenia had taken small pains to dissemble. Finally it came out.

“I must be going,” Eugenia announced at last with sudden briskness. “I
only stopped to inquire for your headache. Oh, yes--and I presume I’d
better take my theme, because it’s due to-morrow morning, and I may not
be down this way again. Did you read it, Miss Wales?”

Betty’s brow puckered in perplexity. “Your theme? Were you to have
one ready for the other day? I thought it was only the last six
propositions in geometry that we were going over together. Madeline
didn’t give me any theme.”

“No,” explained Eugenia. “I didn’t tell her anything about it. I just
dropped it on your desk. I thought you’d notice it and read it, and if
you found anything fearfully wrong, I could fix it over.”

“But I don’t understand what theme it was. We went over all those that
I assigned; and you revised them, and then we went over them again.”

“This was my ‘final,’” explained Eugenia.

“Your ‘final’!” Betty’s tone was full of dismay. “But I wasn’t to see
that, Eugenia. That’s to be entirely your own work, like all the themes
you handed in before you were warned. Don’t you remember I told you
how Miss Raymond called a meeting of English tutors to explain that
they were to give no help of any kind on the ‘final’ theme; and she
announced it in classes too, didn’t she?”

“Oh, yes, if you take it that way”--Eugenia assumed an air of injured
innocence. “Most of the tutors don’t. You see, Miss Wales, some of
the girls are worried to death and bother their tutors for ideas and
pointers until the poor things just about write their freshmen’s themes
to get rid of them. Of course they won’t--or they oughtn’t to--do that
with the ‘final.’ That’s the help Miss Raymond meant.”

“So is reading it over and making suggestions giving help,” Betty
objected. “She meant help of any kind--or at least that was what she
said.”

Eugenia shrugged her shoulders. “All right,” she said. “There’s no
harm done, as long as you haven’t even seen the old thing. It’s due
to-morrow anyway, and all I expected you to tell me was little things
like misspelled words or slips of the pen. I couldn’t copy it all over
to-night possibly.”

Betty always tried to put the best construction on actions that didn’t
seem to her quite honorable. “Oh, if that’s all you wanted, why I don’t
suppose any one would object. But it’s better to keep exactly to Miss
Raymond’s regulations, don’t you think so? If you try hard, you can
find little things like misspelled words for yourself. You will go over
it carefully, won’t you?” Betty added earnestly. “I heard of a girl
once who was conditioned on account of bad spelling. That would be a
perfect shame, after all the time we’ve spent studying really hard
things like outlines.”

While she talked, Betty was looking through her pigeonholes, where neat
little piles of bills and memoranda for the different parts of the
tea-room business were kept. After one week of chaos she had decided
that order was the first law of business; and since then her desk had
been a model of neatness and system.

“Where did you say you left the theme, Eugenia?” she asked after a
minute, looking up from her search.

“Right out on top,” explained Eugenia. “Isn’t it there? Seems to me
a drawer was open. Maybe it got slipped in by mistake with something
else, when the drawer was shut.”

Betty opened every drawer and looked carefully through the contents.
Then she went through the pigeonholes again, while Eugenia waited,
anxiety fast taking the place of her serene assurance.

“It’s not here,” Betty announced at last. “Are you perfectly sure you
left it, Eugenia?”

“Perfectly. You see,” Eugenia, being thoroughly frightened, became,
according to her custom, perfectly frank and open. “You see I knew
you’d think it was cheating to help on a ‘final,’ no matter if
all--well, some,” she amended hastily, “of the regular tutors do it. So
I folded it up and laid it on your desk where I thought you’d naturally
pick it up to see what it was. And after you’d begun it, I thought
you’d finish out of curiosity, because you’re so interested in my not
flunking. And if you thought it was a fright I just hoped you wouldn’t
be able to resist bringing it to me to revise. I guess it wasn’t
honest, and I never mean to actually cheat,” ended Eugenia, with a
feeling for nice distinctions, “so I’m really and truly glad you didn’t
find it before. But it must be there, Miss Wales. It simply must.”

“It isn’t,” Betty answered with decision. “I’ve looked twice at every
single paper.”

“Then somebody has taken it.”

Betty considered. “You might have picked it up yourself, Eugenia, with
your other things, in a fit of absent-mindedness. The maids never touch
this desk. The only other person who could possibly have moved it is
Madeline. She was writing here, I think, the day you say you left it.
She’s up on the campus now. You go and hunt through your room, and as
soon as she comes home, I’ll ask her about it.”

“Suppose we don’t either of us find it?” queried Eugenia anxiously.

“Oh, we shall find it,” Betty assured her. “I’m almost sure you took it
off.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t, Miss Wales,” declared Eugenia. “I know I didn’t,
but I’ll go and look. And if I don’t find it, I shall come right back
here to see if Miss Ayres has it. Oh, just think--what if it’s lost for
keeps?” Eugenia fastened her sable furs as unconcernedly as if they had
been last year’s style and squirrel, and rushed off, her eyes big with
terror.

Betty went over the desk again, just to be doing something. Just before
Madeline arrived, she remembered the secret drawer. The theme was in
that, of course! When Madeline declared that she hadn’t seen it, and
that it couldn’t be with her papers, because she hadn’t had any on the
desk for five days, Betty insisted on her opening the secret drawer.

“I simply must learn to open it,” she said. “I knew something would get
lost in there, and if you were away, I shouldn’t be able to get it out.
There, Madeline, that’s the way you did it the first time you opened
it. I think I shall remember now. Oh, it isn’t there! I do hope she’s
found it herself.”

But a minute later Eugenia burst in, arrayed in her roommate’s oldest
raincoat, furs and complacence alike discarded. “Have you found it?”
she cried. “Because I knew I shouldn’t, and I didn’t.”

“Oh, Eugenia! No, it isn’t here. Madeline, do come and suggest what to
do.”

Madeline was as sympathetic as possible, but even her vaunted
resourcefulness could find no feasible remedy for Eugenia’s plight.

“Ask for more time,” she began.

“She won’t give it unless you’ve been sick,” Eugenia objected.

“Go home and write your theme to-night. You can do it, with coffee and
wet towels. If your matron is fussy about lights, come down to our
house.”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” declared Eugenia tragically. “I can’t hurry on
themes. I’m as slow as a snail when I try to write sense. I spent six
evenings on this, outside of copying.”

“Then go and explain that you’ve lost it, and throw yourself on the
lady’s tender mercies. Go right away, so she won’t be irritated
beforehand by all the other regular eleventh hour excuses.”

Eugenia considered. “I suppose that’s the only thing to do. If I
hurry I can get there before dinner. Between tea and dinner is her
good-natured time.” Eugenia pulled up the raincoat, which was much too
long for her, and started off.

Half an hour later she was back again, shivering forlornly with the
cold and choking with tears.

“I told her. I told her exactly how I happened to lose it, because she
asked me, and I never thought how awful it would look. She says I’m
a cheat, and don’t deserve more time. She says she’ll flunk me in the
course, and she hopes I’ll flunk enough other things so I can’t stay in
college. Oh, Miss Wales, what shall I do? I told my father I was all
caught up. He doesn’t know about midyears. I guess that wasn’t honest
either, to say I was caught up before I’d passed the exams. If I’m
flunked out now I shan’t ever dare go home. Oh, what shall I do? What
shall I do? What shall I do?”

Betty tucked the forlorn, weeping little bundle into a chair, heaped
more wood on the fire that she had been trying to put out, brewed hot
tea, and hunted through the larder for tempting “left-overs” that
would make up an appetizing little supper for two. When Madeline
and the smallest sister came to see, as Dorothy put it, whether the
ploshkin had caught and killed Betty, she sent them away with a hastily
whispered explanation.

“Now first,” she told Eugenia, “you’re to stop crying or you’ll make
yourself sick, and then where will your midyears be? And secondly
you’re to eat what I’ve cooked, because it isn’t polite to act as if
you didn’t like my cooking. And thirdly you’re to escort me as far as
the door of the Davidson. I’m going to see Miss Raymond. I’m sure you
misunderstood part of what she said, because she isn’t the kind to
speak that way. If she has made up her mind to flunk you, I don’t know
that I can do anything, but I’m going to try.”

“Oh, you mustn’t bother,” moaned Eugenia. “It’s no use. I suppose it
was cheating. You said it was yourself.”

“I ought to have told you specially not to bring the ‘final’ theme
to me,” Betty told her. “And if you did leave it here, why, I’m
responsible in a way for its loss. I shall tell Miss Raymond that. I
can’t have you fail because something you left with me has disappeared
off the face of the earth.”

On their way Betty told Eugenia to walk ahead slowly while she ran up
to bid Dorothy good-night.

“I just hate to go,” she told Madeline. “I don’t know Miss Raymond very
well. If it was Miss Ferris, I should know just what to say; but I’m
afraid Miss Raymond will think it was partly my doings that Eugenia
brought me the theme. I just hate to be mixed up in anything that isn’t
perfectly straight.”

“Then let her get out of it as best she can herself.”

Betty shook her head. “That certainly wouldn’t be straight,” she
declared. “I’m helping her because the theme was lost off my desk--and
because she’s been so sweet to Dorothy.”

After all, the interview wasn’t so dreadful. Miss Raymond began by
thanking Betty for coming at once to explain her side of the affair.

“Though of course I knew all that you have told me about the part you
took,” she said. “But one thing more--do you think Miss Ford is telling
the truth about her part? You think she really wrote the theme?”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure she did,” Betty answered earnestly. “She has queer
ideas about what would be fair and honest, but I’m sure she doesn’t
tell out-and-out lies. Besides, how would she ever think of such a
story?”

“It’s no stranger than others I’ve listened to that proved to be the
invention of girls stupider than Eugenia Ford,” Miss Raymond assured
her smilingly. “But I shall accept your judgment in the matter.”

“And give her a chance to write another theme?” asked Betty eagerly.

Miss Raymond hesitated. “I don’t see how I can do that, when I have
refused half a dozen others who had better excuses. But what’s lost
generally turns up, doesn’t it? Suppose I give Miss Ford three weeks,
in the hope that her theme will come to light. Of course I shall trust
to her honor not to write another and substitute it for the original.”

“But if it doesn’t come to light?” Betty knew just how thoroughly she
had ransacked her desk.

Miss Raymond considered. “Then what I can do will depend on the reports
I get from her other instructors--and from you, if you are to continue
tutoring her.”

Betty blushed violently. “If you remember my themes, Miss Raymond, I
know you think it’s perfectly crazy for me to be tutoring in English.”
And she explained how she had been driven to beginning with Eugenia,
and then not allowed to stop.

“When I see the ‘final’ I can judge better how successful you’ve been,”
Miss Raymond told her cordially, “but I imagine you’ve done good work.
The best writers don’t make the best teachers. What was her subject?”

Betty blushed again. “‘Little Girls.’ I’d kept telling her to take
something definite and something she knew about, instead of hope, and
Japanese gardens, and things of that kind. But ‘Little Girls’ is a sort
of ridiculous title, isn’t it?”

“It sounds rather promising to me,” Miss Raymond said. “I hope I shall
have the opportunity of reading about ‘Little Girls.’ Will you explain
our arrangement to Miss Ford?” And Betty felt that she was dismissed.

She hurried over to tell Eugenia how far she had succeeded, and Eugenia
cheered up perceptibly over the ray of hope held out to her, and even
found heart to taste the fudge that her sympathetic roommate had made
to comfort her.

Betty finished off her evening with a call on Miss Ferris, who assured
her, in answer to her apologetic account of the situation, that she
didn’t in the least regret, nevertheless, having practically compelled
Betty to tutor Eugenia.

“And Eugenia is quite right; you can’t stop now,” she declared
laughingly, and then grew serious. “This episode is hard on both of
you, but it will result in her practicing, if she doesn’t fully accept,
a higher code of honor. Then you say she has learned to work, and this
is her chance to show it. Miss Raymond won’t be hard on her if she
shows that she means to do her best. You didn’t think I expected you to
change all her spots in a minute, did you?”

Betty went home, feeling that a great load was off her shoulders.
To be sure, she was perfectly certain that Eugenia’s theme was lost
“for keeps,” but nobody, not even Eugenia, seemed to blame her. And
something would surely happen to make things come right.

At home something had already happened to make things interesting, in
the shape of a telegram from Babbie, who had decided to come up to
Harding, although Madeline had not yet carried out her plan of sending
for her. And so she didn’t know a word about the ploshkin or the dinner
project. It wasn’t to discuss those, certainly, that she was coming to
Harding.




CHAPTER XIII

MORE “SIDE-LINES”


ON the afternoon of her arrival Babbie had tea, alone and very early,
at the Tally-ho. Just after Nora had served her, Mr. Thayer appeared.
He came over to Babbie’s table to shake hands, as a matter of course,
and he lingered over the process until the very least Babbie could do
was to invite him to share her repast.

“I met a cousin of yours,” she informed him, “at the week-end party
I’ve just come from--Mr. Austin Thayer. I saw a lot of him, and we got
quite chummy.”

“Austin’s a fine fellow,” agreed Mr. Thayer cordially, “but he and I
disagree about so many things--we don’t hit it off at all.”

“No,” said Babbie serenely, crushing a slice of lemon relentlessly with
her tiny wooden spoon--Japanese spoons, for the Japanese teas were
the latest innovation at the Tally-ho. “Your cousin Austin thinks you
are ‘a very foolish boy,’ to quote his own words. We discussed you at
dinner last evening.”

Mr. Thayer flushed. “And did you defend me just a little?” he asked.
“Because if you didn’t, considering what Austin has called me now and
then, I don’t see how there could have been much discussion.”

“Well, if you make a point of it, it wasn’t a discussion,” Babbie told
him coldly. “It was an--an exchange of experiences. He told me what he
knew about your past life, and I told him the very little I know about
your present activities.”

Mr. Thayer smiled a perfunctory smile. “It must have been a desperately
dull dinner. My affairs are never the least bit exciting. Next time you
meet Austin at anybody’s week-end, make him talk about himself.”

“Oh, he did that too,” Babbie explained, “sitting out dances the first
evening. He’s had piles of fascinating experiences. If I were a man I
think I should go in for the same sort of thing exactly. I love the
way he pounces down on the Stock Exchange, straight out of a South
African jungle, and after he’s made two or three millions calmly
departs again to climb Mount McKinley, or motor through Tibet. And when
his two millions are spent, he builds a town or sells a gold mine, and
then buys a castle on the Hudson and a car and a motor-boat, and tries
another kind of fun. He doesn’t bother with employees and fiddling
little plans for making them ‘safer and happier,’” Babbie quoted
maliciously.

“No, he doesn’t,” returned Mr. Thayer with asperity. “They mobbed him
once in Chicago, because he’d cornered the wheat supply and the price
of bread had nearly doubled.”

“Was that the time he made five millions in three months?” asked Babbie
blandly.

That evening, while Babbie, in a ruffly pink negligee, sat cross-legged
on Madeline’s couch, eating fudges and playing with the ploshkin, she
explained to her two friends that the week-end party had “bored her to
tears.”

“There wasn’t a possible man there, and Margot kept pairing me off with
a fright of a millionaire who was always getting you into a corner and
making you listen to wild tales of gigantic business ventures he’d
pulled off. I detest business. Money should be seen and not heard,”
ended Babbie sententiously.

But the next afternoon she rushed out of Flying Hoof’s stall, where she
was being entertained at tea by some adoring freshmen, to inform Mr.
Robert Thayer that his cousin Austin had sent him kind regards.

“In a note, you know.” She fluttered it before him tantalizingly.
“We’re both invited to another house-party, you see. He wants to know
if I’m going to accept.”

“And are you?” ventured Mr. Thayer. “That is, if I may ask, by way of
showing a cousinly interest in Austin’s happiness.”

“Most certainly not,” snapped Babbie fiercely.

“Ah, I beg a thousand pardons! I was only joking, Miss Hildreth.”

“I’m most certainly not going, I mean,” Babbie explained amiably, after
a moment of frowning perplexity, and swept back to her tea-party,
leaving a completely bewildered young man behind her.

He relieved his feelings by telling Betty the good news about the
club-house.

“I’ve bought that big, old-fashioned place across the street from the
factory. We couldn’t have begun building before April, and it seemed
out of the question to delay so long. Besides, this is just the thing,
or it will be in a month, when the architect and his minions have
finished with it. I told him that you people changed a barn into a
tea-shop in ten days, and if he can’t alter a few partitions, paper a
few walls, and get in the furniture in a month, he needn’t expect any
more work from yours truly. So bring on your college girls, find out
who wants to teach what and to whom, and tell me which ones are to
go on the pay-roll and which are ready to give their services. I’ll
send you a list of the prospective pupils, with ages and nationalities
attached.” He paused and looked sharply at Betty. “Are you tired
to-night, Miss Wales?”

Betty shook her head. “I’ve lost something, and I’m being foolish and
worrying over it.”

“You work too hard,” Mr. Thayer decreed. “When I’m overworked I always
lose my gloves. It’s a sure sign. You’re not to be bothered with those
lists. But the trouble is, I don’t know the college girls. There’s got
to be somebody for a go-between. Could I hire one of the hire-able
ones for a sort of secretary?”

