CHAPTER XIX
THE AMAZING MR. SMITH AND OTHER
AMAZEMENTS
“RACHEL MORRISON? No, not yet, but she’s coming. Everybody’s coming.”
“K. Kittredge is as comical as ever. Ask her about her prize English pupil.”
“Do you know, you’re glad to see everybody these days. Why, Jean Eastman rushed up to me, and I fell upon her neck. Digs and freaks and snobs and all, they belong to 19— and the good old days.”
“Do you feel that way too? I wondered if any one else had noticed the horrid little changes. I suppose things will change, but I wish——”
“Nonsense! Look at this tea-shop. It’s a change all right, and for my part I don’t see how we should live without it.”
“Oh, but this is different. This is 19—’s very own.”
“Where’s Betty Wales, anyway? She’s so busy you can’t get within a mile of her.”
Thus 19—, over its ices in the Peter Pan Annex. The Tally-ho Tea-Shop was 19—’s headquarters, official and unofficial. There they breakfasted, lunched, tea-ed, and dined; there held informal “sings” and rallies, and there on the last evening of the festal week they were to eat their class supper. The tenth year class were to eat theirs in the loft. The fifteeners had engaged the first floor of the Peter Pan Annex, and the six graduates of the very oldest class were to lunch up in the top floor, among the tree-tops. No wonder that Betty was busy and had to be caught on the wing and forcibly detained by 19— friends. Commencement guests fairly beset the Tally-ho at meal-times. Between meals old girls and belated undergraduates thronged the tables. Betty could hardly believe her eyes when she counted up one day’s returns from the Peter Pan Annex. As for ploshkins, the first order had sold out almost before it was unpacked, and every class in college had wanted to adopt the ploshkin for its class animal. But Betty explained that 19— had already secured it.
Madeline had had that happy thought, of course, and Kate Denise, who was chairman of the supper committee, had capped it by ordering miniature ploshkins for favors and a mammoth one for a centerpiece. Then Madeline had written a ploshkin song which was so much cleverer than “The Bay Where the Ploshkin Bides,” that the Glee Club groaned with envy. There was also a 19— song called “Tea-Shop,” and one called “The House of Peter Pan,” so that Betty’s enterprises were much in the public eye, if she was not.
It was dreadfully hard to stick to work, when you knew that 19— was having a “Stunt-doers’ Meet” under the apple-trees on the back campus, or Dramatic Club’s Alumnæ tea, also with “stunts,” was on in the Students’ Building. The only consolation lay in the fact that your dearest friends calmly cut these surpassing attractions, to which some of them had traveled thousands of miles, just to sit by the cashier’s desk in the Tally-ho Tea-Shop, and talk to the cashier in her intervals of comparative leisure, waiting patiently while she made change, found tables for helpless or hurried customers, took “rush orders” to the kitchen when the waitresses were all too busy, and in general made things “go” in the steady, plodding, systematic fashion that her gay little soul loathed. But she realized that she had made a success of the Tally-ho just by keeping at it, and she was going home next week with little Dorothy and “money in her pocket,” in Will’s slangy phraseology, leaving Emily to take charge of the improvements which Madeline and Mr. Morton had planned on a scale of elegance that fairly took away Betty’s breath, and of the remnants of business that would be left when the hungry Harding girls had departed, and sleepy silence reigned on the deserted campus.
Eugenia Ford came in one afternoon early in commencement week, looking very meek and unhappy.
“I’m going home to-night. I was foolish to plan to stay over, but a senior I know asked me to, and I thought of course she meant it. And she only let me entertain her youngest brother part of one morning, and made me give her my ticket to the senior play.”
“What a shame!” Betty sympathized.
“But I was to blame. I was a goose,” Eugenia repeated. “I ought to have known that she only wanted to get something out of me. If I rush up to people all of a sudden, when I’ve never noticed them much before, I generally want to get something out of them. It’s naturally the same with other girls.”
