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?”