Betty considered. “Midyears are making everybody awfully busy now and
it wouldn’t do to wait ten days or so, till they’re over, would it?
Besides, this thing will have to be managed just right to give it a
good start. Why don’t you ask Babbie? She’s awfully good at things like
that, and awfully interested in the club-house idea.”

“Is she?” gasped Mr. Thayer.

Betty nodded. “She says she thinks the finest thing a rich man can do
is to look after the men and women who are making his money for him.”

“She said that?” gasped Mr. Thayer again. Then he looked pleadingly at
Betty. “Would you ask her to take charge, please? I think she’d do it
quicker for you.”

And he hurried off, leaving Betty to piece together all the things
Babbie had said and done in connection with Mr. Thayer, and all that
he had said and done in connection with Babbie. Her final conclusions
were, first, that Mr. Thayer was afraid of Babbie; second, that Babbie
was interested in Mr. Thayer’s work, but not in Mr. Thayer; and
third, that Madeline was therefore mistaken, owing to an over-romantic
tendency developed by the writing of a great many love-stories.

In any case Babbie readily agreed to post notices about the opening of
the stocking factory’s classes, see that the most promising volunteer
teachers got the most difficult pupils, interview the Student’s Aid
officers about the paid instructors, and be present during the evenings
of the first week to make sure that each teacher found her class and
that things ran smoothly.

“It’s a good excuse to delay going South until next month,” she said.
“Mother is just as bored by Southern resorts as I am, but she hasn’t
the strength of mind to break off the habit of going to them. So she’ll
be secretly relieved, and as proud as Punch, too, to think that I’m
bossing a big evening-school. Mother’s purely ornamental herself, so
she admires the useful type of woman. I must write her immediately
about the tea-shop’s latest departure. Betty, can’t you induce Mr.
Thayer to serve coffee and sandwiches to the ones that learn their
lessons nicely, and then the tea-shop will be making something out of
my school.”

“Wait till we get our dinners started, before we begin on nine-o’clock
lunches,” Betty advised her.

“I shall order the very grandest dinner you can imagine for the opening
night,” declared Babbie enthusiastically, “so you must manage to start
before I leave.”

“We can have new menu cards now,” put in Madeline. “I never did like
the color of these, and besides I think Bob Enderby ought to put a
gift-shop in one corner of the design he drew for us. It certainly
ought to be noticed in some way on the menu.”

“I think he ought to add a night-school too,” declared Babbie
playfully, “and a notice that Betty does tutoring. If we’re broadening
out so much, we ought to let people know all about it.”

“Just because you happen to be running it, the night-school isn’t a
branch of the tea-shop, Babbie,” demurred Madeline. “Wait until Mr.
Thayer actually promises to buy the sandwiches before you consider it a
part of the ‘eats’ business.”

“Well, it’s an outgrowth of it,” retorted Babbie. “The tea-shop is
responsible for the club-house.”

“Oh, if we’re going to put all that the tea-shop is responsible for on
the menu,” Madeline began, with a provoking little smile, “we should
have to put on a picture of a broken h----”

“Come, girls,” interposed Betty, hastily, foreseeing another blundering
reference from Madeline to Mr. Thayer’s devotion to Babbie, “don’t
quarrel about unimportant little things like menu cards, but let’s
discuss what we shall serve and what new china we need.”

“Oh, new china!” cried Madeline in great excitement. “I hadn’t thought
of that! I shall go to New York to buy it. Now, whoever said the fat
little mustard jars were an extravagance? We shall use them a lot for
dinners.”

Betty banged the table for order. “Now how many dinner plates shall we
buy to begin with?” she inquired in businesslike tones.

Madeline banged the table noisily in her turn. “I know something much
more important than dinner plates,” she declared ostentatiously. “Do
let’s be businesslike, Betty, and systematic. Your haphazard methods
jar upon my order-loving soul.”

Betty waited resignedly.

“The most important thing is an assistant for you,” Madeline went on.
“You can’t do more than you are doing now. If we serve dinners, there
will be more marketing, more accounts, more to see to all around the
place, and longer hours for the cashier.”

“Oh, of course Betty must have an assistant,” chimed in Babbie, “and a
bigger salary. It’s not fair for us to be making such good profits when
she works so hard.”

“You’ll make more, even with a good many extra expenses, if the
dinners go as I think they will,” put in Betty, forcing her associates
to listen, while she explained what could be done if the average
dinner check was so-and-so, the average attendance so-and-so, and the
additional expenses kept down to this and that.

“All right; let’s serve dinners by all means,” said Babbie gaily. “I
hate averages, because as far as I can see they never come out the way
you want them, but I’m all for expansion. Mummy will like it too.
She’s awfully proud of us. Now Betty can do a go-as-you-please on the
details, can’t she, Madeline? We only bother by putting in our oars;
we’re such ignoramuses.”

Empowered to choose her own assistant, Betty spent two days anxiously
considering various possibilities. If only it were fall, and Katherine
or Rachel were free to try this unconventional way of earning a living!
And then, just at the crucial moment, when she had almost decided to
ask a junior who was working her way through college to come and try
the work for the rest of the term, arrived a letter from Emily Davis,
with moving pathos behind its story of a bitter disappointment bravely
accepted.

“I can’t blame my old eyes,” Emily wrote, “because they’ve served me
long and well, and I’ve overdriven the poor beasties shamefully. So now
they balk, and the doctor says they just must be humored. They’ll hold
my position in the school for me until next fall. In the meantime I’m
hunting for any honest means of livelihood that doesn’t require eyes.
I should cry a few tears at having to give up this perfectly splendid
position that I was so elated to get; but crying is very bad for the
eyes, so I smile and smile and keep on thinking how in the world I can
manage to earn my bread and butter until next September. This summer,
if worse comes to worst, I can wait on table at a seaside resort.
Please don’t think I’m hinting for a chance to do it at the Tally-ho.
I should hate to explain to everybody I know at Harding how it happens
that I’m back at an underclass girl’s last resort--I, who was a star
tutor way back in my junior year, and who meant to come to our reunion
in June a star teacher, with all the money I borrowed to go through
college paid back, and enough left for board at my sister’s through a
restful summer. And now the oculist’s bill is gobbling up everything in
sight.

“What a growl! But this is a safety-valve letter, Betty. As you are
earning your living too, I feel extra sure you’ll understand.”

“What she means is, she feels sure that I won’t offer her money,” Betty
reflected shrewdly. “And isn’t it just splendid that I can offer her a
good position!”

For of course Emily was the very one to be assistant manager. To be
sure, Betty hated the clerical work, and had planned to have her
assistant take charge of the accounts. But the keeping of those was a
small thing compared to having dear old comical Emily Davis back, with
her famous “stunts,” her cheerful fashion of meeting defeat and failure
with a smile, and her marvelous ability to work twice as hard as any
one else and yet always appear calm and collected and unhurried. Betty
had a feeling that Emily would insist upon attending to the lamps and
the stove. She wouldn’t let her do it all, of course--she knew too well
how hard it was--but just a little help would be such a relief.

Of course Babbie and Madeline were as eager as Betty to have Emily join
the tea-room’s force, and Emily could not have resisted the combined
logic and pleading of the three letters they sent her, even if she had
wanted to. So she wrote back post-haste a grateful acceptance of their
offer and promised to be on hand within a fortnight.

There remained still the ploshkin project to consider. The tea-room’s
uninvested capital would just about buy the extra china and other
equipments needed for the dinner service. Betty was averse to asking
Mrs. Hildreth or Mrs. Bob for more money, and the profits had been
divided in January, so they were not available. But Betty had kept
her emergency fund intact all winter, as her father had advised, and
she had added to it appreciably from her salary, her tutoring money,
and her work for the gift-shop department. It was now well on toward
spring, and the tea-shop had fully proved its money-making capacities.

“So, if you don’t mind, I should like to have the ploshkins made with
the money that father gave me, if it’s enough--and it will be if
Madeline can get them done at about what she and Mary thought would be
a good investment. Then I’ll sell them here, and give the shop a small
commission, as the college girls did when we sold their things before
Christmas.”

This was perfectly satisfactory to everybody, and Madeline departed
gaily to pay visits in Bohemia, see editors, match china, and get
ploshkins manufactured--a potpourri of assorted activities that
thoroughly delighted her variety-loving temperament.




CHAPTER XIV

THE REVOLT OF THE “WHY-GET-UPS”


IT was the dull season between midyears and spring vacation--a time
that makes the ordinary Hardingite restless, and drives the clever ones
to all sorts of absurdities and extravagances. The best stunts are
always invented at this season, and the wildest pranks perpetrated.
This year Prexy guilelessly announced in chapel that “bobbing” and
“hitching” with sleds were not, in his estimation, dignified forms of
recreation for the “womanly woman” who was Harding’s ideal. So with
dust-pan coasting also under the ban, and the ice on the skating-rink
frozen humpy--just to be spiteful, Georgia Ames declared--the dull
season opened ten times duller than usual.

Of course Betty heard all about the “anti-bob” ordinance, and
sympathized duly with its downtrodden victims.

“There are getting to be too many old rules in this place, anyway,”
declared Lucile Merrifield hotly, as they discussed the matter over
their teacups in Flying Hoof’s stall. “We’re supposed to be sensible,
reasonable creatures and to know what’s permissible in this rural
retreat. I shouldn’t go ‘hitching’ in New York. I should probably wear
my hat there when I went out shopping. Prexy doesn’t give his sweet
creation, the womanly woman, credit for ordinary intelligence.”

“He wouldn’t be able to if he heard you talk, my dear,” Polly Eastman
told her soothingly. “Have some more of Betty’s Cousin Kate cookies.
They’re very good for the temper, and not against the rules.”

“Are you sure?” demanded Lucile acidly. “There are so many rules now
that I shouldn’t pretend to keep them all in my head at once.”

“Let’s get Madeline and make her tell tea-ground fortunes,” suggested
Georgia. “I’m tired of all this fuss about rules.”

But Madeline, who was in the loft writing, had overheard enough of
the conversation to enable her to make her fortunes timely, and the
“anti-bob” ordinance was not yet disposed of.

“You’ve got a tempest in your teacup, Lucile,” she announced. “It’s a
frightful brain-storm brought on by the lack of your favorite outdoor
exercise. Isn’t ‘hitching’ your favorite exercise, dearie? Well, do you
see that? That’s a tipped-over sleigh. A brain-storm is better than
an early and ignominious death encountered while ‘hitching,’ Lucile.
But you’re going to do something very silly during the brain-storm.”
Madeline frowned portentously over the grounds in Lucile’s cup. “I
think I see Prexy--yes, the venerable Prexy himself is in here. You’ll
be called up before the powers, Lucile, to answer for your foolishness,
so beware.”

Lucile smiled her subtle, far-away smile--it was first cousin to Mary
Brooks’s “beamish” one. “That will at least be exciting,” she said.
“Fluffy Dutton, what do you say to a race to see which of us can break
the most of their old rules at one go?”

Fluffy shook her curly head vigorously. “I’ve been up before the powers
once, thank you, for too many lights after ten and cutting Greek prose
and being back late after Christmas. I don’t care for it at all. If
he’d glare and storm it wouldn’t be so bad, but when he appeals to
your better judgment----” Fluffy shrugged expressively. “He treats you
like an equal, and looks at you hard and shakes hands so nicely when
he’s finished you up. And then you go off feeling like a marked-down
bargain-lot of last night’s faded violets. No, thank you, Lucile. I’ll
race you anywhere you like except to interviews with Prexy.”

“Good for you, Fluffy.” Georgia patted her on the back approvingly. “I
didn’t think you had so much sense.”

“Lucile has just as much, only she’s trying to deceive us about it,”
put in Betty, who had come over to hear the fortunes.

And then Madeline discovered a tall, light-haired suitor in Polly’s
cup, and being accused of inventing him pointed him out to the
satisfaction of the assembled company. And when Polly vehemently denied
knowing a single light-haired man, she predicted a speedy meeting, a
box of chocolates, an adventure by water, and a summer together by more
water.

“Prom. man, of course,” explained Georgia easily, “invited for you
by Lucile-of-the-vast-masculine-acquaintance, after your own man
has decided to break his arm. Really, girls, there ought to be a
rule against proms., because of the broken bones they produce. Well,
Lucile’s friend will take you out on Paradise, thinking he can paddle,
and upset you. And then he’ll spend the summer at Squirrel Island,
where you always go. That’s easy. Madeline, just tell me if there’s a
suitor in my cup, please. That’s all I care about. Your presents and
trips abroad don’t interest me a bit.”

Betty had quite forgotten this conversation when, a week or so later,
Polly Eastman appeared one morning at the Tally-ho.

“Don’t you want to rent your loft for a little party?” she demanded.
“It’s bigger than the down-town hall, and it will be so nice to sit
down here between times. We want extra-good eats too, so you’ll get
very wealthy out of us.”

“What in the world do you want to give a girl-dance for?” demanded
Betty. “By junior year we were all pretty tired of them, except Helen
Chase Adams, who never had a chance to go to any other kind. This is a
girl-affair, of course?”

Polly was busily examining the depleted gift-shop table. “I always
meant to buy a pair of these candle-shades,” she said, holding up one
of the Tally-ho’s specials. “Will you take the order now? Did you
ask who was giving the affair, Betty? Oh, just our own crowd--the
‘Why-Get-Up-to-Breakfast Club,’ and a few choice spirits who’ve been
invited to join us. Eats for thirty, I think Lucile said; and we want
them very grand and quite regardless of expense. About three courses,
and all nice and spicy, the way campus food never is.”

“I think it’s such a funny idea,” pursued Betty. “Your house party
comes before long, doesn’t it? Why in the world don’t you wait for
that?”

“Nothing but lemonade for refreshments and a crowd of stupidities that
you can’t get away from,” explained Polly succinctly. “Will it be all
right about the loft, Betty? I’m due at chemistry lab., and I promised
the others that I’d have this business all arranged by lunch-time.”

“Why, ye-es,” began Betty doubtfully. “You can have it, I think.
The gift-shop workroom may as well be closed until next fall, and
Madeline’s papers are used to being moved around. I suppose a little
dance like this is just like a party in a campus room. You don’t have
to get permission from anyone, do you?”

“Easily not,” Polly assured her calmly. “It’s exactly the same thing as
a dinner down here, or a spread. You’ve had spreads down here, haven’t
you?”

Betty nodded.

“Then I’ll tell them it’s all right.” Polly tucked her armful of books
more securely under her arm and started off. “Did I say that it was
next Saturday evening? We want the eats at half-past nine, before
everything but the last dance.”

Betty began planning the menu and estimating expenses at once,
reflecting as she did so that there was certainly no accounting for
tastes, and half wishing she had suggested to Polly that a three course
supper wasn’t at all in keeping with the best Harding traditions.
“The Merry Hearts” had not exactly handed down their ideals to the
“Why-Get-Ups,” but the one society had largely taken the other’s place
in the life of the college.

“This kind of thing makes people talk about the fashionable amusements
here and the money it costs to go through Harding College. I wish
I’d----” Betty remembered suddenly that her first duty was to the
tea-shop, and went at her figures in earnest, trying to feel properly
elated over the big order and the new source of revenue suggested by
Polly’s idea of renting the loft.

It was Wednesday of the next week, and oddly enough not one of the
“Why-Get-Ups” had been in for breakfast, lunch, or tea. They were
saving up for their spread-eagle party, Betty thought, until the
high-pitched chatter of two Belden House freshmen explained the
“Why-Get-Ups’” unusual party, and suggested several other possible
reasons why they stayed away from the Tally-ho.

“I’m just broken hearted,” one freshman declared in her shrill treble.
“You see when I asked Marie to our house-party, she promised to come
if she could have a dance with Lucile Merrifield. And now Lucile isn’t
coming. I thought girls always went to their house-parties.”

“Goodness, no, dear,” the other told her importantly. “That is, they
always have before, but you can trust this crowd to be different.
Haven’t you heard anything about the fuss?”

The shrill-voiced freshman shook her head sadly.

“Well, of course it’s a dead secret,” the other went on, “but my
roommate is an intimate friend of Miss Eastman’s. They asked her to
join them, but she decided not to. She told me because she was just
dying to talk it over with somebody. That was away back last week. It’s
leaked out more now, so I’m sure there’s no harm in my telling you. Of
course everybody will know Saturday night when they don’t appear.”

“Do go on,” begged the other.

At this point Betty, who scorned eavesdropping, made an errand to the
kitchen. As early as possible that evening she went up to the Belden.
Polly’s room was dark, but Betty found the “Why-Get-Ups” gathered
in full force in Georgia’s corner single. Their greetings were
constrained, and they plunged at once into a lively discussion of the
last number of the “Argus,” which had come out that afternoon.

But Betty refused to delay. “I’ve come on business,” she announced. “I
want to know if your house dance is this Saturday?”

“Why, yes, I believe it is,” Polly admitted casually, after a nudge
from Lucille, “but we’re not going. I told you we were sick of weak
lemonade and stupid partners. Have you planned our three courses?”

Betty turned upon Georgia. “Why are you all cutting your own house
dance?” she demanded.

Georgia grinned sociably. “Bored,” she explained briefly. “Dying for
excitement. Pining for novelty. Ask Madeline: she understands the
feeling.”

