CHAPTER XVIII
A ROMANCE AND A BURGLARY
“GOODNESS, but I’m glad I haven’t got to break the news to you that I thought I must,” Betty told Emily, when she appeared late in the afternoon. And then she broke the good news instead, and incidentally, now that the danger was all over, explained how nearly the tea-room had come to ruin. She was bursting to tell Emily, who would especially appreciate the idea, about the new dormitory; but the president of Harding must be the first one to hear that news. Betty left Emily in charge of the desk and hurried up to the campus. When she got back, after an altogether satisfactory interview, she found Nora watching in rapt admiration while Emily deftly mended a three-cornered tear in the new blue silk skirt that had been the pride of Nora’s heart.
“Shure an’ she’s a wonder with her needle,” Nora informed Betty, and never a word more did she say about her “notice.” It would indeed have been a callous person who could bring herself to leave the Tally-ho Tea-Shop just when something exciting was brewing there all the time. First there was the news of Jasper J. Morton’s munificent gift to the college. The president passed it on at once, so that almost before Betty was back at her desk Lucile Merrifield rushed in to ask for all the details.
“I hear you planned the whole thing,” she said, “and we all think it’s perfectly splendid. Why didn’t any one ever think of it before?”
Of course Betty disclaimed all credit for Mr. Morton’s gift, but it was no use, especially when his letter to the president was printed in the local newspapers. He referred that gentleman to Miss Wales “for any further ideas and for detailed suggestions, since it was she who first interested me in Harding College and who originated this particular form of benefaction.” Her real friends loved and respected her more than ever for her power to bring such good fortune to pass, and girls like Eugenia Ford were immensely impressed by her evident intimacy with the Mortons and her influence over a man who was noted for never taking advice from anybody.
“It just happened that I got mixed up in it,” Betty told Miss Ferris humbly. “But I am glad that now, when I have the least to give myself, some one that I know can do so much. I’ve remembered all this year what you told me last fall about helping in one way if you can’t in another. It’s worked pretty well.”
Just as the excitement about the dormitory was subsiding, Madeline stirred things up with a succinct telegram to Betty: “Arrived at last.”
Lucile and Polly and the Dutton twins happened to be breakfasting at the Tally-ho when it came, and Betty passed it over to them for opinions about its probable meaning.
“With her usual Bohemian extravagance she pays for seven words that she doesn’t send,” complained Lucile. “Let’s answer it, girls. What shall we say?”
“Which way were you going?” suggested Fluffy Dutton. “That’s to the point. And send it ‘C. O. D.’ Then she’ll be more explicit next time.”
“Not she,” objected Polly. “The charm of her is that she doesn’t know the meaning of explicitness. But we’ll send it ‘C. O. D.’ all the same, because we are all too poor to pay.”
Polly had not anticipated Madeline’s obvious revenge, which was to send a ninety word reply, unpaid, and addressed to “Lucile-Polly-Fluffy-Georgia, Belden House.” But she was quick to see her way out of the financial difficulty.
“Georgia didn’t do anything about sending it, so she pays,” she decreed; and Georgia accepted the decision with her customary bland cheerfulness, only demanding in return the ownership of the telegram, which would make a beautiful trophy for her “memorabil,” as the Harding girl calls her scrap-book filled with souvenirs of her college days.
The telegram was certainly a work of art and ingenuity, and it took art and ingenuity to understand it, with no punctuation marks and some words evidently invented by a despairing operator in a quandary over Madeline’s perfectly illegible handwriting. But the general drift was that Madeline had been “on the way to” utter despair,—because the heroine of her novel insisted on eloping with the villain instead of the hero—when she thought of making a story out of Patricia’s long-lost letters from “R.” While she was waiting for her effort to come back to her, as usual, she scribbled off a college tale about a girl who had a desk with a secret drawer and didn’t know it. The first story was accepted—and paid for—by the magazine that had been the goal of her ambitions all winter, and the other had brought her a contract for a dozen college stories to be written within a year, on terms that made a true Bohemian like Madeline feel fairly dizzy with sudden wealth.
