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.