“But she wouldn’t do this kind of thing,” protested Betty. “It’s so
conspicuous. You needn’t have filled out your cards,--Madeline never
would,--but you ought to go. And you certainly ought not to have an
affair of your own that night.”

“Oh, tell her all about it,” put in Fluffy Dutton. “I never thought it
was fair not to. She isn’t a faculty, but she’s a public institution.
She ought to go into this with her eyes open. Besides when she’s heard
the whole story, I’m sure she’ll stand for us. Mrs. Hinsdale couldn’t,
of course. I only hope that prep. school-teacher Alice is going to ask
for chaperon won’t be too curious or too conscientious. Fire away,
Lucile.”

“Well----” Lucile paused. When you came to tell it to an outsider there
wasn’t so much of a case as there had seemed to be when they discussed
it hotly among their injured selves. “Well,” repeated Lucile, “to begin
with, we’d all asked men, except Georgia, and she’d asked a prep. girl.
And then Dickie Garrison--she’s house president--went and made rules
against them. At least there had always been a rule against men, but
everybody smuggled them in just the same and danced with them too, up
in the gallery. But Dickie said to cut it out. We wouldn’t have cared,
only we were sure she knew about our men and had cooked up this plot at
the last minute just to spite us. We aren’t very popular with Dickie.”

“And then they ruled out asking prep. girls,” put in Georgia.

“And finally Dickie came to me,” Fluffy took up the tale of woe, “and
said what would I think of the next house-meeting’s taking up the
matter of lights after ten. That was just insulting--to say to me.”

“So then we decided to--to revolt,” ended the silent, straight-haired
Dutton twin. “There’s no rule against giving an off-campus party, with
men invited. Nobody ever had one before that we know of, because nobody
ever thought of it. So we’ve just kept dark to avoid possible fusses.”

“And if we can only get the chaperon business settled, it’s all right,”
added Lucile. “Isn’t it now, Betty? We’ve asked six Hilton House
juniors to come too, and I’ve invited a lot of extra men.”

“Including a light-haired one for me,” explained Polly gaily,
“according to the prophecy of the seeress Madeline.”

There was a strained little silence.

“Of course,” said Betty bravely at last, “you don’t remember when the
prom. began. It was in my sister Nan’s senior year, and I’ve heard her
tell how it was started on purpose to give the girls one good chance
to have their men friends up all at once and avoid just this kind of
thing. It was against the rules then to----”

“It’s not now,” declared Lucile hotly.

“Then why didn’t you ask one of the faculty to chaperon you?” Betty
asked in a queer, frightened voice, for she hated to interfere or to
seem priggish.

“Why indeed?” Georgia echoed. “Just what Mary Brooks Hinsdale asked us.
She said she guessed it was all right, but a faculty’s wife couldn’t do
anything reckless.”

“If you don’t want us, Betty, we can take the down-town hall,” Lucile
explained coldly. “Only we depend on your sense of honor not to give us
away.”

“Don’t be cross, Lucile,” commented the straight-haired twin. “Betty’s
not that sort.”

Betty smiled a thank you, and rose to go. “I don’t know what to say
to-night about the loft,” she said, “but I’ll let you know the first
thing in the morning.”

Directly after chapel next day the straight-haired twin appeared,
frankly apologetic. “The prep, teacher turned us down too,” she said,
“and Georgia plucked up courage to ask the new math. assistant, and she
turned us down. We don’t know any town women. We wish--Fluffy and I do
anyway--that we had told our men about the new rule and asked girls
instead. This sort of thing is too much like work.”

Betty considered an instant. She had intended to consult Madeline, but
Madeline had overslept that morning. “Tell the girls that if they’ll
put it off till next Saturday they may have it here, and that I’ll find
a chaperon myself.”

“You angel!” cried the twin. “Lucile won’t like it because it won’t
spite Dickie, so particularly, if you don’t have it the night of the
Belden House affair, but the rest will jump at your magnificent offer.
Betty, will you come to the regular house dance with me?”

As soon as she had received official notice that her proposal was
accepted Betty went straight to Miss Ferris and explained the whole
thing, as she understood it, from Georgia’s candid statement of motives
to the Dutton twins’ admission of regret.

“But Lucile and Polly are so proud,” she added. “If they had to give it
all up now they’d only go ahead and think up something sillier to do.
So I thought if you’d chaperon it, and they promised not to boast of
it---- They’re all going to the house dance now, except maybe Lucile,
and most of the few girls who know about their first plan will think
it’s given up. So it will create a lot less talk and excitement than
if I’d made them find another place, and they’d telegraphed for one
of their mothers and had their party this week Saturday, in spite of
everything, as they first planned.”

Miss Ferris smiled at her. “That sounds like good logic. I’ll come; but
suppose we don’t tell them who the chaperon is to be until they come to
their dance.”

To arrive at what one has supposed to be a secret and forbidden
entertainment and to find the head of the philosophy department waiting
smilingly to receive you and your friends--well, it makes you feel at
once foolish and relieved. The “Why-Get-Up” party was an undoubted
success, but Georgia Ames told Miss Ferris that they were all ashamed
of it.

“Because when you mean to be mean, why, it’s not your fault if Betty
switches you off the track. Of course we all knew that we weren’t up
here to be giving man-dances. We’ll stand by you, Miss Ferris, any way
we can.”

The “Why-Get-Up-to-Breakfast Club” stood by Georgia’s promise. It paid
to humor their little whim, if only because Fluffy Dutton’s light was
out at ten for the rest of the year, and Lucile Merrifield’s chapel
attendance was perfect. As for the Tally-ho Tea-Shop, it had never
seemed like the other places of its kind in town, but now more than
ever its unofficial connection with the college was noted and commented
upon.

“Isn’t there anything that girl can teach?” the president asked, when
he heard about the “Why-Get-Up” party. “We’ll have to find something to
keep her here indefinitely. She knows how to make things run.”

But all Betty cared about was that the “Why-Get-Ups” were one and all
on the same friendly and easy-going footing with her as ever.




CHAPTER XV

A SEA OF TROUBLES


MR. THAYER’S month having been much shortened by his tremendous energy,
the factory classes were successfully started, and Babbie, with her
tantalizing fashion of appearing haughtily distant one minute and
amazingly friendly the next, was off for the gay Southern resorts that
she professed to hate. At some one of them, Mr. Thayer was morally
certain, his fascinating cousin Austin would make it a point to find
her. White flannels, he reflected glumly, were notably becoming to
Austin’s style.

Eugenia’s three weeks were nearly gone too, and the lost theme had
not come to light. Betty had questioned every one who could possibly
have seen it or taken it from her desk, and she had hunted through the
tea-shop from the remotest corner of the loft to the shed where the
kerosene can was kept. Poor Eugenia had turned her room topsyturvy on
three separate occasions, on the principle of “three times and out,”
and she had begged all her friends to do likewise with theirs, if they
loved her one little bit. She had passed her midyears, and was doing
her best with all her courses, though she sadly declared it was no use
at all, since Miss Raymond had never believed she wrote her theme and
would certainly not give her another chance.

“I don’t know that I blame her,” sighed Eugenia, “only I think she
might know that if I was going to make up a lie I’d have made up
a better one than that. If I have to take that course over in the
‘flunked-out’ class that she’s organizing to begin next week, I shall
d-die. Just think of writing a lot of extra themes on top of everything
else--in spring term too, that you all say is so lovely, when nobody
expects so terribly much of you. She’ll expect more of you, Miss
Wales!” ended Eugenia vindictively.

Betty did not dare to hold out any encouragement, but she secretly
suspected that Miss Raymond was keeping Eugenia on tenterhooks, as
good discipline, until the last minute, and then meant to let her off
easily. Betty couldn’t bear to consider the other alternative; she
should always have to feel partly responsible for Eugenia’s misery.
The fact that Eugenia assured her sweetly that she wasn’t at all
responsible and kept on doing nice things for Dorothy only made it all
the harder.

And then came Emily Davis, a little pale and worn with work done under
difficulties and with worry over the future, but as gay as ever at
heart. She slipped in upon Betty unannounced one snowy afternoon.

“Indade an’ you’re a sight for sore eyes,” she cried, rushing at her
with a kiss and a hug. “And it’s destroyed I am for a talk wid ye an’ a
sup o’ your lovely tay.”

Emily’s Irish had been a prime favorite with 19--, and Betty laughed
with delight at hearing it again. “Poor lady, did you have a horrid
trip up?” she asked, as she rang her little bell for Nora.

“Distressin’, me darlint, distressin’,” Emily went on solemnly. “What
wid cryin’ childern an’ worritin’ wimin, wakin’ the place wid their
noise, I could nayther----”

“Sh!” warned Betty. “Here comes Nora.”

But she was just too late. Nora had overheard the mimicry of her
race’s speech. Her Irish feelings were hurt, and her Irish temper
kindled. When Betty introduced Emily and explained that she had come to
share the responsibilities of the tea-room, Nora tossed her head and
said, “Yes’m, and is that all you wanted?” with an air of an offended
duchess.

She served the tea with great care, but in a haughty silence that
worried Betty and amused Emily.

“Shall I tell her that I’m sorry?” she asked Betty. “Or would that only
make matters worse?”

Betty was afraid it would, and promised to explain herself, if Nora
gave her an opening, which Nora did with a vengeance the minute Emily
had gone off to hunt for a boarding-place and see her old friends.

“I’ll be going, when my week is up,” she announced briskly.

Betty stared. “Oh, Nora, you wouldn’t leave me--just when I need you
most, too, to make the dinners go off splendidly, as I know you can.
What’s the trouble?”

“I don’t think I’ll like taking orders from the new lady--I forget her
name.”

“Why do you think that, Nora?” Betty threw out as a feeler.

“She’s not my idea of a lady, Miss Betty, if you’ll excuse me saying
it out. I’m sorry to go an’ leave you in the lurch, Miss, but I should
always be feeling bothered whenever she was by, and when you’re
bothered you can’t do your work right. So this is a week’s notice,
ma’am.”

In vain Betty explained that Emily had meant no harm by her imitation.
In vain she argued, pleaded, coaxed, and scolded; Nora was firm. She
had given her week’s notice, and in a week she would go.

Emily was “destroyed” in earnest when she heard the news; the feeling
that she had repaid Betty’s kindness with careless trouble-making--or
perhaps it was more the reaction from the strain of wondering what
was ahead of her--combined with a bad cold to send her to bed for
a few days. With all her helpers gone, Betty found it very hard
to find time to hunt for a new waitress. In spite of alluring
advertisements and diligent search by herself and her ever-faithful
allies, Mary and Georgia, no substitute for Nora was forthcoming.
But Belden-House-Annie, who had no sympathy whatever with her sister
Nora’s “flighty ways,” had sent word by Lucile, who told Georgia, who
told Betty, that she had heard of somebody who might do, and that the
somebody aforesaid would come to see Betty that same afternoon.

So Betty sat waiting for her, watching the hands of the clock that went
round much too fast, considering that the waitress did not come, until
the door opened, and her hopes took a sudden bound and then dropped
dead. It wasn’t a waitress. It was a gentleman. He looked like the kind
who would think the tea was cold and the cakes stale, and he would very
likely be right too. Nora had grown very careless since she had decided
to leave. Betty fervently wished that he had not come, but she went
forward, with her cordial little smile, to meet him, where he stood
staring uncertainly around the room.

“Did you want some tea?” she asked timidly. “Because if you’ll sit
down----”

The gentleman looked her over closely. “Tea? Why, yes, I suppose I want
tea. It’s the thing to want at this hour, isn’t it? You do a pretty
big business here, don’t you?” He glanced toward the stalls, where
groups of girls were gathered.

“Yes, a good many people come,” Betty told him pleasantly. “Would you
like a little table in the window or one near the fire?”

He chose one near the fire, overlooking the whole room. He ordered
nothing but a cup of tea, which he sipped and sipped, while he stared
at the girls who came in and at those who went out, at the china, the
decorations, the names over the stalls. These last appeared to interest
him particularly, and he craned his neck until Betty feared it would
break, to decipher the one at the furthest end of the line.

Finally he got up and strolled over to her desk.

“Nice little place you’ve got here,” he said, staring hard at her, with
his sharp ferret-eyes. “Very pretty decorations and all that.”

“Thank you,” said Betty politely. “I’m glad you like it. We’ve tried to
make it look attractive.”

“You--er--the owner or manager or something of that kind?”

Betty explained her position briefly, wondering why she hated so to
talk to him.

“And do people drink enough afternoon tea to pay your partners good
profits on their investment?” he demanded.

Betty hesitated. Certainly a stranger had no right to pry into the
Tally-ho’s private affairs in this cool fashion, and yet, since they
were doing well, what harm could there be in saying so? “We serve
lunches as well as tea, you know,” she explained tentatively, “and next
week we shall begin to serve dinners.”

Just then Lucile Eastman and a crowd of her friends, who had been
occupying the stall named after Black Beauty, bore down upon Betty’s
desk, laughing and chattering over their bill, which was to have been
divided because the party was a “Dutch treat,” but which Nora had put
all together by mistake, and summarily refused to change.

“Now jam is twenty cents,” Lucile was explaining, “and toast with
cheese is fifteen, and not a single one of us had the right change.
Please help us to get it right, Betty dear. Now you go first, Polly.
You had sandwiches, and they’re twenty cents.”

Betty got them all straightened out at last, and by that time the
party in Flying Hoof’s stall had finished too. But the gentleman, who
had been fairly swept aside by the crowd of hurrying girls, waited
patiently enough until they had gone, and then returned to Betty and
the interrupted conversation.

“Well,” he began briskly, “I suppose you wouldn’t be branching out if
you weren’t pretty prosperous.”

In spite of her annoyance, Betty smiled at his persistence. “I suppose
not,” she admitted. “We have a gift department too.” She pointed to
the table. “It’s pretty nearly stagnated ever since Christmas, but a
new specialty for it, that we hope everybody will buy, will be here
very soon. We’re taking orders now, from this sample.” She held out the
ploshkin for him to see.

The gentleman shook his head scornfully. “None of that tomfoolery for
me, thank you. But there’s money in it--I know that. Here’s ten cents
for my tea. And here’s my card.”

Betty stared blankly from the bit of paste-board he had handed her to
the gentleman whose name it bore. He was smiling a queer, disagreeable
smile, as if, for some reason that she could not guess, he found her
very amusing. When he had made sure that his name meant nothing to her,
his smile widened.

“Don’t know who I am, eh? Got to feel pretty much at home in this barn,
haven’t you? Feel a good deal as if you owned it, don’t you?”

Betty failed to see the connection between his first question and the
other; but then, all his questions had been queer. “No,” she replied
steadily, “I don’t know who you are, sir. I’m sorry, since you think I
ought to. I’m very stupid about names. We don’t own this barn; we rent
it. And--and I think I must ask you not to question me any more about
our business. I am employed by the others. I can’t see how anything
I have told you could do us any harm, but I don’t think it’s at all
businesslike for me to discuss my employers’ affairs with you.”

“Maybe you’ll think differently when I tell you that I’m the owner of
this property,” snapped the man defiantly. Betty gasped. “Thought I was
in Italy, didn’t you?” He grinned at her cheerfully.

Betty nodded. “In Europe somewhere.”

“Thought my agent was an easy mark, didn’t you?”

“He has always treated us very fairly and politely”--Betty rushed
indignantly to the agent’s defense--“and I don’t see how----”

“‘Fairly and politely.’” The man, whose card read Mr. James Harrison,
repeated the words jeeringly. “Well, my agent’s got to do more than
treat young ladies ‘fairly and politely,’ I can tell you, to suit me.
Do you know what the repairs on this place cost me?”

Betty had no idea.

Mr. Harrison named a sum. “I suppose you do know what rent you pay?”

“Of course,” said Betty with great dignity. “We’ve never been late with
it so far.”

“You pay by the month. You’ve no contract--no lease. Isn’t that so?”

“Why--y-yes,” Betty admitted doubtfully. “I supposed that as long as we
paid our rent and didn’t injure your property, we could stay.”

“Certainly you can stay,” he told her affably, “only I’m going to raise
the rent. The rent you pay is ridiculous. From the beginning of next
month just multiply it by three, please.”

“But--but we can’t afford to pay as much as that,” Betty told him.
“That’s why we didn’t start in New York--because rents were so high.
The first thing we asked your agent, before we even came to look at
this place, was the amount of the rent.”

Mr. Harrison looked at her coldly. “Well, he was an idiot, that’s all.
I’m not in the real estate business for my health. This barn never paid
decent returns. Now that we’ve found a use for it, there’s no reason
why it shouldn’t. Think it over. Make up your mind to cut down expenses
and profits; and if you should decide to quit, why, I’ll buy out your
fixtures. I’ll warrant I can rent at my own price within a month.”

Betty had been thinking desperately. “I don’t know very much about
business, Mr. Harrison,” she said at last, “but it seems to me that if
we pay rent by the month we ought to have a full month’s notice that
you have decided to raise the price. A maid who is paid by the week
always gives at least a week’s notice, and if we wanted to leave we
should certainly have told your agent at least a month beforehand.”

“Very well,” he said briskly. “This is the twenty-third. Next month
goes at the old rate; after that multiply it by three or quit.
Good-afternoon.”

