“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

BETTY WALES
& CO.

A STORY FOR GIRLS

by

MARGARET WARDE

AUTHOR OF

BETTY WALES FRESHMAN
BETTY WALES SOPHOMORE
BETTY WALES JUNIOR
BETTY WALES SENIOR
BETTY WALES B.A.

ILLUSTRATED BY
EVA M NAGEL

THE PENN
PUBLISHING COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA
MCMIX

COPYRIGHT
1909 BY
THE PENN
PUBLISHING
COMPANY

INTRODUCTION

Many of the girls who will read this book have already made the acquaintance of Betty Wales, and know all about her adventures at Harding College, from her rollicking freshman days to the time when she was a “grave and reverend senior”—and was always being mistaken for a freshman, nevertheless. Mary Brooks graduated from Harding a year before Betty, and she always considered that this gave her the privilege of patronizing her friends in 19—, Betty’s class. Madeline joined 19— in its sophomore year, and Babbie Hildreth (she and her friends Babe and Bob were known collectively as the three B’s) was another of the shining lights of that famous class. She and Madeline and Betty planned the tea-room, though only in fun, during a trip abroad that came as a grand finale to their college days. You can read all about that in “Betty Wales, B. A.,” which also tells about Mary Brooks’s “impromptu” wedding. But you will have to go back to “Betty Wales, Senior,” to find out how Mary’s “little friends” discovered that she was interested in Professor Hinsdale. There are a lot of other things that you will want to know about Betty and her friends—if you like them—in “Betty Wales, Freshman,” “Betty Wales, Sophomore,” and “Betty Wales, Junior.”

Margaret Warde.

CONTENTS

Illustrations

Betty Wales & Co.

Betty Wales & Co.

CHAPTER I
UNPLEASANT DISCOVERIES

“The very loveliest part of going abroad is coming home again!” laughed Betty Wales, trying to kiss her mother, hug the smallest sister, and rush into her father’s outstretched arms all at one and the same minute. Fortunately Will and Nan had had their turns at the station, and the smallest sister’s kitten had run away at the critical moment; otherwise matters would have been hopelessly complicated.

“I hope you’ll always feel just that way, dear,” said Mrs. Wales.

“We’re mighty glad to have you back, child,” added father, with a queer little catch in his merry voice.

“Have you got anything for me in your trunk, Betty?” demanded the smallest sister, who was a very practical young person.

“Lots of things, dear,” Betty assured her gaily, “and something for the kitten, even if she isn’t here to say ‘how do you do’ to me.”

“We’ll have dinner first,” mother insisted laughingly.

“And then we’ll all sit around in an expectant circle and watch Betty unpack,” added Nan.

“I’ve stopped being expectant since I’ve heard the news,” put in Will. “She’s brought back money. How’s that, dad, for one of the Wales family?”

“Well, there weren’t any emergencies,” Betty explained earnestly. “So of course I could save my emergency fund.”

“Seeing something that she wants in a store-window is Nan’s definition of an emergency,” declared Will.

“What’s yours?” retorted Nan. “Besides, haven’t I turned over a new leaf this month, and isn’t it this very next week that I’m to begin earning my own bread and butter and jam?”

“What do you mean, Nan?” demanded Betty in amazement.

“Oh, your college course and your trip abroad have bankrupted father,” laughed Nan; and then, seeing Betty’s expression of genuine distress, “No, dear, only we are an expensive family and hopelessly extravagant, as Will says, and times are bad. Anyway I’m tired of rushing around, studying and traveling and amusing myself. So when two of the girls in my class, who have a school in Boston, offered me a job, I jumped at it. Don’t you think I’m likely to make a stunning school-ma’am?”

“Of course,” Betty assured her promptly. “You’re so bright. But I thought you hated Boston, and you always said that Ethel was so silly to drudge at teaching when she didn’t need to.”

“But can’t I change my mind?” asked Nan gaily.

“I suppose so.” Betty looked in a puzzled way around the family group. “Only——”

“Only dinner is ready,” suggested mother again; and all through the meal the talk was about Betty’s voyage home, with its exciting storm, and her visit to Harding, with Georgia’s gargoyle party and Mary Brooks’s absurd methods of housekeeping as main features of interest. The minute dinner was over the smallest sister caught Betty around the waist, and whispered something in her ear.

“All right, dear,” Betty promised. “You shan’t have to wait another minute to see what I’ve brought you.” And they all, except Will and Mr. Wales, who preferred the library and the evening papers, adjourned to Betty’s room to help unpack.

“Such a mess!” she sighed, as she uncovered the top tray. “You see I took out some things on shipboard, and then Mary and Roberta and Bob and Georgia all wanted to see what we’d brought home, and of course I was in too much of a rush to put things back straight. Besides, it wasn’t worth while to be particular, when all my clothes need mending or pressing or something. Move back, little sister, so I can have room for the Katie pile. It’s going to be about all Katie pile, I’m afraid.”

