CHAPTER XVII
A MAGNATE TO THE RESCUE
EMILY DAVIS had expected to go to work the day that the dinners began, but when she tried her strength she found it much less than she had thought. She sat at the cashier’s desk until two o’clock, and then Betty, noticing how pale and miserable she looked, insisted on her giving up and going home to rest.
“I’ll manage some way,” she assured her new assistant hopefully. “And you’ll most certainly catch your never-get-over if you sit here with all the draughts blowing on you, when you’re not well enough to be up.”
“A stove doesn’t give a very even heat, does it?” said Emily wanly. “I’m warm all but one side.”
“A stove,” said Betty with feeling, “is a relic of the barbaric ages. So are kerosene lamps. Running this place without the stove and the lamps would be simply blissful. I should feel like a robber when I took my salary.”
“You shall have a chance to feel that way just as soon as I begin to earn mine,” Emily assured her. “I hate to leave you to-day, but——”
“Run along,” Betty broke in. “I shall need you a lot more after Nora is gone.”
But her resolute hopefulness turned to blank dismay when the newly engaged waitress, who had seemed so promising, sent word that she had sprained her ankle. Nora’s regular assistant was a stout, stupid girl, who could be trusted only with simple orders and unexacting customers. Betty went over the names of the girls who had engaged stalls, found no unexacting ones among them, promptly arrayed herself in one of the caps that Nora scorned and an apron, sent the stupid waitress after a stupid friend who could probably make change correctly, and planned a division of work with Nora, who was frankly horrified at her mistress’s new rôle.
“But the first night must be a success, Nora,” Betty explained. “I’ll stay in the kitchen getting orders ready for Mary Jones as long as I dare. But when she begins to look wild-eyed and distracted, I shall put her in the kitchen, and come out myself. It’s the only way to have things go off well.”
By half-past six the tea-shop was crowded. Betty, peeping in through the kitchen door, was relieved to find very few of her particular friends among the diners. She hoped that nobody would exclaim over her new departure or stop her to demand explanations. She had a presentiment that if any one did she was going to feel, as Nora declared she ought, “most awful queer.”
Eugenia’s arrival occurred at an unlucky moment, when Nora was too busy to attend to her, and Betty decided that her time had come. After the first plunge, past Eugenia’s blank, unrecognizing stare and through a little flurry of amused nods and puzzled glances from other girls who knew her, it wasn’t so bad. Except Eugenia’s party, nobody who gave her orders neglected to hail her and condole over Emily’s grippe and the new waitress’s ankle. Betty soon got into the spirit of the occasion, thoroughly enjoying everything but the many trips to Eugenia’s stall, with its hedge of pompous dignity. She was on her way out to the kitchen with a big trayful of dishes, when the door opened and in strode an elderly gentleman, with a militant air and keen gray eyes that twinkled merrily under his bushy eyebrows, as he closed the door with a terrific bang and looked eagerly about him from one absorbed group of diners to another. But a man is a novelty in Harding, and this particular man would have attracted attention anywhere; in an instant he was the centre of interest; in another he had discovered Betty and she had discovered him.
“Well, Miss B. A.!” he called out gleefully, quite oblivious of the staring crowd of girls. “Put down that tray and come and shake hands. Didn’t expect to see me to-night, did you? Well, I was almost up here, and I’d promised myself that some time this winter I’d investigate Harding College, so I seized the opportunity. I telegraphed the little tomboy that John’s so fond of to meet me and help show me around. Haven’t seen her, have you?”
“No, I haven’t, Mr. Morton,” Betty told him—for of course the noisy intruder was none other than Jasper Jones Morton, the Elusive Magnate of the European trip. “And I’m afraid she won’t come, because I had a letter from her yesterday saying that she was in bed with a cold.”
Jasper J. Morton’s smile clouded. “Too bad, too bad,” he muttered. “She’ll be disappointed. She likes going off on trips with me. We’ll have to send her a consolation present to-morrow. You’ll know what she’d like. Now, Miss B. A., I want some dinner at this famous tea-shop, and I want you to sit down and eat with me and tell me all about the business.” Mr. Morton threw back his head and laughed, as if he thought Betty Wales in business at the Tally-ho Tea-Shop the very best joke in the world.
Betty led him to a little table in a corner, that had opportunely been left vacant by two girls who were hurrying off to a senior play rehearsal. “But I can’t sit with you,” she explained, “because I’m waiting on people to-night. The regular waitress has sprained her ankle.”
“There’s one.” Mr. Morton waved his hand imperiously at Nora. “She can manage somehow. Sit down.”
But Betty was firm. She explained that the dinners were a new departure, that she was particularly anxious for every one to go away satisfied with the food and the service, and finally she promised to wait on Mr. Morton herself, and to come and talk to him later, when the crowd had thinned. Then she flew to the kitchen after Eugenia’s salads.