“Good-afternoon,” Betty told him, with a sigh of relief that he had
gone, even though he left such a dreadful ultimatum behind him. But he
hadn’t gone. He stuck his head in the door to say that he would “call
around again” in a few days for her decision.

Left alone at last Betty looked at her watch. Six
o’clock--Belden-House-Annie’s waitress wouldn’t come now. Perhaps it
was just as well. Perhaps Nora would stay for the month--the last month
of the Tally-ho. They couldn’t pay three times their present rent. No
matter how successful the dinners were, that was out of the question.
The profits, outside of the gift department, had been comparatively
small, and the busiest part of the year was now over. If Mr. Harrison
persisted in his determination to raise the rent, they would have to
stop, or move--and there was no place to move to.

Betty looked around the pretty room, with all its attractive
“features,” and suddenly realized what the closing of the tea-shop
would mean. Madeline and Babbie would be disappointed; Mrs. Hildreth
and Mrs. Enderby would lose a part, at least, of their investment. But
she--and little Dorothy--and Emily Davis--Betty reached out for a sheet
of note-paper to write to Madeline the resourceful, and then dropped
her head down on the big desk and cried as if her heart would break.

Why hadn’t she thought of all this before Mr. Harrison left? She had,
in a confused fashion; but instead of helping her to argue with him her
despair had made her dumb. If only he would let them stay until June!
Then Emily would be provided for through the summer, and father and
mother would be back from Mexico. Dorothy could go home and Betty too,
with a nice little sum left over to show for her winter’s work. But if
the Tally-ho stopped now, where could she sell the ploshkins? And with
the emergency fund gone, and no salary after next month----

Betty could hear father saying with his twinkling, amused smile, “You
oughtn’t to have counted your chickens before they were hatched, little
girl. It’s a bad habit.”

But who would have thought that everything could go to pieces now,
after such a splendid beginning?

Betty wiped her eyes and composed a telegram to Madeline: “If possible
countermand order for ploshkins. Rent raised. Will write.”

Then she reflected that a letter would reach Madeline by the first mail
in the morning, and as she couldn’t countermand an order for ploshkins
before that time, a letter would do as well as a telegram. But before
she wrote it she must go and have dinner with Dorothy.

She found Eugenia and Dorothy on the floor playing paper-dolls, quite
oblivious of the fact that it was past dinner-time.

“I feel like a murderer the night before he’s electrocuted,” Eugenia
explained cheerfully. “To-night I am enjoying myself, for to-morrow
I’ve got to go and tell Miss Raymond that my lost theme is still lost.
And she’ll point with her awful finger to the ‘flunked-out’ class, and
I shall accept my doom.”

Dorothy tumbled over into Eugenia’s lap and hugged her sympathetically.
“Maybe you’ll find it to-night,” she said.

“You’re sure as sure you haven’t hidden it?” Eugenia demanded solemnly.

“Of course.”

“Then I think it’s in the bay of the ploshkin,” Eugenia declared
impressively, “and that’s too far off to go to to-night, so I may as
well be off to dinner. By the way, Betty, I want a dozen ploshkins out
of the very first that come.”

Instead of the pleased smile that Eugenia had expected, Betty’s face
wore a positively tragic expression. “I’m not sure that we shall have
any to sell, Eugenia. There’s some trouble. I can’t explain to-night.
I----”

Eugenia’s little face hardened as she listened to Betty’s astonishing
announcement. She had not lost her ambition to take a place in
Harding’s charmed circle, and she had counted on the ploshkin and her
connection with it to help her in becoming that envied and enviable
creature, a “prominent girl.”

“Madeline Ayres and Fluffy Dutton made it, but it was Eugenia Ford’s
idea”--that was what she had looked forward to people’s saying. And
Polly Eastman was writing a song called “The Bay where the Ploshkin
Bides” for Tibbie Ware, soprano soloist of the Glee Club, to sing
for her encore number at the spring concert. There wouldn’t be point
enough to the song if there was only one ploshkin. Being naturally
silly and suspicious, Eugenia now scented a deep-laid plot against her
happiness. Without stopping to reason out the absurdity of her idea,
she disentangled herself from Dorothy’s caressing arms.

“You don’t need to explain that,” she said. “The only thing I really
want explained is where the theme I left on your desk went to.
Good-night.”

So that was what Eugenia really thought! Betty sat very still wondering
what would come next.

“I’m homesick for my dear mother, Betty.” Little Dorothy, awed by
Eugenia’s coldness and her beloved sister’s forbidding silence, was
very near to tears.

Betty held out her arms. “So am I,” she said, and in a minute more the
two sisters, clasped tight in each other’s arms, were crying out all
their troubles. Betty came to her senses first.

“We mustn’t be such sillies,” she told Dorothy, with a watery attempt
at a smile. “Mother wouldn’t ever get homesick for two such big
cry-babies as we are. Now come and let me bathe your face, and then
we’ll go right down to dinner. No, it’s too late. We’ll go over to the
tea-shop and cook a nice little supper for ourselves. That will be lots
of fun, won’t it?”

“Ye-es,” agreed Dorothy faintly. “Can we have strawberry jam?”

“All you want,” Betty promised, wishing that she too was at the age
when strawberry jam could make her forget her woes.




CHAPTER XVI

THE MYSTERY SOLVED


BETTY found it very hard to keep her mind on the preparations for
supper. Dorothy’s happy little babble of questions and frantic efforts
to “help” with everything, drove her to the verge of distraction.
Betty wanted some crackers and coffee and a chance to write to
Madeline--Babbie had not yet sent any address, and was, besides, too
far away to help much in the present crisis. But Dorothy insisted
upon creamed chicken on toast and hot chocolate, and wished to treat
strawberry jam as an entrée and have “regular dessert” besides. Betty
acquiesced in all her demands not so much from good-nature as because
she was sure that another flood of tears would come the minute she
said no. But she couldn’t make ice-cream, which was Dorothy’s idea of
“regular dessert,” and not a bit had been left over from the day’s
sales.

“Just remember how you love ‘whips,’” she coaxed, and made one out of
her share of the cream for the chocolate.

Dorothy watched the proceedings suspiciously.

“Well, but a ‘whip’ always has jelly in the bottom,” she objected.

Betty suggested using strawberry jam.

“Not that kind--real jelly. I shall be sick of strawberry jam if I have
it so much.”

Betty sighed despairingly, and then smiled. “All right, we’ll turn
it into charlotte russe,” she said, “with this big slice of cake
underneath.”

Dorothy wanted to know which was Charlotte--the cake or the cream--and
Betty craftily encouraged the discussion, so that little Dorothy would
enjoy her dessert and not notice that she was taking all the cream away
from Betty, which would have distressed her dreadfully.

“And now we’ll pile the dishes up, and Bridget will do them in the
morning,” Betty suggested, when they had finished.

“Oh, let’s do them ourselves and s’prise Bridget,” objected Dorothy,
who was beginning to surmise that Betty was in a hurry to be rid of
her. No matter how sleepy she was, Dorothy never wanted to go to bed,
and to-night she was wide awake.

“Couldn’t you do them and surprise me?” Betty asked. “I have a long,
long letter to write to Madeline, and I want to get started, because
I’m very tired and I thought I’d like to go to bed when you do.”

“All right,” agreed Dorothy, and Betty lighted her desk-lamp and two
candles, because candle-light is so soothing and luxurious, found a
fresh sheet of paper to take the place of the one that was still damp
with tears, and had gone as far as, “Dear Madeline, I have some very
bad news for you,” when Dorothy fluttered back.

“I thought it all over,” she announced, “and I thought it would be more
of a s’prise for Bridget if I didn’t do the dishes. She can’t imagine
what it is when she sees them all piled up in her clean sink. But if I
did them, it wouldn’t s’prise you a bit, ’cause you knew I was doing
them.”

“All right. Now we’re all surprised,” said Betty absently. “So you see
if you can’t think of something nice to do while I write my letter.”

“Haven’t you written it yet?” Dorothy demanded, with an elaborate show
of amazement. “Well, now I’m the most s’prised one of all! I thought I
stayed out there ages-an’-ages.”

Betty smiled and went on writing, while Dorothy stood staring
disconsolately at her.

“It’s been ages-an’-ages now,” she declared at the end of three minutes
by the clock.

“Oh, Dorothy, do be quiet!” began Betty impatiently. And then, as the
smallest sister’s lips quivered ominously, “Remember, dearie, you’re my
company, and a company always helps along. This letter I’m writing is
on business about the tea-room, and you can help me just lots by being
nice and quiet until I get it all written.”

Dorothy eyed her sister mournfully. “I thought that when you had
company come to see you, you played what they wanted to, and waited
till they’d gone home to do what you wanted to your own self. That’s
what m-mother always said.” Dorothy gulped miserably over the “mother.”

“Yes, that’s one kind of company,” Betty explained patiently, “and you
are that kind of company too. But you said you wanted to be the other
kind--the kind brother Will told you about, that people have to keep
them in business. And I told you you might be, so we’re Betty Wales &
Co., aren’t we?”

Dorothy nodded solemnly. “That’s why I help Nora clean the silver and
put the menu cards around on all the tables ’most every day.”

“Of course it is,” Betty took her up eagerly. “You help a lot--I
couldn’t get along at all without my dear little company. But you’ll
help the most you ever have if you’ll be just as quiet as a little gray
mouse until I’ve finished my letter.”

Dorothy considered. “I might draw pictures,” she suggested tentatively
at last.

“Of course you might.” Betty handed her a pencil and paper.

“But I haven’t any good place to sit,” Dorothy demurred. “I ought to
have a desk just as much as you.”

“Dorothy Wales,”--Betty’s voice was very solemn,--“if I let you sit
down here, will you promise, ‘cross your heart,’ not to speak another
word until I’ve finished my letter?”

Dorothy nodded her head so vigorously that her hair ribbon came off
and had to be tied on again. Then she established herself at the desk,
and Betty lighted more candles and moved her writing materials into
the stall of Jack of Hearts. The big room was still, save for the
scratching of Betty’s pen and an occasional loud “ahem” from Dorothy
whose throat was always affected queerly in church or anywhere else
where she was denied the joys of fluent conversation.

As Betty wrote, the hopelessness of the situation grew clearer and
clearer. It seemed a waste of words to explain it all, when there was
absolutely nothing to be done.

“What do girls know about business, anyway?” Will had said that with
his most scornful air, when Betty had first proposed the tea-room
project. Well, he was right. A man would have thought about a contract.
A man would have managed somehow to make out a case in behalf of the
Tally-ho. But how? Betty went over the conversation, trying to think
what she could have said, how she could have answered Mr. Harrison’s
questions so as to defeat his plans. But she had no inspiration. He was
the owner of the barn. If he wanted higher rent, he had a right to it.
To be sure, people sometimes wanted what they couldn’t get. But he had
said--

“I ought to have taken him up about that,” Betty reflected sadly. “I
ought to have asked him if he was perfectly sure that any other people
would pay such a lot more than we have. Madeline would have got him all
confused about it, and perhaps he’d have let us stay.”

She went mournfully over the scene again bit by bit.

“I wonder what he wants our decorations for,” she reflected. “They’re
only good for a tea-room. Then he must mean to use this for a tea-room.
But if he rents it all decorated, of course it’s worth more. Why didn’t
I think to say that? Why didn’t I make him think we would certainly go
right on somewhere else? He can’t steal our name and our ideas. It’s
not fair. Madeline must come and talk to him.”

And she returned with new energy to her letter, trying to make the
case seem as urgent as possible, and Madeline’s presence absolutely
necessary. Madeline was having a beautiful time in Bohemia; Dick
Blake had told her that her stories were improving, and one of them
had actually been accepted by an obscure magazine that “paid on
publication.” Madeline had celebrated this landmark in her Literary
Career by giving a dinner at Mr. Bob’s latest find in the way of
Italian cafés, and she had discovered, over the coffee, that four of
her six guests had been honored by the same magazine, and that all were
still waiting patiently for the years to bring around the mystic time
of publication.

“Who cares? It was a delicious dinner, and just as much fun as if I had
really arrived,” Madeline had written Betty. “And now the other four
are all going to be game and celebrate too.”

Betty realized how much persuasion it would take to detach Madeline
from four impending celebrations, and begged her with all the eloquence
she could command to come to the rescue of the Tally-ho. She was just
folding her letter when a queer little squeal from Dorothy made her
jump.

“I’m through now, Company,” she called, “so you can chatter away as
fast as you like. What’s the matter?”

“I opened the secret drawer all by myself,” cried Dorothy in an excited
treble. “Nobody showed me. I just heard you and Madeline and Miss
Mary--I mean Mrs. Mary--talking about how to do it. And I remembered,
and after I got tired of drawing pictures for magazines I did it.
Look!” and she danced over to Jack of Hearts’ stall with the secret
drawer in her hand.

“Why, Dorothy Wales!” began Betty in astonishment. “I don’t believe I
could have opened that myself. Why, there’s something in it. What! Oh,
Dorothy, you darling, you’ve helped now, I can tell you! Why, Dorothy
Wales, do you know what you’ve done? You’ve found Eugenia’s theme.”

“If you’d asked me I’d have found it before,” announced Dorothy with
dignity.

“What do you mean, little sister? Did you hide away Eugenia’s theme in
that drawer?”

“Of course not. But I’d have looked everywhere and when I came to this
place, why there I’d have seen it.”

“But Madeline and I looked there,” explained Betty in perplexity, “and
the drawer was empty then. So if you haven’t put it in there since,
some one else has.”

“Here’s another paper,” said little Dorothy, handing Betty a card.
“What does it say? I can’t read that queer kind of printing.”

“Well, if that isn’t the strangest thing!” Betty quite forgot to tell
Dorothy that the card said, “Mrs. George Garrison Hinsdale, Thursdays.”
“Mary put that in there herself the day she opened the drawer--I
remember she said we might lose the combination and then, years after,
her card would be found there, and people would wonder what the things
she wrote on the back could mean. See: ‘Perfect Patron, Promoter of
Ploshkins, Candle-shades, and Cousin Kate’s Cookies.’ And that card
most certainly wasn’t there either, when Madeline and I had the drawer
open hunting for Eugenia’s theme.”

“You didn’t look very hard, I guess,” said little Dorothy wisely. But
Betty was over at the desk, putting back the secret drawer with Mary’s
card still in it. Then she went through the combination, and when the
drawer came out it was empty again.

“Goodness, but this is funny!” she said, shutting it in hurriedly.
“But I think I see how it happens. Now, Dorothy, you open the drawer,
please.”

And when Dorothy opened it, there was the card. She had used the second
combination that Madeline had hit upon, and Betty had used the first.
There were two secret drawers, only one of which could be opened at a
time. They were side by side, and it took close inspection to notice
the slight difference in their positions. When Madeline had shown Mary
how to find the drawer she had used the second combination, and it
was that drawer that had stayed open all day and into which Eugenia’s
ill-fated theme had slipped. But when Madeline had looked for the
theme, she had happened to use the other combination, and consequently
had opened the wrong drawer.

Betty hastily added a postscript to her letter: “Eugenia’s theme is
found. There are two secret drawers in the desk, and it was in the
other.”

Then she took Dorothy home, for it was long past her bedtime, and
mailed her letter, which must reach Madeline without fail the first
thing in the morning, so as to give her the earliest possible chance
to countermand the ploshkin order and get ready to start for Harding.
She reached the campus on her other errand just in time to hear the
college clock toll out the last strokes of ten and to see the shadow
of the Belden House matron and her candle stalk majestically down the
length of the lower hall. That meant locked doors everywhere, so Betty
went home and to bed. She dreamed that Eugenia Ford was throwing the
Tally-ho dishes at Miss Raymond, who was standing on a table pelting
Eugenia with handfuls of oats pulled from the big horseshoe over the
fireplace. And through the door to the kitchen wound a procession of
little ploshkins, who hopped along exactly as Billy and Willy Stocking
had at the Christmas party.

She woke up later than usual the next morning with a queer feeling that
something unpleasant had happened. In a minute she remembered, and
resolved not to waste time in worry, but to get Eugenia’s theme to
her as soon as possible and then devote herself to persuading Nora to
postpone her departure a little.

Eugenia received her with studied coldness. She was “very much
relieved” to have her theme back. Perhaps Betty would explain to Miss
Raymond.

Betty was quite willing to do that. She didn’t blame Eugenia for being
vexed about the theme and disappointed about the ploshkins. She would
have been, in Eugenia’s place, no doubt; but when she asked Eugenia if
she should be down in the afternoon to see Dorothy, and Eugenia replied
coldly that she was very busy, and never even sent a message of thanks
to the little girl for finding the missing theme--then Betty was vexed
in her turn. Dorothy wasn’t to blame for any of Eugenia’s troubles. It
would be just as sensible for Miss Raymond to be disagreeable to her
because her desk had two secret drawers.

But Miss Raymond was very friendly and very much interested in the
two drawers, which she promised to come and see for herself soon. And
Nora, won by the suspicion of tears in Betty’s eyes and by the honor
of being entrusted with Betty’s unhappy secret, promised to stay a few
days longer, until Madeline had come up and they knew how matters stood.

Madeline arrived that very afternoon.

“Show me the drawers,” she demanded before she was well inside the
Tally-ho, and to Betty’s dismay she utterly refused to talk business,
while she sat for an hour opening one drawer after another, and hunting
through the recesses of the desk for more sliding panels or hidden
springs.