“Is the Katie pile what you want Katie to fix in the sewing-room?” inquired the smallest sister. “Because we haven’t got Katie any more, so you’ll have to call it something else.”

“Haven’t got Katie any more!” Betty’s face wore an expression of blank amazement. “Has Katie left?”

“I thought we could get on without her,” Mrs. Wales explained hastily. “I have so little to do, now that my girls are all grown up. Dorothy is going to help me mend stockings this winter, aren’t you, dear?”

The smallest sister nodded impressively. “I’ll help you mend your Katie pile too, Betty. Katie has gone to the Elingwoods’ to live, and she likes it, but she says it’s not the same thing, and when times are better she’ll be glad of it, because then she’ll come right back here.”

“You see it’s this queer horrid panic, Betty,” Nan explained. “Father hasn’t actually lost much, I imagine; but business is bad, and so we’re trying to economize.”

“And you never told me!” Betty looked reproachfully at her mother.

Mrs. Wales laughed. “No, dear. Why should we? Anyway it’s all come up lately, since we got back from the shore. Even now there’s really nothing to tell, except that everybody is talking hard times and father’s business is dull. I’m very sorry it happened this season, because I meant you to be very gay your first winter at home, and now we can’t do much formal entertaining.”

Betty’s face clouded as she remembered a house-party she had planned for the “Merry Hearts.” Luckily, she hadn’t mentioned it; it was to have been a grand surprise to everybody. Then a horrible thought swept everything else out of her head.

“Oh, mother dear,” she began, “perhaps I ought to teach too, like Nan. I don’t believe I could, ever in the world, but I suppose every college girl ought to be able to, and I could try.”

“Betty Wales,” mother ordered solemnly, “unpack your trunk just enough to satisfy Dorothy’s curiosity, and then go to bed. You’re worn out, and as nervous as a witch. Just because I’ve decided not to keep a seamstress in the house this winter, and Nan is tired of society and jumps at an excuse to do a little teaching, you decide that the family is on the way to the poorhouse.”

“It isn’t only that——” Betty stopped. She had started to say that father looked worried, and didn’t joke back at all when you teased him; but perhaps that only seemed so to-night because she was fatigued herself from too much gaiety at Harding.

So she hunted out six assorted neck-bows for the gray kitten, six hair ribbons from Paris for the kitten’s small mistress, a Dutch doll, and a long chain strung with tiny silver charms, each with a story of its own; and having assured the smallest sister that this was only a beginning of the treasures she might expect, Betty went to bed and dreamed that she had lost her emergency fund under the teacher’s desk in Nan’s schoolroom, and had to teach a class in senior “English Lit.” before she could get it back. But she couldn’t remember when Shakespeare was born, and the girls stood up on their desks and waved their handkerchiefs and screamed, and she waved too, because it was the Harvard-Cambridge boat race on the Thames. No, it was brother Will calling her to breakfast, and little Dorothy saying in a sepulchral whisper, “Oh, hush, Will! Mother said Betty was to sleep over.”

“Coming! Wouldn’t sleep over for anything!” Betty called back, making a rush for her bath.

It was such a jolly day. People kept dropping in to say welcome home, and to tease Nan about her “latest fad,” as everybody called it. In the evening there was a regular party of Betty’s and Will’s friends on the big piazza, and before it was over Betty had promised to help at six “coming-out” teas, take part in one play, be on the committee to get up another, join a morning French class and a reading-club, and consider taking a cross-country ride every Saturday afternoon as long as the good weather lasted.

Up-stairs in her room she took down the rose-colored satin dress she had bought in Paris, and examined it approvingly. But one simply couldn’t wear the same thing at six receptions. There was her graduating dress, of course, but styles had changed frightfully since spring. If only Katie were here to use her magic touch on the pink lace evening gown that Bob had stepped on at class-supper!

“I never can mend it myself!” sighed Betty. “I shall need another afternoon dress anyway, and a suit, and I did want a new riding habit. Mine is horribly rusty. I wonder how careful about money we’ve got to be. And I wonder if Will thought to bolt the piazza door.”

She slipped on a kimono and crept softly down the stairs, a slim, golden-haired ghost in a trailing robe of silk and lace. Will hadn’t locked the door. And there was a light in the library, though it was long after midnight.

“It’s Nan, probably, reading up things to teach. I’ll go in and bother her and make her come to bed.”

But it wasn’t Nan. It was father, poring over a big sheet of paper scrawled full of tiny figures. Betty closed the door after her, crept quietly across the room, and descended precipitately upon the arm of her father’s chair.

“What in the world are you doing here all by yourself at this time of night, Father Wales?” she demanded gaily.