This splendid sequel to the hunt for Eugenia’s theme reminded Betty of the papers which had filled her drawer, and which, in the rush of other excitements, she had quite forgotten. If they had anything to do with Patricia and “R.” perhaps Madeline might write a sequel to her first story and score another triumph. But examination proved that the nearest name to Patricia mentioned in them was prosaic Peter, and the only “R.” a Robert Wales who signed one of the papers in the minor rôle of witness for Peter’s signature. Betty was interested at discovering her surname; but prosy old documents make dull reading, even if witnessed by a possible ancestor. However, she finally sent them to Madeline, for, as she told Georgia Ames, you never can tell what a literary person will see in the most commonplace things.
Of course Madeline was overjoyed at the happy outcome of the Tally-ho’s crisis, and so was Babbie, who appeared in Harding with the very earliest signs of spring.
“Florida was duller than ever this year,” she told Betty. “I’ve left mother in Washington waiting for really warm weather, and I’ve come to see about my branch of the Tally-ho. I’m sure it needs my personal attention. Mr. Thayer certainly ought to give the poor stocking-makers ice-cream for staying in and learning their lessons now that it’s getting to be nice weather. You’re not a bit enterprising about working up business through the night-school, Betty.”
“I have to leave that to you,” Betty told her solemnly. “The regular affairs of the tea-shop, and Mr. Morton, are all that I can manage. The ploshkins will be here to-morrow in full force, and Mr. Morton has written to know if we can’t think of some small improvements that can be made next week during the spring vacation. He can’t bear to wait until summer for everything.”
“As if this place wasn’t just about perfect now!” said Babbie scornfully.
But Mary Brooks, appearing in the midst of the discussion, took a different view. “You’ve got to keep making them sit up and take notice of something new over and over and over,” she announced. “That’s business. The ploshkins will do for one thing, but if the Morton millions are fairly languishing to be wasted on this property, you ought to be able to think of some features to spend them on. Just wait a minute—I have it—a tea-garden! Pagoda effects scattered over the side yard. Lattice work, and thatched roofs, Japanese screens to keep out the sun and the stares of the gaping crowd, and lanterns for evenings. I’m sure it would take.”
“It’s commonplace compared to what I’ve thought of,” declared Babbie proudly. “What we want is a Peter Pan Annex in our elm trees. I presume you’ve never been to the original Café Robinson, Mary, but we have, and it’s way beyond any tea-garden.”
Betty was in the window, peering out at the Harding elm trees.
“We could,” she declared. “I always wondered how those two trees happened to be so close together, and now it seems like fate that they’re exactly right for a Café Robinson.”
“And easily tall enough for three stories,” cried Babbie, joining her.
“We mustn’t forget the big one-two-three signs for the stories,” chimed in Betty excitedly.
“Nor the basket to pull up with the extra things,” added Babbie.
“We’ll tell Nora to have some extra things in every order so they can all have the fun of hauling up the basket.”
“The view will be perfectly lovely from the top,” declared Babbie. “And isn’t it fine that our trees are in such a sheltered place, behind the little white house?”
Betty nodded. “If Bob were here she’d shin up to the top this very minute and tell us what you can see.”
“But Babe will surely say she likes the second story best, because she and John made up their quarrel in the second story,” laughed Babbie; and then they settled down to telling the bewildered Mary about the house-in-the-trees café that they had discovered near Paris, and how the going-away party held there for Madeline had developed into an announcement party for Babe. And of course Mary agreed that a Peter Pan Annex was the only thing for the Tally-ho Tea-Shop.
“And as Madeline won’t let me call my night-school a branch of the business, I shall write her how I thought up this,” Babbie declared. “I will also hunt up that comical carpenter that Madeline had such times with last fall, and show him how to build it.”