“For if there are two drawers, there may just as well be three or even
four,” she said. “And who knows what may be in them or how long they’ve
been lost and forgotten? Don’t look so disgusted, Betty. I ordered the
ploshkins the first day I was in New York, and this morning it was too
late to change. To-morrow I’ll hunt up your dreadful Mr. Harrison and
try my blarney on him, though after the way you managed Dick Blake
for Eleanor when we were sophomores, I don’t see how you expect me to
succeed where you’ve failed.”

“This was so unexpected,” Betty explained. “He frightened all my
ideas away, because he came at me so suddenly. I’m never any good at
impromptus.”

Madeline sighed. “And that’s all I am good for. Now I may struggle over
this drawer business for hours and find nothing, and then some day,
when I’m not trying, I shall just put my hand out and snap the right
spring. It’s horribly provoking--gives you such a lazy, purposeless
feeling at times.”

Evidently Madeline didn’t care much about the disaster that threatened
the Tally-ho. She could sit and play with an old-fashioned desk, not
asking a question about all the matters that Betty had not taken time
to write of fully, nor making a single plan for the campaign against
Mr. Harrison. Well, if she believed so thoroughly in her impromptu
inspirations, why should she bother with making plans? If she only
would act as if she cared a little--as if she realized what the failure
of the tea-room meant to Betty. But she only played with the drawers,
and gave absurd accounts of the Literary Celebrations. The next one
was to be a roller-skating party, and not one of the crowd had ever
been on roller-skates before.

“But the first one whose story is printed is going to reimburse the
rest of us for the doctors and the liniments we expect to need,”
Madeline explained, “and Bob Enderby has solemnly promised to ask the
editor of ‘The Leisure Hour’ to come and meet his near-contributors.
It’s to-morrow night. Now say I’m not businesslike if you dare, to come
straight up here and miss it all.” Then she laughed. “I may as well
’fess up that it was only the postscript about the secret drawer that
brought me. But that doesn’t matter, does it? Because now that I’m
here, I shall do my full duty by Mr. Harrison.”

But the next morning Madeline came back in dismay from her visit to Mr.
Harrison’s Harding office.

“He’s away,” she lamented. “The agent was there, and I talked to him;
but he can’t do anything. He’s in deep disgrace now for letting us have
so many repairs. And Mr. Harrison won’t be back for at least a week; so
you’ll have to tackle him yourself after all.”

“Oh, Madeline, can’t you stay over?”

Madeline shook her head decisively. “Absolutely impossible. I’ve just
hired a studio apartment consisting of two closets, miscalled rooms,
and I’ve begun a novel. It was spinning along like mad when you stopped
it. I should have to go to-morrow anyway, so why not go now, in time
for the roller-skating party? I did want to stay long enough to find
the other secret drawers, though.” Madeline frowned absently at the old
desk.

“Perhaps there aren’t any others,” Betty reminded her practically.

“Oh, but I’m sure there are. I have a leading.” Madeline stretched
out her hand, and, just as she had predicted, it hit the spring. A
fan-shaped panel slipped to one side, the wall at the back of the
opening dropped, and a tiny drawer, deep and very narrow, appeared, the
small key still in the lock.

“There!” said Madeline triumphantly, opening it. “Oh, it’s stuffed
full! Betty Wales, these are love-letters, I just know it! Tied with
pink ribbons and scented with lavender. Did you ever imagine anything
so nice? It’s surely all right to read them, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps we ought to take them to the woman you bought the desk of,”
Betty suggested.

“But her husband had just taken it for a bad debt, and I remember she
said all the family it really belonged to had died or moved away.”

“Then I guess it’s all right, so long as they’re so very old.”

They were love-letters, the sweetest, merriest letters to a girl named
Patricia from a man who signed himself “R.” One or two of Patricia’s
notes to “R.” were tucked in with the letters, but as they all began
“Mine,” they threw no light on the significance of the “R.” Betty liked
that; it added to the sense of remoteness, to the story-book atmosphere
of “long-ago and far-away” that belonged to the yellowed sheets, the
faded ribbons, and the quaint, old-fashioned expressions. Most of the
letters had never been mailed. Madeline almost wept with joy when
she discovered that they had been put in a hollow tree in Patricia’s
apple orchard. They were arranged by dates and once there was a gap
of six months. That was because the squire of the village had asked
Patricia’s father for his daughter’s hand in marriage, and Patricia’s
father had said yes. Patricia was an obedient child, so there were
no more letters in the tree, in spite of “R.’s” pleadings, until one
day when Patricia could show good reason for sending the squire about
his business. And then there was a duel. Was it between “R.” and the
squire, or “R.” and some other disappointed suitor? They were still
discussing the evidence when Madeline remembered her train.

“Let me take these along,” she begged. “I’ll send them back in a day or
so, but I simply must know how it all ended.” She turned to the desk.
“There ought to be a drawer on the other side to correspond to this
one.”

“Let me try to find it,” cried Betty hastily, and after a minute’s
fumbling she snapped the spring. “It’s getting almost tiresome, finding
so many secret hiding-places, isn’t it?” she laughed.

This drawer was full too, but of dusty, uninteresting-looking
documents. Madeline glanced them through rapidly.

“Nothing exciting there, I guess. You can look them over, and if
they’re about Patricia and ‘R.’ send them to me, won’t you? And if
you hate talking to Mr. Harrison, get Emily to go for you, or send
Young-Man-Over-the-Fence. He’d like nothing better than to champion the
cause of oppressed damsels, Babbie Hildreth being one of them.”

“You don’t take this seriously enough, Madeline,” Betty told her sadly.

“No,” agreed Madeline, “I don’t, but that’s because I have such perfect
confidence in your persuasive powers. Good-bye.”

The whistles shrieked for noon. Betty hastily straightened up her desk,
gave some last touches to the dainty tables, and resolutely forced a
smile to meet the usual twelve-o’clock invasion of hungry customers.
Never in her life had she felt so forlorn and lonely, but she was too
proud to show it. She resolved that if the Tally-ho Tea-Shop must be
abandoned at least it should go out in a blaze of glory. At first she
had not thought it worth while to begin the dinner service for only a
month, but now she decided to inaugurate it at once. She hung up the
prettily lettered signs that Madeline had made: “Beginning to-morrow
the Tally-ho Tea-Shop will serve dinners, and will therefore be open
until nine in the evening.” The appearance of this announcement
created no little excitement. Six girls ordered special dinners for
the opening night. Eugenia Ford sent a written order by a friend who
came in for tea. She explained that she wanted everything “as elegant
as possible,” because her dinner was in honor of her roommate’s mother
and father--“very wealthy people.” She hoped the waitress would wear
a cap. As caps were Nora’s bête noir, Betty decided to ask the newest
Student’s Aid waitress if she would mind wearing one just this time, by
way of helping to heap coals of fire on Eugenia’s pretty head.




CHAPTER XVII

A MAGNATE TO THE RESCUE


EMILY DAVIS had expected to go to work the day that the dinners began,
but when she tried her strength she found it much less than she had
thought. She sat at the cashier’s desk until two o’clock, and then
Betty, noticing how pale and miserable she looked, insisted on her
giving up and going home to rest.

“I’ll manage some way,” she assured her new assistant hopefully. “And
you’ll most certainly catch your never-get-over if you sit here with
all the draughts blowing on you, when you’re not well enough to be up.”

“A stove doesn’t give a very even heat, does it?” said Emily wanly.
“I’m warm all but one side.”

“A stove,” said Betty with feeling, “is a relic of the barbaric ages.
So are kerosene lamps. Running this place without the stove and the
lamps would be simply blissful. I should feel like a robber when I
took my salary.”

“You shall have a chance to feel that way just as soon as I begin to
earn mine,” Emily assured her. “I hate to leave you to-day, but----”

“Run along,” Betty broke in. “I shall need you a lot more after Nora is
gone.”

But her resolute hopefulness turned to blank dismay when the newly
engaged waitress, who had seemed so promising, sent word that she had
sprained her ankle. Nora’s regular assistant was a stout, stupid girl,
who could be trusted only with simple orders and unexacting customers.
Betty went over the names of the girls who had engaged stalls, found no
unexacting ones among them, promptly arrayed herself in one of the caps
that Nora scorned and an apron, sent the stupid waitress after a stupid
friend who could probably make change correctly, and planned a division
of work with Nora, who was frankly horrified at her mistress’s new rôle.

“But the first night must be a success, Nora,” Betty explained. “I’ll
stay in the kitchen getting orders ready for Mary Jones as long as I
dare. But when she begins to look wild-eyed and distracted, I shall
put her in the kitchen, and come out myself. It’s the only way to have
things go off well.”

By half-past six the tea-shop was crowded. Betty, peeping in through
the kitchen door, was relieved to find very few of her particular
friends among the diners. She hoped that nobody would exclaim over
her new departure or stop her to demand explanations. She had a
presentiment that if any one did she was going to feel, as Nora
declared she ought, “most awful queer.”

Eugenia’s arrival occurred at an unlucky moment, when Nora was too busy
to attend to her, and Betty decided that her time had come. After the
first plunge, past Eugenia’s blank, unrecognizing stare and through a
little flurry of amused nods and puzzled glances from other girls who
knew her, it wasn’t so bad. Except Eugenia’s party, nobody who gave her
orders neglected to hail her and condole over Emily’s grippe and the
new waitress’s ankle. Betty soon got into the spirit of the occasion,
thoroughly enjoying everything but the many trips to Eugenia’s
stall, with its hedge of pompous dignity. She was on her way out to
the kitchen with a big trayful of dishes, when the door opened and in
strode an elderly gentleman, with a militant air and keen gray eyes
that twinkled merrily under his bushy eyebrows, as he closed the door
with a terrific bang and looked eagerly about him from one absorbed
group of diners to another. But a man is a novelty in Harding, and this
particular man would have attracted attention anywhere; in an instant
he was the centre of interest; in another he had discovered Betty and
she had discovered him.

“Well, Miss B. A.!” he called out gleefully, quite oblivious of the
staring crowd of girls. “Put down that tray and come and shake hands.
Didn’t expect to see me to-night, did you? Well, I was almost up here,
and I’d promised myself that some time this winter I’d investigate
Harding College, so I seized the opportunity. I telegraphed the little
tomboy that John’s so fond of to meet me and help show me around.
Haven’t seen her, have you?”

“No, I haven’t, Mr. Morton,” Betty told him--for of course the noisy
intruder was none other than Jasper Jones Morton, the Elusive Magnate
of the European trip. “And I’m afraid she won’t come, because I had a
letter from her yesterday saying that she was in bed with a cold.”

Jasper J. Morton’s smile clouded. “Too bad, too bad,” he muttered.
“She’ll be disappointed. She likes going off on trips with me.
We’ll have to send her a consolation present to-morrow. You’ll know
what she’d like. Now, Miss B. A., I want some dinner at this famous
tea-shop, and I want you to sit down and eat with me and tell me all
about the business.” Mr. Morton threw back his head and laughed, as if
he thought Betty Wales in business at the Tally-ho Tea-Shop the very
best joke in the world.

Betty led him to a little table in a corner, that had opportunely
been left vacant by two girls who were hurrying off to a senior play
rehearsal. “But I can’t sit with you,” she explained, “because I’m
waiting on people to-night. The regular waitress has sprained her
ankle.”

“There’s one.” Mr. Morton waved his hand imperiously at Nora. “She can
manage somehow. Sit down.”

But Betty was firm. She explained that the dinners were a new
departure, that she was particularly anxious for every one to go away
satisfied with the food and the service, and finally she promised to
wait on Mr. Morton herself, and to come and talk to him later, when the
crowd had thinned. Then she flew to the kitchen after Eugenia’s salads.

Mr. Morton watched her pick up the heavy tray. “Bless me, but she’s a
worker!” he muttered audibly, to the vast amusement of two freshmen at
the next table. “I supposed from what the little tomboy said that she
was playing at business, but it seems she’s in earnest. How I do like
to see people in earnest!”

When Eugenia Ford had finished her dinner, she intercepted Betty in a
flying trip to the kitchen after a forgotten cup of coffee. “Isn’t that
Mr. Jasper J. Morton of New York?” she asked. “I thought it must be,
and so did Mr. and Mrs. Valentine, Susanna’s mother and father. They
know him very well, but of course he won’t expect to see them here.
Would you mind taking us over to speak to him? Why didn’t you tell me
you knew the Mortons?”

“Why should I have told you that?” demanded Betty calmly. “The subject
never came up. John Morton is engaged to one of my best friends.”

“Really!” Eugenia’s face was a study. “Well, come over and meet the
Valentines.”

“Not till I’ve brought Dickie Drake’s coffee. Just a second, Dickie.”
And she was off. It was a master-stroke on Betty’s part, to cap the
information about the Mortons by showing her intimacy with Dickie
Drake, who was a most exclusive senior. It was one thing to speak of
her as Dickie--all the college did that--and quite another to address
her directly by her nickname. But Betty was not trying to impress
Eugenia--which was the reason why she succeeded so perfectly then and a
moment later, when, having been duly introduced to the Valentines, she
convoyed them and Eugenia across to Mr. Morton’s table.

“Friends of yours, Miss B. A.?” he inquired in a dreadfully loud
whisper. “Friends of mine! Nonsense--merest acquaintances. Well, tell
me their names again, and then bring ’em along. How do you do, Mrs.
Valentine? Mr. Valentine, how are you? Your daughter--this one, no,
that one--and Miss Force. Very glad to see so many New Yorkers, I’m
sure. Miss B. A., don’t forget that I’m waiting for you. I hate to be
kept waiting, but you’re one of the people that are worth waiting for.
Do I know your father, Miss Force? It’s quite possible. I know so many
people in one way and another that it takes several secretaries to keep
me posted on the subject. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to my
dinner, which is too good to let cool.”

Whereupon the “very wealthy” Valentines and “Miss Force” departed,
and Jasper J. Morton chuckled to himself as he wondered if they had
noticed that what he had left on his plate to cool was tomato salad.
He had reached his coffee before Betty came to keep him company. She
wasn’t hungry, she explained; she had snatched her dinner bit by bit
between-times; but Mr. Morton insisted upon her beginning all over
again and “eating like a Christian,” telling her meanwhile the latest
news of John’s senior honors at Harvard, of which he was absurdly
proud, and of the house he was building as a surprise for Babe, next to
his own stately summer home.

“Now tell me all about yourself,” he commanded, when Betty finally
declared that she couldn’t and wouldn’t eat anything more. “Are you
well, and are you happy? It’s no use asking if your business is a
success, after watching this evening’s crowd eat. But I’m afraid you’re
overworked. Next time you’re shy a waitress just telephone me and I’ll
have one sent up from New York in short order. But if she doesn’t get
here soon enough, why, let ’em sit a while. Or let ’em run out and help
themselves. The help-yourself style of restaurant is getting to be very
popular. Now how about your latest ‘benevolent adventures’?”

Betty told him about the factory’s club-house, and promised to take him
to see it in the morning, after they had been to chapel and made a tour
of the campus. Mr. Morton watched her closely while she talked.

“You’re not happy, Miss B. A.,” he said at last. “You’ve got something
on your mind. You don’t laugh right out the way you did last summer,
and you were thinking about something else while I told you about the
little tomboy’s new house. Out with it now; what’s the trouble?”

“Nothing,” Betty assured him.

“You say that very much as if you didn’t mean it, my dear young lady,”
Mr. Morton told her.

“Well, nothing that I want to tell you then,” Betty amended, with her
flashing smile. “You’ll want to do something about it and I don’t
think you can--anyway I don’t want you to try, and you’ll only get
awfully----”

“Mad,” put in Mr. Morton grimly. “Well, then you’ll have a chance to
smooth me down the way you did last summer. You can do that, but you
can’t get out of telling me what’s worrying you.”

So Betty told the whole story, beginning with Mr. Harrison’s unexpected
visit and ending with Madeline’s hurried one. She explained why she had
begun so suddenly with the dinners, and how unfortunate it was that
there would be no time to sell the ploshkins, of whose charms she gave
a lively description. She accounted for her disappointment purely on
the ground of not wishing to have the Tally-ho Tea-Shop cease at the
height of its success, saying nothing about the little sister, her
responsibility for Emily, or the low ebb of her own finances. But just
as she had predicted, Mr. Morton flew into a rage at once. Why hadn’t
she written him to come and interview that rascal Harrison? Why had
she gone into business in the first place without his advice and help?
Where was the scamp’s office? If he did not meet his engagement to go
to chapel with her the next morning she would know what had detained
him.

“But, Mr. Morton, Mr. Harrison isn’t in town just now,” Betty
expostulated, not thinking it necessary to add that Mr. Harrison’s
absence was the chief reason why she had not absolutely refused to
confide in Mr. Morton.

“That may be,” Mr. Morton sputtered, “but he is somewhere on this side
of the globe, isn’t he? He hasn’t dropped off the earth, and presumably
he can be reached by wire or wireless, can’t he? You go to bed and to
sleep, Miss B. A. I’ll settle this scamp Harrison.”

“But Mr. Morton----” Betty began, only to be majestically waved into
silence.