Mr. Wales looked up at her, still frowning absently, with a finger on his place among the figures. “Nothing, daughter; just looking over a contract that I wanted to do a little estimating on before to-morrow.”

“But it’s horribly late,” objected Betty. “Think how sleepy you’ll be in the morning.”

Mr. Wales smiled faintly. “Shall I? Well, run along to bed, so you won’t be sleepy too.” And he was back at his figures again.

Betty watched him for a minute, dropped a kiss on his puckered forehead, and slipped softly away without a word.

“He’s just awfully worried,” she reflected, as she went up-stairs. “Nan and mummy and Will don’t realize how changed he is, because they’ve been here right along. Why, in these three months he’s a different person!” She put the rose-colored satin dress carefully back in its cheese-cloth covering. “I wonder if we’re really going to be poor. Why, this may be the first and the last Paris gown I shall ever have! I know one thing. I’m going to talk to father, and make him tell me just how poor we are now. You can go ahead so much better when you understand things.”

But it was such a busy week, what with catching up the threads of the home life that had been dropped for so long, helping Nan off, and getting Dorothy started in school, that it slipped by without the talk that Betty had promised herself. On the evening of Nan’s departure, however, her opportunity came. Will had an engagement, mother was tired, and Dorothy very sleepy; so only Mr. Wales and Betty went with Nan to her train.

It was a fine September evening, and Betty craftily suggested that they walk home. The down-town streets were too noisy for serious conversation, but out on the avenue Betty plunged in at once.

“Father, you’re awfully worried. Please tell me why.”

Mr. Wales threw back his head and laughed. “Goodness, Betty, but you come right to the point! Suppose I deny that ‘awfully.’”

“You mean because it’s slang?” asked Betty anxiously. “And isn’t it a good thing to come right to the point?”

“Wouldn’t that depend on the point, little girl? Suppose it was a point you had never expected to come to, and didn’t want to come to,—what then?”

Betty’s face wore its most intent expression. “But if you had come to it all the same, father——”

“Then you’d better get away again as fast as possible, and ask little girls not to bother their heads about you in the meantime.” Father’s tone was very brusque and final—the one he used when he meant “no” and was not going to change his mind, no matter how much you teased.

“All right, father.” Betty tried not to show that she felt hurt. “I won’t bother you again. Only I thought that if I understood perhaps I could help a little. I don’t think mother really knows how much we ought to try to save this winter, and I’m sure Nan and Will don’t. You’ve always been so generous and let us have just whatever we wanted. I want lots of things just now, but I can be happy without them.” Betty stopped suddenly, not quite sure where she had meant to come out.

There was a long pause. “Are you quite sure of that—quite sure you can be happy without them, little girl?” father asked at last.

“Perfectly sure, if I know I’m helping you out, daddy.”

“Well, then—— But I can’t have your mother worried, not any more than she is now at least.”

“Oh, but I won’t worry her!” Betty promised eagerly. “It will just be a secret between us two.”

Mr. Wales smiled at her eagerness. “Not a very agreeable secret, I’m afraid. Well, then, Betty, if you insist, here it is. My business has scarcely paid expenses for three months, and a big investment I made in June is going all wrong. By Christmas time I shall probably know where I stand. Until then I need every cent of ready money that I can get hold of, and the more things you can be happy without, the better. That’s all, I guess.”

“Th-thank you.” Betty felt as if she had suddenly been plunged up to her neck in a blinding fog that made all the old familiar landmarks of life look queer and far away. “It’s rather bad, isn’t it? But I’ll be very economical, and I’ll think up ways of making the others economical without their knowing it. And you can have my emergency fund this very night. That’s ready money. I meant to give it to you before, but——” There was no use explaining that Nan had said it was foolish to give the check back, when she would need all of it and more so soon for her fall wardrobe.

“Keep it and make it go as far as you can,” father told her. “And don’t think too much about these business troubles, or I shall be sorry I confided in you.”

They were turning in at their own door. “No, you won’t be sorry,” Betty assured him proudly. “I won’t let you be sorry. Goodness! I see one way to economize this very minute. Mother’s got dozens of lights turned on that she doesn’t need.” And she flitted gaily ahead to begin her economy program. But before she had reached the door, she rushed back to whisper a last word in her father’s ear.

“It’s mean not to tell mother too, daddy. We could have so much more fun over it if we all knew.”

“Fun over it!” repeated Mr. Wales slowly. “Fun over it!” Then he reached out and caught Betty in a big hug. “You’re the right sort, little girl. You stand up and face life with a smile. Keep it up just as long as you can, child.”

Betty considered, frowning in her earnestness. “I’ve always had the smiling kind of life so far, father, haven’t I? But I’ve wished sometimes that I had to get things for myself, like Helen Adams and Rachel and K. You know I’ve told you about them, and about K.’s brother who wants to go to college, and she’s going to help. I shan’t mind a bit being rather poor—till Christmas,” she added prudently. “Now I’ll go and turn out the lights and see that Dorothy is all right, and you be telling mother.”