Mr. Morton watched her pick up the heavy tray. “Bless me, but she’s a worker!” he muttered audibly, to the vast amusement of two freshmen at the next table. “I supposed from what the little tomboy said that she was playing at business, but it seems she’s in earnest. How I do like to see people in earnest!”
When Eugenia Ford had finished her dinner, she intercepted Betty in a flying trip to the kitchen after a forgotten cup of coffee. “Isn’t that Mr. Jasper J. Morton of New York?” she asked. “I thought it must be, and so did Mr. and Mrs. Valentine, Susanna’s mother and father. They know him very well, but of course he won’t expect to see them here. Would you mind taking us over to speak to him? Why didn’t you tell me you knew the Mortons?”
“Why should I have told you that?” demanded Betty calmly. “The subject never came up. John Morton is engaged to one of my best friends.”
“Really!” Eugenia’s face was a study. “Well, come over and meet the Valentines.”
“Not till I’ve brought Dickie Drake’s coffee. Just a second, Dickie.” And she was off. It was a master-stroke on Betty’s part, to cap the information about the Mortons by showing her intimacy with Dickie Drake, who was a most exclusive senior. It was one thing to speak of her as Dickie—all the college did that—and quite another to address her directly by her nickname. But Betty was not trying to impress Eugenia—which was the reason why she succeeded so perfectly then and a moment later, when, having been duly introduced to the Valentines, she convoyed them and Eugenia across to Mr. Morton’s table.
“Friends of yours, Miss B. A.?” he inquired in a dreadfully loud whisper. “Friends of mine! Nonsense—merest acquaintances. Well, tell me their names again, and then bring ’em along. How do you do, Mrs. Valentine? Mr. Valentine, how are you? Your daughter—this one, no, that one—and Miss Force. Very glad to see so many New Yorkers, I’m sure. Miss B. A., don’t forget that I’m waiting for you. I hate to be kept waiting, but you’re one of the people that are worth waiting for. Do I know your father, Miss Force? It’s quite possible. I know so many people in one way and another that it takes several secretaries to keep me posted on the subject. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to my dinner, which is too good to let cool.”
Whereupon the “very wealthy” Valentines and “Miss Force” departed, and Jasper J. Morton chuckled to himself as he wondered if they had noticed that what he had left on his plate to cool was tomato salad. He had reached his coffee before Betty came to keep him company. She wasn’t hungry, she explained; she had snatched her dinner bit by bit between-times; but Mr. Morton insisted upon her beginning all over again and “eating like a Christian,” telling her meanwhile the latest news of John’s senior honors at Harvard, of which he was absurdly proud, and of the house he was building as a surprise for Babe, next to his own stately summer home.
“Now tell me all about yourself,” he commanded, when Betty finally declared that she couldn’t and wouldn’t eat anything more. “Are you well, and are you happy? It’s no use asking if your business is a success, after watching this evening’s crowd eat. But I’m afraid you’re overworked. Next time you’re shy a waitress just telephone me and I’ll have one sent up from New York in short order. But if she doesn’t get here soon enough, why, let ’em sit a while. Or let ’em run out and help themselves. The help-yourself style of restaurant is getting to be very popular. Now how about your latest ‘benevolent adventures’?”
Betty told him about the factory’s club-house, and promised to take him to see it in the morning, after they had been to chapel and made a tour of the campus. Mr. Morton watched her closely while she talked.
“You’re not happy, Miss B. A.,” he said at last. “You’ve got something on your mind. You don’t laugh right out the way you did last summer, and you were thinking about something else while I told you about the little tomboy’s new house. Out with it now; what’s the trouble?”
“Nothing,” Betty assured him.
“You say that very much as if you didn’t mean it, my dear young lady,” Mr. Morton told her.
“Well, nothing that I want to tell you then,” Betty amended, with her flashing smile. “You’ll want to do something about it and I don’t think you can—anyway I don’t want you to try, and you’ll only get awfully——”
“Mad,” put in Mr. Morton grimly. “Well, then you’ll have a chance to smooth me down the way you did last summer. You can do that, but you can’t get out of telling me what’s worrying you.”
So Betty told the whole story, beginning with Mr. Harrison’s unexpected visit and ending with Madeline’s hurried one. She explained why she had begun so suddenly with the dinners, and how unfortunate it was that there would be no time to sell the ploshkins, of whose charms she gave a lively description. She accounted for her disappointment purely on the ground of not wishing to have the Tally-ho Tea-Shop cease at the height of its success, saying nothing about the little sister, her responsibility for Emily, or the low ebb of her own finances. But just as she had predicted, Mr. Morton flew into a rage at once. Why hadn’t she written him to come and interview that rascal Harrison? Why had she gone into business in the first place without his advice and help? Where was the scamp’s office? If he did not meet his engagement to go to chapel with her the next morning she would know what had detained him.