“I admire your independence. I always admire independence. But in this
case it’s absurd. I won’t call this man Harrison a scamp to his face,
Miss B. A.; I give you my word I won’t. But I’ll bring him to terms, or
my name’s not J. J. Morton. You see, Miss B. A., in a case like this my
name is a pretty valuable asset. It will scare him a good deal when he
finds who’s back of this tea-shop that he thought was run by a parcel
of little girls.”

Next morning the chapel bell was tolling and the last stragglers
were hurrying up the hill, hoping to slip in before the doors were
closed, when a carriage drove up to the Tally-ho and Jasper J. Morton,
descending from it, beckoned wildly to Betty to come out.

[Illustration: THEY INTERCEPTED THE PRESIDENT]

“I don’t want to miss seeing this famous chapel service,” he called, as
Betty, who had been watching for him by a window, appeared. “I’ve
done your business, Miss B. A. I routed out the agent, got this
Harrison’s address, and”--he chuckled reminiscently,--“in three minutes
by long distance the whole thing was arranged. The rent and the agent
go on just as usual. The agent will bring you a contract, made out for
as long as you like. There will be no rent this summer while the place
is closed for needed repairs. Is this the right way to chapel? Come on
then.”

The portly form of Jasper Jones Morton barely squeezed through the
chapel door as it slid shut, and he and Betty dropped breathlessly into
the back row of seats.

“I like to accomplish what I set out to,” he murmured under cover of
the opening chant. “And I’d like to meet the president of the college
some time when it’s convenient.”

So they intercepted the president when chapel was over, and the
president insisted upon personally conducting so distinguished a
financier as Jasper Jones Morton over his domain. Jasper Jones Morton
beamed upon the president and upon every inch of the domain, and he
made ostentatious notes of the president’s unostentatious hints
regarding the needs of the college.

He went over these later, as he devoured an early luncheon by the
fire in the Tally-ho. “Now, shall I build them a library annex, or a
greenhouse, or a dormitory?” he demanded. “I couldn’t give him any idea
what to expect until I’d seen you.”

“I wish you could build a dormitory for girls who can’t pay the regular
price for board,” said Betty impulsively. “They have to live so far off
and in such horrid little places----”

“Exactly.” Mr. Morton cut her short. “Don’t I know? Have I forgotten
the holes I’ve boarded in? Now of course I’ll put up that kind of
dormitory, with an endowment to cover the expense of running it. You’ve
got nerve, Miss B. A. That gift will cost at least twice what the
others would.”

Betty only laughed, for she was very sure that Mr. Morton did not care
what his gift to Harding cost. Besides she was too happy about the
Tally-ho’s rent to worry about anything else.

“Now if you have that decided, please tell me how you managed Mr.
Harrison,” she begged. “I may have to manage him some time myself, when
you’re too far away----”

“No you won’t,” Mr. Morton interrupted with decision. “I have just one
rule, Miss B. A., for the treatment of scoundrels: Eliminate them. I
applied the rule this morning in the simplest way that occurred to me,
by buying this property.”

“So you’re our landlord now!” gasped Betty.

“I am,” Mr. Morton assured her. “Just as soon as the college closes
I want this tea-room to close too, so that I can install decent
up-to-date systems of lighting and heating and make any other
improvements that you or the artistic young lady named--thank you,
yes, Ayres, can suggest. Remember I hate half-way measures. I want my
building to be the finest quarters for a tea-shop in the whole U.S.
Then I guess, when you are tired of running the place--or I might say
anxious to try your hand at running some lucky young man--why, you
won’t have any trouble in finding a successor.”

“Oh, Mr. Morton,” sighed Betty reproachfully, “you shouldn’t have done
it. Really you shouldn’t.”

“You certainly didn’t encourage me at all,” Mr. Morton told her, “so
you needn’t feel in the least responsible. By the way, send me a sample
of that plasher-thing that you’re having made in plaster. If those fool
images sell here, I don’t see why they shouldn’t make good in New York.
And tell the president what we’ve decided about the dormitory. Tell him
to write me if he favors the idea, and I’ll send a check. Good-bye.”

“You must wait till I’ve thanked----” began Betty.

“Miss B. A.,” broke in Mr. Morton sternly, “don’t you know me well
enough yet to know that the thing I detest most in this world is to be
thanked?”




CHAPTER XVIII

A ROMANCE AND A BURGLARY


“GOODNESS, but I’m glad I haven’t got to break the news to you that
I thought I must,” Betty told Emily, when she appeared late in the
afternoon. And then she broke the good news instead, and incidentally,
now that the danger was all over, explained how nearly the tea-room
had come to ruin. She was bursting to tell Emily, who would especially
appreciate the idea, about the new dormitory; but the president of
Harding must be the first one to hear that news. Betty left Emily in
charge of the desk and hurried up to the campus. When she got back,
after an altogether satisfactory interview, she found Nora watching in
rapt admiration while Emily deftly mended a three-cornered tear in the
new blue silk skirt that had been the pride of Nora’s heart.

“Shure an’ she’s a wonder with her needle,” Nora informed Betty, and
never a word more did she say about her “notice.” It would indeed have
been a callous person who could bring herself to leave the Tally-ho
Tea-Shop just when something exciting was brewing there all the time.
First there was the news of Jasper J. Morton’s munificent gift to the
college. The president passed it on at once, so that almost before
Betty was back at her desk Lucile Merrifield rushed in to ask for all
the details.

“I hear you planned the whole thing,” she said, “and we all think it’s
perfectly splendid. Why didn’t any one ever think of it before?”

Of course Betty disclaimed all credit for Mr. Morton’s gift, but it was
no use, especially when his letter to the president was printed in the
local newspapers. He referred that gentleman to Miss Wales “for any
further ideas and for detailed suggestions, since it was she who first
interested me in Harding College and who originated this particular
form of benefaction.” Her real friends loved and respected her more
than ever for her power to bring such good fortune to pass, and girls
like Eugenia Ford were immensely impressed by her evident intimacy
with the Mortons and her influence over a man who was noted for never
taking advice from anybody.

“It just happened that I got mixed up in it,” Betty told Miss Ferris
humbly. “But I am glad that now, when I have the least to give myself,
some one that I know can do so much. I’ve remembered all this year what
you told me last fall about helping in one way if you can’t in another.
It’s worked pretty well.”

Just as the excitement about the dormitory was subsiding, Madeline
stirred things up with a succinct telegram to Betty: “Arrived at last.”

Lucile and Polly and the Dutton twins happened to be breakfasting
at the Tally-ho when it came, and Betty passed it over to them for
opinions about its probable meaning.

“With her usual Bohemian extravagance she pays for seven words that she
doesn’t send,” complained Lucile. “Let’s answer it, girls. What shall
we say?”

“Which way were you going?” suggested Fluffy Dutton. “That’s to the
point. And send it ‘C. O. D.’ Then she’ll be more explicit next time.”

“Not she,” objected Polly. “The charm of her is that she doesn’t know
the meaning of explicitness. But we’ll send it ‘C. O. D.’ all the same,
because we are all too poor to pay.”

Polly had not anticipated Madeline’s obvious revenge, which
was to send a ninety word reply, unpaid, and addressed to
“Lucile-Polly-Fluffy-Georgia, Belden House.” But she was quick to see
her way out of the financial difficulty.

“Georgia didn’t do anything about sending it, so she pays,” she
decreed; and Georgia accepted the decision with her customary bland
cheerfulness, only demanding in return the ownership of the telegram,
which would make a beautiful trophy for her “memorabil,” as the Harding
girl calls her scrap-book filled with souvenirs of her college days.

The telegram was certainly a work of art and ingenuity, and it took
art and ingenuity to understand it, with no punctuation marks and some
words evidently invented by a despairing operator in a quandary over
Madeline’s perfectly illegible handwriting. But the general drift was
that Madeline had been “on the way to” utter despair,--because the
heroine of her novel insisted on eloping with the villain instead
of the hero--when she thought of making a story out of Patricia’s
long-lost letters from “R.” While she was waiting for her effort to
come back to her, as usual, she scribbled off a college tale about
a girl who had a desk with a secret drawer and didn’t know it. The
first story was accepted--and paid for--by the magazine that had been
the goal of her ambitions all winter, and the other had brought her a
contract for a dozen college stories to be written within a year, on
terms that made a true Bohemian like Madeline feel fairly dizzy with
sudden wealth.

This splendid sequel to the hunt for Eugenia’s theme reminded Betty
of the papers which had filled her drawer, and which, in the rush of
other excitements, she had quite forgotten. If they had anything to do
with Patricia and “R.” perhaps Madeline might write a sequel to her
first story and score another triumph. But examination proved that
the nearest name to Patricia mentioned in them was prosaic Peter, and
the only “R.” a Robert Wales who signed one of the papers in the
minor rôle of witness for Peter’s signature. Betty was interested at
discovering her surname; but prosy old documents make dull reading,
even if witnessed by a possible ancestor. However, she finally sent
them to Madeline, for, as she told Georgia Ames, you never can tell
what a literary person will see in the most commonplace things.

Of course Madeline was overjoyed at the happy outcome of the Tally-ho’s
crisis, and so was Babbie, who appeared in Harding with the very
earliest signs of spring.

“Florida was duller than ever this year,” she told Betty. “I’ve left
mother in Washington waiting for really warm weather, and I’ve come
to see about my branch of the Tally-ho. I’m sure it needs my personal
attention. Mr. Thayer certainly ought to give the poor stocking-makers
ice-cream for staying in and learning their lessons now that it’s
getting to be nice weather. You’re not a bit enterprising about working
up business through the night-school, Betty.”

“I have to leave that to you,” Betty told her solemnly. “The regular
affairs of the tea-shop, and Mr. Morton, are all that I can manage.
The ploshkins will be here to-morrow in full force, and Mr. Morton has
written to know if we can’t think of some small improvements that can
be made next week during the spring vacation. He can’t bear to wait
until summer for everything.”

“As if this place wasn’t just about perfect now!” said Babbie
scornfully.

But Mary Brooks, appearing in the midst of the discussion, took a
different view. “You’ve got to keep making them sit up and take notice
of something new over and over and over,” she announced. “That’s
business. The ploshkins will do for one thing, but if the Morton
millions are fairly languishing to be wasted on this property, you
ought to be able to think of some features to spend them on. Just
wait a minute--I have it--a tea-garden! Pagoda effects scattered over
the side yard. Lattice work, and thatched roofs, Japanese screens to
keep out the sun and the stares of the gaping crowd, and lanterns for
evenings. I’m sure it would take.”

“It’s commonplace compared to what I’ve thought of,” declared Babbie
proudly. “What we want is a Peter Pan Annex in our elm trees. I
presume you’ve never been to the original Café Robinson, Mary, but we
have, and it’s way beyond any tea-garden.”

Betty was in the window, peering out at the Harding elm trees.

“We could,” she declared. “I always wondered how those two trees
happened to be so close together, and now it seems like fate that
they’re exactly right for a Café Robinson.”

“And easily tall enough for three stories,” cried Babbie, joining her.

“We mustn’t forget the big one-two-three signs for the stories,” chimed
in Betty excitedly.

“Nor the basket to pull up with the extra things,” added Babbie.

“We’ll tell Nora to have some extra things in every order so they can
all have the fun of hauling up the basket.”

“The view will be perfectly lovely from the top,” declared Babbie. “And
isn’t it fine that our trees are in such a sheltered place, behind the
little white house?”

Betty nodded. “If Bob were here she’d shin up to the top this very
minute and tell us what you can see.”

“But Babe will surely say she likes the second story best, because she
and John made up their quarrel in the second story,” laughed Babbie;
and then they settled down to telling the bewildered Mary about the
house-in-the-trees café that they had discovered near Paris, and how
the going-away party held there for Madeline had developed into an
announcement party for Babe. And of course Mary agreed that a Peter Pan
Annex was the only thing for the Tally-ho Tea-Shop.

“And as Madeline won’t let me call my night-school a branch of the
business, I shall write her how I thought up this,” Babbie declared. “I
will also hunt up that comical carpenter that Madeline had such times
with last fall, and show him how to build it.”

Now carpentry and the supervision of carpentry are no work for a
woman; and the Tally-ho’s trees were in plain sight from Mr. Thayer’s
office windows. So it was only natural, when Babbie’s slender figure
appeared on the lawn for the purpose of supervision, that Mr. Thayer
should join her for the purpose of applying an understanding masculine
intelligence and a firm masculine will to the direction of the
thickest-headed carpenter imaginable. Babbie had a careless fashion of
running out on the rawest day without a wrap. This made it all the more
necessary for Mr. Thayer to come over, bringing his sweater to throw
across her shoulders.

“I saw your Cousin Austin at Palm Beach,” Babbie had explained shortly
after her arrival in Harding, “and then at St. Augustine. At Miami he
took us on the loveliest cruise, and I drove his car at sixty miles an
hour on the beach at Ormond. It was ripping fun. Not many men will risk
your losing your head and smashing them up.”

“And don’t you ever lose your head?” inquired Mr. Thayer blandly.

“Not over your Cousin Austin,” said Babbie, with a flash of a smile.

After that Mr. Thayer came oftener and stayed longer. Babbie assured
Betty and Emily Davis that they had no idea how complicated a Peter Pan
Annex seemed to an untraveled carpenter of Harding.

“We’re so afraid it won’t have the real French air,” she said. “That’s
why we spend such ages in staring at it from all possible angles.”

“And then it must be perfectly secure,” she explained on another
occasion, just after she and Mr. Thayer had sat for almost an hour
in the top story, among the branches that now made a most beautiful
feathery screen. “Think how horrible it would be if the railing was too
low and some silly little freshman fell out, or if the floor wasn’t
strong enough and gave way. Mr. Thayer knows all about such things.
He’s taking a lot of interest. We never could have done it properly
except for him.”

But in spite of the accommodating slowness and stupidity of the
untraveled carpenter, the Peter Pan Annex was finished at last.

“I’m a candidate now for the Perfect Patron’s Society,” Mr. Thayer told
Betty, “so I want to give an opening-day tea up on the top floor for
all the owners, managers, assistant managers, and small sisters. It’s
to be this afternoon at four. I also want another stocking factory
party, and hadn’t we better get it off our hands early, before
commencement begins to loom up ahead?” Mr. Thayer looked very hard at
Betty. “I suppose you are terribly busy?”

“Terribly,” returned Betty gravely, “but I think Babbie will help.”

Babbie would not.

“I’m going to your Cousin Austin’s Adirondack camp,” she explained,
“to see spring come in the woods. Mother is the chaperon, and I have
an awful suspicion that I am a sort of guest of honor. Anyway, the
spring part of it appeals to me. And secondly, mother has been solemnly
promised a reunion with her long-lost daughter.”

Later in the day Babbie, in a kimono, which is the attire of
confidential intercourse, complained that “Mummy was as bad as Margot
about a multi-millionaire,” and that she hated the woods in spring;
they were always hot, and smoky from forest fires, there was no shade
and no shooting, and the canoes leaked from being dry all winter.

“Moreover,” added Babbie wearily, a “so-called camp, with a butler and
three other men, and a sunken garden, is going too much for me. But
when mummy really insists, the laws of the Medes and Persians aren’t in
it.” She gave a funny little mirthless laugh. “I suppose one ought to
be very sure that one isn’t foolishly prejudiced against the popular
idea of the idle rich.”

So Emily planned the factory party with much energy and originality,
and Mr. Thayer was duly grateful. But his rare smile came only when
Betty showed him a note from Babbie, inquiring carefully about the date
of the party and stating in a postscript, with vehement underlining,
that she never wanted to see spring come in anybody’s woods again.

“There are mosquitoes, and other things much worse,” ended Babbie
enigmatically, with the blackest possible lines under the last two
words.

“Suppose you let me write her about the date of the party?” suggested
Mr. Thayer. “Then you needn’t bother.”

Evidently the change in correspondents did not displease Babbie
seriously, for she was back on the appointed day, with a bewitching
smile, flashed out from beneath a bewitching hat, for all her stocking
factory friends, including Mr. Thayer. The party was a sort of spring
fête held out on the grounds of the factory, in the late afternoon and
early evening. There were folk dances in costume, national songs, and
old-country games. Emily had made all the guests feel a tremendous
pride in doing whatever they could to entertain the rest, and
everything, from the Irish bag-pipe music to the Russian mazurkas, went
off with great spirit.

It was while Jimmie O’Ferrel was dancing a jig with all his might and
main, and with all eyes fastened upon his flying feet, that Betty,
happening to glance across the grounds, saw a bewitching hat slip
swiftly from the fence top down on the tea-shop side. But she had no
proof that Mr. Thayer was concerned in the disappearance of the hat,
until the smallest sister sought her out importantly, a little later.

“Do you want to know what I think?” she asked. “Well, I think Babbie
and Mr. Thayer are in love.”

“Why do you think that?” asked Betty laughingly.

“Because,” explained Dorothy, “I ran up in the Peter Pan Annex just
now to see how small people look ’way down here from ’way up there, and
I jumped ’most out of my skin ’cause there those two sat. They never
saw me at all, and he had his arm around her and she didn’t care. She
was smiling about it. So I came straight away. Was that right?”

“Of course,” laughed Betty. “You hadn’t been invited.”

“I was invited to Mr. Thayer’s party, though,” objected Dorothy, “and
now he isn’t here. He’s over at our house. That’s queer.”

