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.