“But, Mr. Morton, Mr. Harrison isn’t in town just now,” Betty expostulated, not thinking it necessary to add that Mr. Harrison’s absence was the chief reason why she had not absolutely refused to confide in Mr. Morton.
“That may be,” Mr. Morton sputtered, “but he is somewhere on this side of the globe, isn’t he? He hasn’t dropped off the earth, and presumably he can be reached by wire or wireless, can’t he? You go to bed and to sleep, Miss B. A. I’ll settle this scamp Harrison.”
“But Mr. Morton——” Betty began, only to be majestically waved into silence.
“I admire your independence. I always admire independence. But in this case it’s absurd. I won’t call this man Harrison a scamp to his face, Miss B. A.; I give you my word I won’t. But I’ll bring him to terms, or my name’s not J. J. Morton. You see, Miss B. A., in a case like this my name is a pretty valuable asset. It will scare him a good deal when he finds who’s back of this tea-shop that he thought was run by a parcel of little girls.”
Next morning the chapel bell was tolling and the last stragglers were hurrying up the hill, hoping to slip in before the doors were closed, when a carriage drove up to the Tally-ho and Jasper J. Morton, descending from it, beckoned wildly to Betty to come out.
THEY INTERCEPTED THE PRESIDENT
“I don’t want to miss seeing this famous chapel service,” he called, as Betty, who had been watching for him by a window, appeared. “I’ve done your business, Miss B. A. I routed out the agent, got this Harrison’s address, and”—he chuckled reminiscently,—“in three minutes by long distance the whole thing was arranged. The rent and the agent go on just as usual. The agent will bring you a contract, made out for as long as you like. There will be no rent this summer while the place is closed for needed repairs. Is this the right way to chapel? Come on then.”
The portly form of Jasper Jones Morton barely squeezed through the chapel door as it slid shut, and he and Betty dropped breathlessly into the back row of seats.
“I like to accomplish what I set out to,” he murmured under cover of the opening chant. “And I’d like to meet the president of the college some time when it’s convenient.”
So they intercepted the president when chapel was over, and the president insisted upon personally conducting so distinguished a financier as Jasper Jones Morton over his domain. Jasper Jones Morton beamed upon the president and upon every inch of the domain, and he made ostentatious notes of the president’s unostentatious hints regarding the needs of the college.
He went over these later, as he devoured an early luncheon by the fire in the Tally-ho. “Now, shall I build them a library annex, or a greenhouse, or a dormitory?” he demanded. “I couldn’t give him any idea what to expect until I’d seen you.”
“I wish you could build a dormitory for girls who can’t pay the regular price for board,” said Betty impulsively. “They have to live so far off and in such horrid little places——”
“Exactly.” Mr. Morton cut her short. “Don’t I know? Have I forgotten the holes I’ve boarded in? Now of course I’ll put up that kind of dormitory, with an endowment to cover the expense of running it. You’ve got nerve, Miss B. A. That gift will cost at least twice what the others would.”
Betty only laughed, for she was very sure that Mr. Morton did not care what his gift to Harding cost. Besides she was too happy about the Tally-ho’s rent to worry about anything else.
“Now if you have that decided, please tell me how you managed Mr. Harrison,” she begged. “I may have to manage him some time myself, when you’re too far away——”
“No you won’t,” Mr. Morton interrupted with decision. “I have just one rule, Miss B. A., for the treatment of scoundrels: Eliminate them. I applied the rule this morning in the simplest way that occurred to me, by buying this property.”
“So you’re our landlord now!” gasped Betty.
“I am,” Mr. Morton assured her. “Just as soon as the college closes I want this tea-room to close too, so that I can install decent up-to-date systems of lighting and heating and make any other improvements that you or the artistic young lady named—thank you, yes, Ayres, can suggest. Remember I hate half-way measures. I want my building to be the finest quarters for a tea-shop in the whole U.S. Then I guess, when you are tired of running the place—or I might say anxious to try your hand at running some lucky young man—why, you won’t have any trouble in finding a successor.”
“Oh, Mr. Morton,” sighed Betty reproachfully, “you shouldn’t have done it. Really you shouldn’t.”
“You certainly didn’t encourage me at all,” Mr. Morton told her, “so you needn’t feel in the least responsible. By the way, send me a sample of that plasher-thing that you’re having made in plaster. If those fool images sell here, I don’t see why they shouldn’t make good in New York. And tell the president what we’ve decided about the dormitory. Tell him to write me if he favors the idea, and I’ll send a check. Good-bye.”
“You must wait till I’ve thanked——” began Betty.
“Miss B. A.,” broke in Mr. Morton sternly, “don’t you know me well enough yet to know that the thing I detest most in this world is to be thanked?”