Up in the Peter Pan Annex Mr. Thayer was saying to Babbie, “I must go
back before any one misses me.”

“I can’t go back,” said Babbie sadly. “I tore my dress dreadfully
getting over the fence. You shouldn’t have made me do it.”

“I didn’t make you,” retorted Mr. Thayer. “I particularly advised you
to go around.”

“Exactly,” agreed Babbie, “and that made me want to go over. Dear
me! Do you suppose we shall ever really quarrel on account of my not
wanting to give in to your chin?”

“No, because I shall always want to give in to yours,” Mr. Thayer told
her.

“But I shouldn’t let you give in always,” declared Babbie. “I should
take turns giving in.”

“Don’t say ‘should,’” objected Mr. Thayer. “Say ‘shall.’ Haven’t we
settled it?”

“Of course.” Babbie gave a comical little sigh. “It feels so queer to
be settled--and so very nice. Now go back to your party, and I’ll get
Nora to lend me some pins so I can go back too. Oh, and we’ll tell
Betty, shan’t we, right away?”

Under the circumstances Betty wasn’t extremely surprised, but she was
extremely pleased.

“Now our tea-room is as successful as the famous one that belonged to
the cousins of the girl who lives over Mrs. Bob,” she laughed. “It
has produced an engagement, and a literary career to match the artist
person’s.”

Babbie frowned. “You mustn’t leave yourself out, Betty. You’re mixed up
in everything, and I don’t believe that other tea-room was half as nice
as this or made half as much money.”

“Neither do I,” agreed Betty happily. “I’m perfectly satisfied with my
profits, though they’re not so extraordinary as yours and Madeline’s.
Every morning when I unlock the door I’m in such a hurry to look in
and see that everything is all right and all here. It’s so pretty and
I love it so, that I’m afraid it will vanish some night like a fairy
palace.”

It was odd that the very next morning when Betty unlocked the door,
she should find that some marauder had been there before her. She had
locked her desk the night before, as she always did. But during the
night the lid had been forced back, the papers in the pigeonholes
tossed out on to the floor, the drawers opened and emptied.

Her face was white and frightened as she rushed over to find Babbie,
who was staying in the little white house this time.

“The tea-room has been robbed!” she gasped. “Come over there, quick.”

Babbie, who always breakfasted late, was pinning her collar, and she
gave a start that jabbed the pin straight into her thumb. “Ouch, but
that hurt!” she groaned. “What did they take?”

“I was so frightened I didn’t stop to see. I thought they might be
hiding in the loft.”

Babbie dropped a skirt over her head, and started down the stairs,
hooking it up as she ran.

“They wouldn’t do that. They’d want to escape in the dark,” she called
back encouragingly.

But at the door of the tea-shop she paused. “There is something moving
up there,” she whispered cautiously. “See! Over in that corner by the
curtain.”

Betty couldn’t see anything moving, but when Babbie started in a hasty
retreat toward the little white house she banged to the big door and
followed. Just then Bridget came waddling breathlessly up the hill.

“Wat’s up now, Misses?” she called. “Why are yez afther shuttin’ of me
out?”

Bridget’s fat figure was very reassuring. Simultaneously Betty and
Babbie ran toward it, gasping out the news.

[Illustration: “COME ALONG NOW”]

“In the loft? Well, we’ll finish ’em thin.” Bridget seized a
brass-handled poker, the latest addition to the tea-shop’s stock of
antiques. Then she laid it down again, carefully removed her neat
black bonnet, and as carefully laid it on a table. “No use of spilin’
that in a fight. Come along now wid yez,” she ordered.

Betty seized an umbrella that some one had opportunely left in a
corner, and Babbie chose as weapon a tall brass candlestick. Then the
procession started, Bridget waddling and wheezing in front, Betty,
still white with terror, following, and Babbie, beginning to smile
again at the absurdity of the search, bringing up the rear. But they
hunted conscientiously, exploring every hiding-place into which a man
could possibly squeeze himself and some that would have cramped a
self-respecting cat.

“They ain’t here at all,” announced Bridget at last, removing her
eye from a knot-hole in the wall into which she had been spying
laboriously, and standing upright with more puffings and pantings.
“It’s downstairs we go. Thim stalls are foine for burgulars, and mebbe
they’re in me kitchen this minute, ating up me angil-food that ’ud riz
light as a feather. Oh me, oh me.”

“They aren’t here now. I’m sure they’re not,” protested Babbie. “Think
how absurd it would be for a burglar to hide in here, just waiting
around to be caught. I’m going to see what we’ve lost.”

Bridget persisted in completing her search, and Betty would not
desert her. But when the fat cook was satisfied and had sat down to
fan herself into a semblance of calmness that would make possible the
successful cooking of waffles for the “Why-Get-Up-to-Breakfast Club,”
Betty joined Babbie, and together they straightened out and looked over
the papers from the desk.

“There’s nothing gone. Of course they wouldn’t want grocer’s bills,
even if they were receipted,” Betty declared. “But I left six dollars
and thirty cents all rolled up in one of the top drawers. Emily forgot
it when she went to the bank. I suppose they’ve got that.”

“Drawer wide open, and one--five--yes, six dollars and thirty cents all
here,” Babbie reported. “That’s very queer. Burglars that hunt as hard
as this and then don’t take the money when they find it are certainly
particular. Well, did they like our old brasses, I wonder, or our
plated silver spoons?”

But the candlesticks--except the one Babbie had seized upon--and the
Flemish lamps were all in place. The gargoyles grinned serenely from
their accustomed niches. The silver drawer had not been tampered with.
In the kitchen the angel-food was just as Bridget had left it.

“It’s a mystery,” declared Babbie at last, “a thrilling and
impenetrable mystery. When do burglars not burgle?”

“When they are frightened off,” answered Betty prosaically.

“But it wouldn’t have taken a second to dip out that money,” Babbie
objected. “It was all mussed up, so some one’s hand must have been in
there, since you left it in a roll----”

“Yes, in a tight little wad,” put in Betty.

“And that some one could have pulled back his hand full just as quickly
as empty,” Babbie went on. “I tell you it’s a horrible mystery. I’m
going to ask Robert to come over this minute and see about it.”

Meanwhile Emily, who had been doing the day’s marketing, arrived; but
neither she nor Mr. Thayer could solve the “thrilling, impenetrable,
horrible” mystery, though Mr. Thayer found “jimmy” marks on the shed
door, and that, as Betty said, proved beyond a doubt that the burglars
had been the real thing.

“Real, but very eccentric,” laughed Emily. “Let’s hope that all the
Tally-ho’s burglars will belong to the same accommodating tribe.”




CHAPTER XIX

THE AMAZING MR. SMITH AND OTHER AMAZEMENTS


“RACHEL MORRISON? No, not yet, but she’s coming. Everybody’s coming.”

“K. Kittredge is as comical as ever. Ask her about her prize English
pupil.”

“Do you know, you’re glad to see everybody these days. Why, Jean
Eastman rushed up to me, and I fell upon her neck. Digs and freaks and
snobs and all, they belong to 19-- and the good old days.”

“Do you feel that way too? I wondered if any one else had noticed the
horrid little changes. I suppose things will change, but I wish----”

“Nonsense! Look at this tea-shop. It’s a change all right, and for my
part I don’t see how we should live without it.”

“Oh, but this is different. This is 19--’s very own.”

“Where’s Betty Wales, anyway? She’s so busy you can’t get within a mile
of her.”

Thus 19--, over its ices in the Peter Pan Annex. The Tally-ho
Tea-Shop was 19--’s headquarters, official and unofficial. There they
breakfasted, lunched, tea-ed, and dined; there held informal “sings”
and rallies, and there on the last evening of the festal week they were
to eat their class supper. The tenth year class were to eat theirs in
the loft. The fifteeners had engaged the first floor of the Peter Pan
Annex, and the six graduates of the very oldest class were to lunch up
in the top floor, among the tree-tops. No wonder that Betty was busy
and had to be caught on the wing and forcibly detained by 19-- friends.
Commencement guests fairly beset the Tally-ho at meal-times. Between
meals old girls and belated undergraduates thronged the tables. Betty
could hardly believe her eyes when she counted up one day’s returns
from the Peter Pan Annex. As for ploshkins, the first order had sold
out almost before it was unpacked, and every class in college had
wanted to adopt the ploshkin for its class animal. But Betty explained
that 19-- had already secured it.

Madeline had had that happy thought, of course, and Kate Denise,
who was chairman of the supper committee, had capped it by ordering
miniature ploshkins for favors and a mammoth one for a centerpiece.
Then Madeline had written a ploshkin song which was so much cleverer
than “The Bay Where the Ploshkin Bides,” that the Glee Club groaned
with envy. There was also a 19-- song called “Tea-Shop,” and one called
“The House of Peter Pan,” so that Betty’s enterprises were much in the
public eye, if she was not.

It was dreadfully hard to stick to work, when you knew that 19-- was
having a “Stunt-doers’ Meet” under the apple-trees on the back campus,
or Dramatic Club’s Alumnæ tea, also with “stunts,” was on in the
Students’ Building. The only consolation lay in the fact that your
dearest friends calmly cut these surpassing attractions, to which some
of them had traveled thousands of miles, just to sit by the cashier’s
desk in the Tally-ho Tea-Shop, and talk to the cashier in her intervals
of comparative leisure, waiting patiently while she made change, found
tables for helpless or hurried customers, took “rush orders” to the
kitchen when the waitresses were all too busy, and in general made
things “go” in the steady, plodding, systematic fashion that her gay
little soul loathed. But she realized that she had made a success
of the Tally-ho just by keeping at it, and she was going home next
week with little Dorothy and “money in her pocket,” in Will’s slangy
phraseology, leaving Emily to take charge of the improvements which
Madeline and Mr. Morton had planned on a scale of elegance that fairly
took away Betty’s breath, and of the remnants of business that would
be left when the hungry Harding girls had departed, and sleepy silence
reigned on the deserted campus.

Eugenia Ford came in one afternoon early in commencement week, looking
very meek and unhappy.

“I’m going home to-night. I was foolish to plan to stay over, but a
senior I know asked me to, and I thought of course she meant it. And
she only let me entertain her youngest brother part of one morning, and
made me give her my ticket to the senior play.”

“What a shame!” Betty sympathized.

“But I was to blame. I was a goose,” Eugenia repeated. “I ought to
have known that she only wanted to get something out of me. If I rush
up to people all of a sudden, when I’ve never noticed them much before,
I generally want to get something out of them. It’s naturally the same
with other girls.”

Betty laughed. “Better stick to the ones who are always nice to
you--your real friends,” she advised.

“But then you won’t get on,” objected Eugenia wisely. “They say you’ve
got to scheme a lot to be in things here. You’ve got to make yourself
known.”

“Why not just try to be worth knowing?” Betty suggested. “My friend
Rachel Morrison was as quiet and--and--unpushing as could be, but she
was so bright and nice and thoughtful for other people and so reliable
that everybody wanted her for a friend.”

Eugenia sighed. “I’m not bright or thoughtful for others. I--oh, dear,
this isn’t what I came to talk about, Miss Wales. I--I stopped to say
good-bye to Dorothy. I--she--we made up. I mean--we hadn’t exactly
quarreled, so we couldn’t exactly make up. But I felt so ashamed. Being
mean to little girls makes you feel so ashamed--even if they don’t
know about it. Miss Wales, I’ve heard about the dormitory for poor
girls--Morton Hall. When I went home in the spring my father said that
as far as he could see you’d taught me about all the sensible things
I’d learned this year. He asked me what you’d like for a present. I
couldn’t decide, but when I heard about the dormitory I wrote and
asked him to send you a check for extra things, you know, for the
furnishings, or to pay part of some girl’s board. I thought perhaps
you’d rather have that--from us--than something for yourself.” She
put three checks into Betty’s hand. “Two of my best friends sent the
others. It was what they had left from their spring term allowances.
Susanna would like hers to go for a picture in the house parlor. Molly
doesn’t care.”

Eugenia rushed through all this information so fast that Betty had no
chance to interrupt, and at the end she was speechless with surprise.
She glanced at the checks. The smallest was for a hundred dollars.
Together they would provide endless “extras” for Morton Hall, or help
dozens of poor girls to make both ends meet.

“Oh, Eugenia, you are a dear,” she cried impulsively. “And your father
is a dear too, and these other girls. But why not give it right to the
college yourselves?”

“Because you’ll think of something nicer than they would to do with
it. Anyway it’s a sort of a present to you--father’s part. You’re just
to say it’s from friends of yours. We don’t want our names mentioned.
You’re the one who put the idea into my head. We’re not doing it for
anything but to please you, and Susanna and Molly because they liked
the idea, and what was the use keeping over their allowances?”

Betty was glad of this explanation. She had tried to choke back an ugly
little suspicion that this gift might be a part of Eugenia’s campaign
to “make herself known,” by having her father’s name linked with Mr.
Morton’s as a benefactor of Harding. Now she was reassured on that
point, and she thanked Eugenia again, trying to make her feel how much
the money would accomplish.

“I suppose that’s so,” Eugenia agreed, “and we shan’t any of us miss
it. Lots of the girls could give away more than they do, Miss Wales,
only they never think of it.”

“It’s the same way about helping the ones who are rather left out to
have some good times,” Betty put in eagerly. “It doesn’t take much
effort or time from your own fun, and it means such a lot to them.”

“Yes,” Eugenia agreed soberly. “I’m going to try to be more like that
next year. It’s horrid to be as snippy as most of our crowd are. Some
awfully nice girls are left out of things for one reason or another.
We should all have more fun, I guess, if we all had it,” ended Eugenia
rather obscurely. “Good-bye, Miss Wales, until next fall.”

Betty was wondering busily whether she should be back next fall, for
mother had just written that father’s business was improving fast and
that he hoped to have the family together again soon, when the supper
committee appeared to inquire about the shape of the 19-- table and to
consult the president about the seating arrangements. Betty was deep
in the problem of how to get all the speakers on one side of the table
and yet not separate them from their friends, when a strange gentleman
walked in and came straight up to Betty’s desk.

“Miss Wales?” he inquired in businesslike tones.

“I am Miss Wales.” Betty stood up behind the desk, and Kate Denise and
the rest withdrew to a window until the man should have finished his
business with Betty.

“My name is Smith,” he went on. “I represent Furbush, a Boston antique
shop. You’ve heard of it, I presume?”

Betty had not heard of Furbush’s.

“Well, that’s not vital,” Mr. Smith told her smilingly, “because we buy
on a cash basis, so it’s not a question of our credit. I should have
said that I’m up here buying old furniture. I heard you had a rather
good desk that you might like to sell, and some pieces of brass.”

“Yes, we have those things, but we don’t care to sell any of them,”
Betty told him shortly. The idea of any one’s coming to buy the
Tally-ho’s most prized features, and in commencement week too, when
every minute was precious. Mr. Smith’s hand was on the desk, but now
he looked down as if he had but just discovered the fact.

“Oh, this is the desk I was told about, isn’t it?” he said, and came
around to Betty’s side to see it to better advantage. “It’s a good
piece--a very good piece. I’ll give you a good price for it, Miss
Wales. Just name your figure.”

“I couldn’t, for the desk belongs to the firm--the tea-shop firm,”
Betty answered. “And if we should even decide to sell,--though I don’t
think we shall--two friends of ours are ready to give us the full value
of the desk.”

“Now what would you consider the full value of the desk, Miss Wales?”
Mr. Smith asked, in a tone that was meant to be half persuasive and
half scornful of Miss Wales’s knowledge of antiques.

“I don’t know exactly, and it doesn’t matter at all, because we don’t
wish to sell the desk or anything else that we have.” Betty’s tone
was meant to be wholly anxious for the immediate departure of the
importunate Mr. Smith.

“I’ll give you four hundred dollars for that desk, Miss Wales. That’s
about five times what you paid for it, I guess, and twice what your
friends would give. Furbush’s can pay top prices for a thing they like,
because their customers are the top-price sort.”

Betty was inwardly amazed, both at the sum Mr. Smith offered and at
the accuracy of his guesses about the price Madeline had paid and the
advance Mrs. Bob had offered. But she reflected that if Furbush’s, of
which she had never heard, would pay four hundred dollars for the desk
to-day they probably would pay that or nearly that later in the week.
Babbie was off walking with Mr. Thayer, whom she was keeping very much
in the background because only Betty and the other two B’s were to
know of the engagement until class supper night, when Babbie meant to
run around the table with the other engaged girls. And Madeline had
not yet torn herself away from her beloved studio apartment, where
her latest diversion was papering her study with “rejection slips”
from over-fastidious editors. The desk certainly could not be sold at
any price without Madeline’s consent. So in the face of Mr. Smith’s
munificent offer, Betty preserved a stony silence which finally evoked
a low whistle from that gentleman.

“All right,” he said, slipping his hand lovingly across the carved
panels and the inlaid fronts of the little drawers. “If you feel that
way about it, Furbush must do without. Now have you the same objections
to selling me a cup of tea?”

“Certainly you can have tea here,” Betty told him. “If you will sit
down at one of the tables you will be served directly.” Then she turned
her attention to Kate and the others, and forgot all about Mr. Smith,
who chose a retired nook in Flying Hoof’s stall, ordered tea with three
kinds of sandwiches, pulled a book out of his pocket, and explained
to the waitress that he liked to eat slowly and read, without being
disturbed.

