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.