Betty laughed. “Better stick to the ones who are always nice to you—your real friends,” she advised.
“But then you won’t get on,” objected Eugenia wisely. “They say you’ve got to scheme a lot to be in things here. You’ve got to make yourself known.”
“Why not just try to be worth knowing?” Betty suggested. “My friend Rachel Morrison was as quiet and—and—unpushing as could be, but she was so bright and nice and thoughtful for other people and so reliable that everybody wanted her for a friend.”
Eugenia sighed. “I’m not bright or thoughtful for others. I—oh, dear, this isn’t what I came to talk about, Miss Wales. I—I stopped to say good-bye to Dorothy. I—she—we made up. I mean—we hadn’t exactly quarreled, so we couldn’t exactly make up. But I felt so ashamed. Being mean to little girls makes you feel so ashamed—even if they don’t know about it. Miss Wales, I’ve heard about the dormitory for poor girls—Morton Hall. When I went home in the spring my father said that as far as he could see you’d taught me about all the sensible things I’d learned this year. He asked me what you’d like for a present. I couldn’t decide, but when I heard about the dormitory I wrote and asked him to send you a check for extra things, you know, for the furnishings, or to pay part of some girl’s board. I thought perhaps you’d rather have that—from us—than something for yourself.” She put three checks into Betty’s hand. “Two of my best friends sent the others. It was what they had left from their spring term allowances. Susanna would like hers to go for a picture in the house parlor. Molly doesn’t care.”
Eugenia rushed through all this information so fast that Betty had no chance to interrupt, and at the end she was speechless with surprise. She glanced at the checks. The smallest was for a hundred dollars. Together they would provide endless “extras” for Morton Hall, or help dozens of poor girls to make both ends meet.
“Oh, Eugenia, you are a dear,” she cried impulsively. “And your father is a dear too, and these other girls. But why not give it right to the college yourselves?”
“Because you’ll think of something nicer than they would to do with it. Anyway it’s a sort of a present to you—father’s part. You’re just to say it’s from friends of yours. We don’t want our names mentioned. You’re the one who put the idea into my head. We’re not doing it for anything but to please you, and Susanna and Molly because they liked the idea, and what was the use keeping over their allowances?”
Betty was glad of this explanation. She had tried to choke back an ugly little suspicion that this gift might be a part of Eugenia’s campaign to “make herself known,” by having her father’s name linked with Mr. Morton’s as a benefactor of Harding. Now she was reassured on that point, and she thanked Eugenia again, trying to make her feel how much the money would accomplish.
“I suppose that’s so,” Eugenia agreed, “and we shan’t any of us miss it. Lots of the girls could give away more than they do, Miss Wales, only they never think of it.”
“It’s the same way about helping the ones who are rather left out to have some good times,” Betty put in eagerly. “It doesn’t take much effort or time from your own fun, and it means such a lot to them.”
“Yes,” Eugenia agreed soberly. “I’m going to try to be more like that next year. It’s horrid to be as snippy as most of our crowd are. Some awfully nice girls are left out of things for one reason or another. We should all have more fun, I guess, if we all had it,” ended Eugenia rather obscurely. “Good-bye, Miss Wales, until next fall.”
Betty was wondering busily whether she should be back next fall, for mother had just written that father’s business was improving fast and that he hoped to have the family together again soon, when the supper committee appeared to inquire about the shape of the 19— table and to consult the president about the seating arrangements. Betty was deep in the problem of how to get all the speakers on one side of the table and yet not separate them from their friends, when a strange gentleman walked in and came straight up to Betty’s desk.
“Miss Wales?” he inquired in businesslike tones.
“I am Miss Wales.” Betty stood up behind the desk, and Kate Denise and the rest withdrew to a window until the man should have finished his business with Betty.
“My name is Smith,” he went on. “I represent Furbush, a Boston antique shop. You’ve heard of it, I presume?”
Betty had not heard of Furbush’s.