Now carpentry and the supervision of carpentry are no work for a woman; and the Tally-ho’s trees were in plain sight from Mr. Thayer’s office windows. So it was only natural, when Babbie’s slender figure appeared on the lawn for the purpose of supervision, that Mr. Thayer should join her for the purpose of applying an understanding masculine intelligence and a firm masculine will to the direction of the thickest-headed carpenter imaginable. Babbie had a careless fashion of running out on the rawest day without a wrap. This made it all the more necessary for Mr. Thayer to come over, bringing his sweater to throw across her shoulders.
“I saw your Cousin Austin at Palm Beach,” Babbie had explained shortly after her arrival in Harding, “and then at St. Augustine. At Miami he took us on the loveliest cruise, and I drove his car at sixty miles an hour on the beach at Ormond. It was ripping fun. Not many men will risk your losing your head and smashing them up.”
“And don’t you ever lose your head?” inquired Mr. Thayer blandly.
“Not over your Cousin Austin,” said Babbie, with a flash of a smile.
After that Mr. Thayer came oftener and stayed longer. Babbie assured Betty and Emily Davis that they had no idea how complicated a Peter Pan Annex seemed to an untraveled carpenter of Harding.
“We’re so afraid it won’t have the real French air,” she said. “That’s why we spend such ages in staring at it from all possible angles.”
“And then it must be perfectly secure,” she explained on another occasion, just after she and Mr. Thayer had sat for almost an hour in the top story, among the branches that now made a most beautiful feathery screen. “Think how horrible it would be if the railing was too low and some silly little freshman fell out, or if the floor wasn’t strong enough and gave way. Mr. Thayer knows all about such things. He’s taking a lot of interest. We never could have done it properly except for him.”
But in spite of the accommodating slowness and stupidity of the untraveled carpenter, the Peter Pan Annex was finished at last.
“I’m a candidate now for the Perfect Patron’s Society,” Mr. Thayer told Betty, “so I want to give an opening-day tea up on the top floor for all the owners, managers, assistant managers, and small sisters. It’s to be this afternoon at four. I also want another stocking factory party, and hadn’t we better get it off our hands early, before commencement begins to loom up ahead?” Mr. Thayer looked very hard at Betty. “I suppose you are terribly busy?”
“Terribly,” returned Betty gravely, “but I think Babbie will help.”
Babbie would not.
“I’m going to your Cousin Austin’s Adirondack camp,” she explained, “to see spring come in the woods. Mother is the chaperon, and I have an awful suspicion that I am a sort of guest of honor. Anyway, the spring part of it appeals to me. And secondly, mother has been solemnly promised a reunion with her long-lost daughter.”
Later in the day Babbie, in a kimono, which is the attire of confidential intercourse, complained that “Mummy was as bad as Margot about a multi-millionaire,” and that she hated the woods in spring; they were always hot, and smoky from forest fires, there was no shade and no shooting, and the canoes leaked from being dry all winter.
“Moreover,” added Babbie wearily, a “so-called camp, with a butler and three other men, and a sunken garden, is going too much for me. But when mummy really insists, the laws of the Medes and Persians aren’t in it.” She gave a funny little mirthless laugh. “I suppose one ought to be very sure that one isn’t foolishly prejudiced against the popular idea of the idle rich.”
So Emily planned the factory party with much energy and originality, and Mr. Thayer was duly grateful. But his rare smile came only when Betty showed him a note from Babbie, inquiring carefully about the date of the party and stating in a postscript, with vehement underlining, that she never wanted to see spring come in anybody’s woods again.
“There are mosquitoes, and other things much worse,” ended Babbie enigmatically, with the blackest possible lines under the last two words.
“Suppose you let me write her about the date of the party?” suggested Mr. Thayer. “Then you needn’t bother.”
