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.
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.”