“Well, that’s not vital,” Mr. Smith told her smilingly, “because we buy on a cash basis, so it’s not a question of our credit. I should have said that I’m up here buying old furniture. I heard you had a rather good desk that you might like to sell, and some pieces of brass.”
“Yes, we have those things, but we don’t care to sell any of them,” Betty told him shortly. The idea of any one’s coming to buy the Tally-ho’s most prized features, and in commencement week too, when every minute was precious. Mr. Smith’s hand was on the desk, but now he looked down as if he had but just discovered the fact.
“Oh, this is the desk I was told about, isn’t it?” he said, and came around to Betty’s side to see it to better advantage. “It’s a good piece—a very good piece. I’ll give you a good price for it, Miss Wales. Just name your figure.”
“I couldn’t, for the desk belongs to the firm—the tea-shop firm,” Betty answered. “And if we should even decide to sell,—though I don’t think we shall—two friends of ours are ready to give us the full value of the desk.”
“Now what would you consider the full value of the desk, Miss Wales?” Mr. Smith asked, in a tone that was meant to be half persuasive and half scornful of Miss Wales’s knowledge of antiques.
“I don’t know exactly, and it doesn’t matter at all, because we don’t wish to sell the desk or anything else that we have.” Betty’s tone was meant to be wholly anxious for the immediate departure of the importunate Mr. Smith.
“I’ll give you four hundred dollars for that desk, Miss Wales. That’s about five times what you paid for it, I guess, and twice what your friends would give. Furbush’s can pay top prices for a thing they like, because their customers are the top-price sort.”
Betty was inwardly amazed, both at the sum Mr. Smith offered and at the accuracy of his guesses about the price Madeline had paid and the advance Mrs. Bob had offered. But she reflected that if Furbush’s, of which she had never heard, would pay four hundred dollars for the desk to-day they probably would pay that or nearly that later in the week. Babbie was off walking with Mr. Thayer, whom she was keeping very much in the background because only Betty and the other two B’s were to know of the engagement until class supper night, when Babbie meant to run around the table with the other engaged girls. And Madeline had not yet torn herself away from her beloved studio apartment, where her latest diversion was papering her study with “rejection slips” from over-fastidious editors. The desk certainly could not be sold at any price without Madeline’s consent. So in the face of Mr. Smith’s munificent offer, Betty preserved a stony silence which finally evoked a low whistle from that gentleman.
“All right,” he said, slipping his hand lovingly across the carved panels and the inlaid fronts of the little drawers. “If you feel that way about it, Furbush must do without. Now have you the same objections to selling me a cup of tea?”
“Certainly you can have tea here,” Betty told him. “If you will sit down at one of the tables you will be served directly.” Then she turned her attention to Kate and the others, and forgot all about Mr. Smith, who chose a retired nook in Flying Hoof’s stall, ordered tea with three kinds of sandwiches, pulled a book out of his pocket, and explained to the waitress that he liked to eat slowly and read, without being disturbed.
The supper committee worked out its seating plan and departed, highly indignant that Betty wouldn’t come up to the campus with them to pay calls on the lesser stars of the senior play cast, who were on exhibition in their make-ups.
“I’m lucky to get off to-night for the play,” Betty told them sternly, and in the pause before dinner she tried to concentrate her mind on preparing a menu for the next day. She needed to consult Bridget about several items, and as the tea-room was quite empty and she would only be gone a minute she slipped out without calling in Emily, who was busy in the kitchen, to take her place at the desk. When she came back she was startled to find her chair occupied by Mr. Smith, who had opened several drawers and was poking the fan-shaped panel, trying vainly to push it to one side. Betty stared at him for a moment in amazement, then she called out loudly, “I thought you had gone, Mr. Smith,” keeping meanwhile close to the kitchen door which separated her from Bridget, Nora, and Emily, for she had no idea what a man might do when you caught him robbing your desk.