The supper committee worked out its seating plan and departed, highly
indignant that Betty wouldn’t come up to the campus with them to
pay calls on the lesser stars of the senior play cast, who were on
exhibition in their make-ups.

“I’m lucky to get off to-night for the play,” Betty told them sternly,
and in the pause before dinner she tried to concentrate her mind on
preparing a menu for the next day. She needed to consult Bridget about
several items, and as the tea-room was quite empty and she would only
be gone a minute she slipped out without calling in Emily, who was busy
in the kitchen, to take her place at the desk. When she came back she
was startled to find her chair occupied by Mr. Smith, who had opened
several drawers and was poking the fan-shaped panel, trying vainly to
push it to one side. Betty stared at him for a moment in amazement,
then she called out loudly, “I thought you had gone, Mr. Smith,”
keeping meanwhile close to the kitchen door which separated her from
Bridget, Nora, and Emily, for she had no idea what a man might do when
you caught him robbing your desk.

But Mr. Smith was not even disconcerted. “Oh, no, Miss Wales,” he began
easily. “Don’t you remember I haven’t paid for my grub? I’m not the
sort of man to go off without paying my bill. I’d finished, and you
weren’t here, so I was taking a last lingering look at your lovely
desk. Seems to me as if there might be a secret drawer behind one of
these panels.” He tapped the panels gently, one after another, with his
knuckles.

“If we ever decide to sell you the desk, Mr. Smith, you can examine it
as closely as you like,” Betty told him with dignity. “But now I must
ask you to leave it alone.”

“Oh, very well,” Mr. Smith answered absently, still fingering the
carved panel in the center.

As Betty watched him indignantly, a dreadful thought came into her
head. The three checks that Eugenia had given her were on the desk.
She had tucked them carelessly under the blotter, meaning to take
them out again as soon as Kate and the others had gone. Betty did not
stop to consider how useless they would be to Mr. Smith. She only
reflected that he was certainly dishonorable, and probably dishonest,
and that the checks were a sacred trust. Mr. Smith was absorbed in the
arrangements of the desk. Betty slipped silently through the kitchen
door and approached Bridget.

“I’m not sure, but I think there’s a burglar in there,” she whispered.
“He’s at the desk, and he won’t get away from it. I want you to scare
him into another part of the room, and then bar the door until I’ve
found out whether or not he’s stolen anything. Do you understand?”

“Aisy,” returned Bridget calmly, wiping her hands on her apron, and
seizing a poker and a rolling-pin she marched boldly into the tea-room.

“Scat!” she hissed into the ear of the astonished Mr. Smith, who jumped
back like a frightened rabbit when he saw the poker and the rolling-pin
brandished dangerously about his head. In a minute Bridget had him
prisoned in Flying Hoof’s stall, in front of which she danced back and
forth, waving her improvised weapons frantically.

“I’ve got him,” she called triumphantly to Betty. “An’ if he’s a
burgular fur shure, I’ll kape him safe while Miss Emily do be runnin’
for the perlice.”

It took Betty only an instant to put her hand under the blotter, and
there, just as she had left them, were the three checks.

“Oh, Bridget, he’s not a burglar,” she cried. “The money is here all
right. Let him out the door. I’m sorry, Mr. Smith,” she added with
dignity, “but you certainly acted like a thief, so you mustn’t blame
me, since I knew that there was a large amount of money in the desk,
for treating you like one.”

“Indade it’s a good whack yez desarve for troublin’ me lovely young
ladies,” declared Bridget, reluctantly moving to one side to let her
prisoner pass out.

Mr. Smith, scowling angrily, walked across to the desk that had been
the cause of all the trouble, and threw down the slip Nora had given
him and the change to pay it.

“It’s a pity if a gentleman can’t satisfy his idle curiosity about the
date of an antique desk without being taken for a sneak thief,” he
declaimed angrily, as he started off.

“It’s a pity when a gintlemin ain’t got enough bisniss of his own to
mind so it’ll kape his nose out of other people’s private propity,”
cried Bridget after him, and then she turned her attention to
comforting Betty, who had been dreadfully frightened by the episode.

“I almost wish the desk was sold,” she declared with a sob in her
voice. “It’s always making us trouble with its queer old secret
drawers and the people that try to steal out of it--and don’t.”

“It’s a foine desk that burgulars can’t burgle, I’m thinkin’,” Bridget
declared consolingly.

“But it attracts burglars,” Betty objected, “and being frightened is
almost as bad as being really robbed.”

Madeline, who came that evening, fairly gloated in the mysterious
robbery and the strange conduct of Mr. Smith. “It’s like living in a
detective story,” she declared. “Mr. Smith was hunting for something,
and so were the burglars,--something so valuable that they turned
up their noses at six good round dollars. Those old papers can’t be
valuable. Therefore it stands to reason that there must be something
else in there that we haven’t found--jewels, maybe, worth a king’s
ransom. As soon as I’ve embraced dear old 19--, I’ll have another hunt.”

But embracing dear old 19-- was a more absorbing process than Madeline
had counted it. Class supper night, the grand wind-up of Harding
commencement, arrived, and she had not given another thought to the
hidden treasure.




CHAPTER XX

A FINAL EXCITEMENT


AT first Betty had not seen how she could possibly be spared from
“business” on the most strenuous night in the Tally-ho’s history, with
three class suppers being eaten at once in its precincts, a chef from
Boston lording it over Bridget in the kitchen,--or trying to, and a
little army of strange waitresses to be shown the way about. But 19--
was firm; its president must and should sit through the whole supper
on the right hand of Eleanor Watson, who was toast-mistress again this
year; must present the mammoth ploshkin to T. Reed’s adorable young
son, and the silver loving-cup to the real class-baby, the daughter
of a certain Mary Jones, who had never in all her college course done
anything less commonplace than her name. On the day after commencement
she had married a Harding lawyer, and her living in town made the
display of her very small baby possible.

“It’s not every first year reunion that has one right here on hand to
be inspected,” declared Katherine Kittridge. “So here’s to Mary Jones,
if she wasn’t a highly exciting member of our highly exciting class.”

So Betty finally yielded to 19--’s demands for her own and Emily’s
release from duty, put the management of the suppers into Nora’s
capable hands, and resolved to wear the rose-colored satin dress that
she had bought in Paris and to forget for the one night that she was
anything but a “lady of leisure” come to her class reunion, just like
Bob and Babe and Roberta, without a care in the world or a thought
beyond the joy of being “back” with 19--. And partly, no doubt,
because the supper was so good and so well served, she succeeded.
Eleanor was lovelier than ever, and her little speeches cleverer; Bob,
on her other side, was jollier, Helen Adams more amusingly sedate,
K. more delightfully absurd. The toasts were as “superfine” as all
19--’s stunts, the songs went with a fine dash, the ploshkins made a
decided hit, and T. Reed’s little T.--it stood for Thomas instead of
Theresa--was so dear and comical, trying to pull his big ploshkin off
the table, and finally insisting on a chair for it between himself and
“Mother T.,” as everybody called her now. Betty realized suddenly that
she hadn’t had many “good times” this year, and that she had missed
them. Then she forgot everything but the perfectly splendid time she
was having right now, in the old care-free Betty Wales fashion. She
counted the minutes jealously, and sighed all to herself when the last
toast was over--K’s comical eulogy of “Our Working Women.”

But with the end of the supper the night’s fun was only well started.
Up the stairs to the loft, bearing the ploshkins solemnly above their
heads, climbed 19--, to sing to the little tenth year table; then out
to the Peter Pan Annex to salute the fifteeners and pelt them with
green carnations. The third year reunion was up in the gym; the seniors
were in the Student’s Building. Off trailed 19--, to the tune of the
ploshkin song, to return _en masse_ the serenades that had enlivened
its own supper. Up-stairs the tenth year people were not half-way
through their toasts. Down-stairs Nora turned the lamps low, so that
they would burn until 19-- came back for its forgotten wraps and its
last good-byes. It was a breathlessly hot night, so Nora left all the
windows open, and she and Bridget, their duties ended, went home to
well-earned rest.

It was long after midnight when 19--, having serenaded all the suppers,
all their favorite faculty, all their “loved spots” on the campus, came
back in scattered ranks and without music, for they had sung themselves
hoarse, to the Tally-ho. The other classes had left, and the tea-shop
was dusky and silent. Betty happened to be marching in the front rank
with Babe and Roberta.

“I ought to have come back ahead and lighted up for you,” she said. “I
thought Nora would stay until we got here, but it’s terribly late, and
I suppose she got sleepy.”

“We can hurry ahead and do it now just as well,” declared Babe, and the
three walked swiftly up the winding path and flung open the heavy door.

Though the lamps were turned low, they gave light enough to see by
easily, and there, sitting at the desk, bending over the pigeonholes,
was a tall woman wearing a dark dress and a dark, drooping hat, that,
in her present attitude, completely hid her face. The three girls
discovered the intruder at exactly the same minute.

“More Blunderbuss,” murmured Babe, remembering the mysterious robberies
of senior year. “Do you know her, Betty?”

“No,” Betty answered quickly.

“Then I’ll just hang on to her till we see what she’s taken,” cried
Babe impulsively, and launched herself fearlessly at the stranger,
while Roberta screamed; a relay of girls appearing in the door just
then rushed to Babe’s assistance, and Betty, not knowing what else to
do, turned up all the lamps.

The tall, black-gowned woman was unusually strong, but she was no match
for eight stalwart and determined members of 19--.

“I give up. Don’t smother me so,” she cried after a minute in a queer,
deep voice. Her hat had been knocked off in the struggle, and the short
hair and unmistakably masculine features that were revealed matched
the deep voice and the manly strength.

“Why, she’s a--a man,” cried Roberta, and redoubled her shrieks of
terror.

The man, still held firmly by his captors, struggled to his feet. “Shut
up, can’t you?” he demanded angrily of Roberta. “Call the police if you
want to, but don’t wake all the dogs and babies in the neighborhood,
and for pity’s sake”--to the others--“don’t squeeze my arms so. It’s
not ladylike.”

Almost unconsciously the girls loosened their hold a little, and the
prisoner, making one supreme effort, dashed straight at the terrified
Roberta, who stood near the door, and in another moment was out in the
dark, running like a deer for the factory fence. When he climbed over
the top, they could just see that he had left his skirt behind.

“Well, this is a crazy ending for a sedate little class supper,”
declared Babe, sorrowfully inspecting a great tear in her lace-trimmed
skirt.

“Wasn’t it queer how, when you knew it was a man, you couldn’t hold so
tight?” questioned Christy Mason.

“We ought to have chased him,” cried Roberta, to the vast amusement of
the rest.

“It wouldn’t pay,” Betty put in, “for there’s nothing of value here
that he could take away, and nothing in the desk that any one would
want.” She stopped to examine it. “Why!” she cried in dismay. “It’s
been sawed off, all the top part, and put back again. Look, Madeline!”

Sure enough, the top of the desk had been sawed off just below the
drawers, and then cut into three sections, which had finally been laid
in place again, so that at first sight the damage would not be noticed.

“The vandal!” cried Madeline. “He’s ruined our prize feature. And what
was his idea? Oh, I see! He couldn’t find the springs, and this was his
hateful way of getting into the secret drawers. Do let’s count them.
Two--four--that’s all. Then there wasn’t another drawer filled with a
king’s ransom in pearls for him to make off with. That’s certainly a
relief.”

“Oh, Madeline, do tell us what you mean,” came with one voice from
the crowd of wide-eyed girls; and with many promptings from Betty
and Babbie Madeline told the story of the secret drawers through all
its exciting stages, ending with her theory of the hidden jewels as a
possible motive for all the queer robberies.

“But that was evidently a little too wonderful,” she added, “though for
that matter the real explanation may be even more remarkable. I await
suggestions.”

These came thick and fast, but the best one was from Christy Mason.
“Those papers that Betty found are very likely to be what they want to
decide the ownership of some big estate or valuable lands. Old wills
and deeds are often very important. But why don’t they ask for them,
instead of trying to steal them?”

Madeline stared. “That rubbish! Why I think I---- Well, it doesn’t
matter, because the waste-basket is as safe as any other place while
I’m away. When I packed to come up here I think I tossed them into it,
but I’m perfectly sure I didn’t empty the basket. I never do till it
overflows. I’ll rush off on the six ten to-morrow--no, this morning,
and I’ll telegraph you, Betty; Dick will know, or father’s lawyer, if
the papers are the prize package. Good-bye, all you dear old 19--’s.”

So 19--’s collective farewells were said amid wild excitement, and
half the class waited over to be at the Tally-ho next morning when
Madeline’s telegram was delivered: “Papers safe in waste-basket. Two
thousand dollars reward.”

This was thrilling, but tantalizingly incomplete; 19-- departed gaily
with its half-loaf, having made Betty promise to indite a round robin
to the class explaining the whole affair.

“For it’s very much our affair,” Christy declared. “And don’t you write
until you can explain every single thing, Betty.”

It was only a day later, as it happened, when Betty had the whole
story. It seemed that the deed signed by “Peter” and witnessed by
Robert Wales was wanted, exactly as Christy had guessed, to determine
the ownership of a property worth many millions; and the lawyers of the
rightful heirs had offered a large reward for its recovery. Meanwhile a
daring adventurer, who was trying to assert his claims to the estate,
had hired a disreputable detective agency to find and destroy the
deed. Their clever work had traced it to its strange hiding-place, and
they had made three desperate attempts to get hold of the paper. The
fact that Mr. Wales was a relative of the rightful heirs--Robert and
“Peter” were cousins--had made them suspect that his daughter would
know of the search for the paper and refuse to give it up; but they had
never guessed that the girls would have discovered and emptied the two
inner drawers, of the existence of which nobody else knew but their
client. “Mr. Smith” did not represent any Boston antique shop, and
his knowledge of old furniture was confined to an exhaustive special
course in the arrangement of sliding panels and secret springs. But
though this had failed him he was a resourceful sleuth, as is proven
by the fact that just an hour after Madeline had taken the papers to
Dick Blake he appeared at her studio apartment in the guise of the
building’s window cleaner; and it was due only to Madeline’s prompt
recognition of his resemblance to the lady in black of the night
before, that in less than an hour more he had been arrested, charged
with despoiling the Tally-ho desk and also with entering Betty’s room
in the little white house with intent to take the papers if he could
find them there. For Betty had gone home to discover her possessions in
great confusion, and Dorothy had told of waking up to find somebody in
their room who said she was the washerwoman waiting for Betty to come
and give her the clothes.

“And when I said ‘you’re not our wash-woman ’cause she’s Mrs. Gibbs,’
she said she was Mrs. Gibbs’ sister, and Mrs. Gibbs was sick. And then
I guess I was asleep again,” Dorothy ended comprehensively.

From Betty’s rooms Mr. Smith had returned empty-handed to the Tally-ho,
where he had previously succeeded in opening two drawers; and this time
he completed his search in the most conclusive fashion that occurred to
him by laying open the whole interior of the desk.

It was a detective story ready-made, Madeline declared, and promptly
wrote it up, only to have one editor tell her that it lacked reality
and the next assure her it was commonplace.

“You certainly never can tell how things will take,” complained
Madeline sadly. “That’s what Mr. Morton says. He’s as nearly cross
with you as he can be with his dear Miss B. A., because ‘those fool
splashers’ that he got some shop to order a few of are catching on so
splendidly. It’s certainly fortunate that Bob Enderby thought of the
patent, for it seems there’s a small fortune in ploshkins.”

“Betty Wales and Co.” had certainly enjoyed a successful year. Will’s
salary had been raised three times, and Nan had made a fine record and
been asked to take a party of girls abroad for the summer. But between
tea-shop, ploshkins, and “hidden treasure,” Betty was what Will called
“most disgustingly wealthy.” It was great fun to be able to rush down
town in Cleveland and buy the Japanese screens and the hammock that
mother wanted for the piazza of the little cottage they had taken for
the summer in a lake-side suburb. It was better still to be accepted
joyously as the family cook. Now that she had plenty of money in the
bank for summer clothes and other expenses, and a steady income from
ploshkins, it was not necessary to waste time counting up how much
her cooking saved the family. The only disappointment came when father
absolutely refused to take her “ready money,” after what he had said in
the fall about how every little would help.

“I can’t do that,” he told her, “and I don’t need to now. We’ve pulled
through the worst of our business trouble, though we shan’t be back on
Easy Street for a good while yet, I’m afraid.” And he sighed a little.

But Betty only laughed. “Who wants so particularly to be back on Easy
Street?” she demanded. “It’s fun to see what you can do when you try. I
like being part of Betty Wales and Co. I like being the cook. I shall
like helping in any other ways that turn up.” Betty smiled a little
far-away smile. “Lots of queer things have turned up this year. I
certainly do wonder what I shall get into next.”




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

On page 164, pigeon-holes has been changed to pigeonholes.

On page 249, Beldon House has been changed to Belden House.

On page 343, francticially has been changed to frantically.

All other spelling and hyphenation has been retained as typeset.

Illustrations occurring in the middle of a paragraph have been moved to
avoid interrupting the reader’s flow.