Evidently the change in correspondents did not displease Babbie seriously, for she was back on the appointed day, with a bewitching smile, flashed out from beneath a bewitching hat, for all her stocking factory friends, including Mr. Thayer. The party was a sort of spring fête held out on the grounds of the factory, in the late afternoon and early evening. There were folk dances in costume, national songs, and old-country games. Emily had made all the guests feel a tremendous pride in doing whatever they could to entertain the rest, and everything, from the Irish bag-pipe music to the Russian mazurkas, went off with great spirit.
It was while Jimmie O’Ferrel was dancing a jig with all his might and main, and with all eyes fastened upon his flying feet, that Betty, happening to glance across the grounds, saw a bewitching hat slip swiftly from the fence top down on the tea-shop side. But she had no proof that Mr. Thayer was concerned in the disappearance of the hat, until the smallest sister sought her out importantly, a little later.
“Do you want to know what I think?” she asked. “Well, I think Babbie and Mr. Thayer are in love.”
“Why do you think that?” asked Betty laughingly.
“Because,” explained Dorothy, “I ran up in the Peter Pan Annex just now to see how small people look ’way down here from ’way up there, and I jumped ’most out of my skin ’cause there those two sat. They never saw me at all, and he had his arm around her and she didn’t care. She was smiling about it. So I came straight away. Was that right?”
“Of course,” laughed Betty. “You hadn’t been invited.”
“I was invited to Mr. Thayer’s party, though,” objected Dorothy, “and now he isn’t here. He’s over at our house. That’s queer.”
Up in the Peter Pan Annex Mr. Thayer was saying to Babbie, “I must go back before any one misses me.”
“I can’t go back,” said Babbie sadly. “I tore my dress dreadfully getting over the fence. You shouldn’t have made me do it.”
“I didn’t make you,” retorted Mr. Thayer. “I particularly advised you to go around.”
“Exactly,” agreed Babbie, “and that made me want to go over. Dear me! Do you suppose we shall ever really quarrel on account of my not wanting to give in to your chin?”
“No, because I shall always want to give in to yours,” Mr. Thayer told her.
“But I shouldn’t let you give in always,” declared Babbie. “I should take turns giving in.”
“Don’t say ‘should,’” objected Mr. Thayer. “Say ‘shall.’ Haven’t we settled it?”
“Of course.” Babbie gave a comical little sigh. “It feels so queer to be settled—and so very nice. Now go back to your party, and I’ll get Nora to lend me some pins so I can go back too. Oh, and we’ll tell Betty, shan’t we, right away?”
Under the circumstances Betty wasn’t extremely surprised, but she was extremely pleased.
“Now our tea-room is as successful as the famous one that belonged to the cousins of the girl who lives over Mrs. Bob,” she laughed. “It has produced an engagement, and a literary career to match the artist person’s.”
Babbie frowned. “You mustn’t leave yourself out, Betty. You’re mixed up in everything, and I don’t believe that other tea-room was half as nice as this or made half as much money.”
“Neither do I,” agreed Betty happily. “I’m perfectly satisfied with my profits, though they’re not so extraordinary as yours and Madeline’s. Every morning when I unlock the door I’m in such a hurry to look in and see that everything is all right and all here. It’s so pretty and I love it so, that I’m afraid it will vanish some night like a fairy palace.”
It was odd that the very next morning when Betty unlocked the door, she should find that some marauder had been there before her. She had locked her desk the night before, as she always did. But during the night the lid had been forced back, the papers in the pigeonholes tossed out on to the floor, the drawers opened and emptied.
Her face was white and frightened as she rushed over to find Babbie, who was staying in the little white house this time.
“The tea-room has been robbed!” she gasped. “Come over there, quick.”
Babbie, who always breakfasted late, was pinning her collar, and she gave a start that jabbed the pin straight into her thumb. “Ouch, but that hurt!” she groaned. “What did they take?”
“I was so frightened I didn’t stop to see. I thought they might be hiding in the loft.”
Babbie dropped a skirt over her head, and started down the stairs, hooking it up as she ran.