But Mr. Smith was not even disconcerted. “Oh, no, Miss Wales,” he began easily. “Don’t you remember I haven’t paid for my grub? I’m not the sort of man to go off without paying my bill. I’d finished, and you weren’t here, so I was taking a last lingering look at your lovely desk. Seems to me as if there might be a secret drawer behind one of these panels.” He tapped the panels gently, one after another, with his knuckles.
“If we ever decide to sell you the desk, Mr. Smith, you can examine it as closely as you like,” Betty told him with dignity. “But now I must ask you to leave it alone.”
“Oh, very well,” Mr. Smith answered absently, still fingering the carved panel in the center.
As Betty watched him indignantly, a dreadful thought came into her head. The three checks that Eugenia had given her were on the desk. She had tucked them carelessly under the blotter, meaning to take them out again as soon as Kate and the others had gone. Betty did not stop to consider how useless they would be to Mr. Smith. She only reflected that he was certainly dishonorable, and probably dishonest, and that the checks were a sacred trust. Mr. Smith was absorbed in the arrangements of the desk. Betty slipped silently through the kitchen door and approached Bridget.
“I’m not sure, but I think there’s a burglar in there,” she whispered. “He’s at the desk, and he won’t get away from it. I want you to scare him into another part of the room, and then bar the door until I’ve found out whether or not he’s stolen anything. Do you understand?”
“Aisy,” returned Bridget calmly, wiping her hands on her apron, and seizing a poker and a rolling-pin she marched boldly into the tea-room.
“Scat!” she hissed into the ear of the astonished Mr. Smith, who jumped back like a frightened rabbit when he saw the poker and the rolling-pin brandished dangerously about his head. In a minute Bridget had him prisoned in Flying Hoof’s stall, in front of which she danced back and forth, waving her improvised weapons frantically.
“I’ve got him,” she called triumphantly to Betty. “An’ if he’s a burgular fur shure, I’ll kape him safe while Miss Emily do be runnin’ for the perlice.”
It took Betty only an instant to put her hand under the blotter, and there, just as she had left them, were the three checks.
“Oh, Bridget, he’s not a burglar,” she cried. “The money is here all right. Let him out the door. I’m sorry, Mr. Smith,” she added with dignity, “but you certainly acted like a thief, so you mustn’t blame me, since I knew that there was a large amount of money in the desk, for treating you like one.”
“Indade it’s a good whack yez desarve for troublin’ me lovely young ladies,” declared Bridget, reluctantly moving to one side to let her prisoner pass out.
Mr. Smith, scowling angrily, walked across to the desk that had been the cause of all the trouble, and threw down the slip Nora had given him and the change to pay it.
“It’s a pity if a gentleman can’t satisfy his idle curiosity about the date of an antique desk without being taken for a sneak thief,” he declaimed angrily, as he started off.
“It’s a pity when a gintlemin ain’t got enough bisniss of his own to mind so it’ll kape his nose out of other people’s private propity,” cried Bridget after him, and then she turned her attention to comforting Betty, who had been dreadfully frightened by the episode.
“I almost wish the desk was sold,” she declared with a sob in her voice. “It’s always making us trouble with its queer old secret drawers and the people that try to steal out of it—and don’t.”
“It’s a foine desk that burgulars can’t burgle, I’m thinkin’,” Bridget declared consolingly.
“But it attracts burglars,” Betty objected, “and being frightened is almost as bad as being really robbed.”
Madeline, who came that evening, fairly gloated in the mysterious robbery and the strange conduct of Mr. Smith. “It’s like living in a detective story,” she declared. “Mr. Smith was hunting for something, and so were the burglars,—something so valuable that they turned up their noses at six good round dollars. Those old papers can’t be valuable. Therefore it stands to reason that there must be something else in there that we haven’t found—jewels, maybe, worth a king’s ransom. As soon as I’ve embraced dear old 19—, I’ll have another hunt.”
But embracing dear old 19— was a more absorbing process than Madeline had counted it. Class supper night, the grand wind-up of Harding commencement, arrived, and she had not given another thought to the hidden treasure.