“They wouldn’t do that. They’d want to escape in the dark,” she called back encouragingly.
But at the door of the tea-shop she paused. “There is something moving up there,” she whispered cautiously. “See! Over in that corner by the curtain.”
Betty couldn’t see anything moving, but when Babbie started in a hasty retreat toward the little white house she banged to the big door and followed. Just then Bridget came waddling breathlessly up the hill.
“Wat’s up now, Misses?” she called. “Why are yez afther shuttin’ of me out?”
Bridget’s fat figure was very reassuring. Simultaneously Betty and Babbie ran toward it, gasping out the news.
“COME ALONG NOW”
“In the loft? Well, we’ll finish ’em thin.” Bridget seized a brass-handled poker, the latest addition to the tea-shop’s stock of antiques. Then she laid it down again, carefully removed her neat black bonnet, and as carefully laid it on a table. “No use of spilin’ that in a fight. Come along now wid yez,” she ordered.
Betty seized an umbrella that some one had opportunely left in a corner, and Babbie chose as weapon a tall brass candlestick. Then the procession started, Bridget waddling and wheezing in front, Betty, still white with terror, following, and Babbie, beginning to smile again at the absurdity of the search, bringing up the rear. But they hunted conscientiously, exploring every hiding-place into which a man could possibly squeeze himself and some that would have cramped a self-respecting cat.
“They ain’t here at all,” announced Bridget at last, removing her eye from a knot-hole in the wall into which she had been spying laboriously, and standing upright with more puffings and pantings. “It’s downstairs we go. Thim stalls are foine for burgulars, and mebbe they’re in me kitchen this minute, ating up me angil-food that ’ud riz light as a feather. Oh me, oh me.”
“They aren’t here now. I’m sure they’re not,” protested Babbie. “Think how absurd it would be for a burglar to hide in here, just waiting around to be caught. I’m going to see what we’ve lost.”
Bridget persisted in completing her search, and Betty would not desert her. But when the fat cook was satisfied and had sat down to fan herself into a semblance of calmness that would make possible the successful cooking of waffles for the “Why-Get-Up-to-Breakfast Club,” Betty joined Babbie, and together they straightened out and looked over the papers from the desk.
“There’s nothing gone. Of course they wouldn’t want grocer’s bills, even if they were receipted,” Betty declared. “But I left six dollars and thirty cents all rolled up in one of the top drawers. Emily forgot it when she went to the bank. I suppose they’ve got that.”
“Drawer wide open, and one—five—yes, six dollars and thirty cents all here,” Babbie reported. “That’s very queer. Burglars that hunt as hard as this and then don’t take the money when they find it are certainly particular. Well, did they like our old brasses, I wonder, or our plated silver spoons?”
But the candlesticks—except the one Babbie had seized upon—and the Flemish lamps were all in place. The gargoyles grinned serenely from their accustomed niches. The silver drawer had not been tampered with. In the kitchen the angel-food was just as Bridget had left it.
“It’s a mystery,” declared Babbie at last, “a thrilling and impenetrable mystery. When do burglars not burgle?”
“When they are frightened off,” answered Betty prosaically.
“But it wouldn’t have taken a second to dip out that money,” Babbie objected. “It was all mussed up, so some one’s hand must have been in there, since you left it in a roll——”
“Yes, in a tight little wad,” put in Betty.
“And that some one could have pulled back his hand full just as quickly as empty,” Babbie went on. “I tell you it’s a horrible mystery. I’m going to ask Robert to come over this minute and see about it.”
Meanwhile Emily, who had been doing the day’s marketing, arrived; but neither she nor Mr. Thayer could solve the “thrilling, impenetrable, horrible” mystery, though Mr. Thayer found “jimmy” marks on the shed door, and that, as Betty said, proved beyond a doubt that the burglars had been the real thing.
“Real, but very eccentric,” laughed Emily. “Let’s hope that all the Tally-ho’s burglars will belong to the same accommodating tribe.”