But father shook his head. “Not to-night, anyway. You don’t realize the meaning of all this yet, Betty. When you do, I’m afraid it will look very different to you.”

“I won’t let it,” declared Betty eagerly. “I said I’d help, and I will. Just try me.”

Betty went to bed with her pretty head in a whirl. This was what they called being “out in the wide, wide world.” “The real business of life” that she had talked about so glibly with the B’s and Roberta was going to begin at last.

CHAPTER II
BETTY WALES, “M. A.”

Things did look different in the morning. Betty sighed a little as she considered her last winter’s suit, which she had relegated to the position of a rainy day stand-by, in the light of a “general utility,”—K.’s delightful name for her one street costume. K. and Rachel had managed very well with a new suit once in two or three years. Well, then, so could she, Betty told herself sternly. Just then Mary Hooper telephoned to know about the Saturday rides.

“I’m afraid you can’t count on me,” Betty explained to her. “No, I’m not too busy, Mary, but riding horses are very expensive, and I don’t believe I can afford it.”

Mary’s curt, “Oh, very well, I didn’t suppose you had to consider that. Good-bye, then,” stung a hot blush into Betty’s cheeks. She didn’t care what Mary Hooper thought of her—yes, she did—well, she wouldn’t any more.

That night at dinner mother looked worried, in her turn.

“My new cook has given notice,” she told the assembled family the first time the waitress went out of the room, “and I thought she was going to be such a treasure!”

“What’s her trouble?” demanded Will gaily.

“She doesn’t like living where they keep only two maids. Of course it is difficult to manage, especially with such a big house. Maggie is too busy sweeping and dusting and answering the bell to help at all in the kitchen. Yesterday the cook absolutely refused to clean the silver, and to-night she grumbled about wiping the dishes.”

“Then have the third maid back, Alice. It was only to be an experiment, this cutting down household expenses. I simply won’t have you worried.” Father’s voice sounded impatient, because he felt so very unhappy.

“I don’t know how I can help worrying when everything goes wrong, and I understood that it was absolutely necessary to cut down expenses.” Mother’s voice sounded stiff and unsympathetic, because father didn’t realize how glad she had been to do her part.

Then in a flash everything came out. “If it wasn’t absolutely necessary to retrench when we talked things over, it certainly is now,” father began abruptly; “my New York broker has disappeared. It seems he’s been on the wrong side of the market lately, and to help himself out he’s been borrowing the securities that his customers had left on deposit with him. That means that a good many thousands of my money have gone, with practically no hope of recovery. I’d been holding that stock as a last reserve. I’m afraid this spells ruin.” Father pushed back his plate, and got up from the table.

“Please don’t go, father,” begged little Dorothy solemnly, catching at his coat tails. “Are we going to be really and truly poor? Because if we aren’t going to have enough to eat by and by, we ought not to waste to-night’s dinner, that’s all cooked.”

Mr. Wales laughed in spite of himself; and then, because Maggie was coming back with the salad, he sat down again, and somehow, between silence and conversation about the weather, dinner was finished.

Afterward Betty got Will and Dorothy down in the furthest corner of the lawn with the gray kitten, so that mother and father, up on the piazza, could talk things over and come to an understanding.

“Tell me, Betty, are we going to be really and truly poor?” little Dorothy demanded. But when Betty kissed her and said no, not really hungry and ragged, she was quite ready to forget all about it and devote herself to teaching the gray kitten to climb trees. That left Will and Betty free to discuss the family crisis.

“I shall take that job Cousin Joe West offered me out at his shops,” Will declared. “He’s awfully fussy, and father says he works his men to death. That’s why I didn’t go last June. Father thought he could certainly get me something better by fall, but nothing has turned up yet, and if I go with Joe that will be one thing off father’s mind.”

Betty sighed. “It’s so easy to be poor if you’re a boy. You’ll be earning your own living——”

“I suppose a fellow can live on what I’ll earn, if he has to,” interrupted Will, making a wry face.

“And I shall have to spend father’s money just as usual, only not so much of it. Oh, dear, I wish I was bright enough to teach, like Nan!”

“A penny saved is a penny earned,” quoted Will sagely. “Nan will never save a penny, that’s one thing sure. I say, didn’t we promise the Benson girls that we’d be over to-night?”

When the Benson girls accused Betty of being quiet and absent-minded she laughed at them and asked if she generally monopolized the entire conversation. But on the way home she confided to Will that she hadn’t heard a word Sallie Benson had said about the plans for her coming-out cotillion. For almost the first time in her life, except the night after her famous runaway in senior year, Betty did not fall asleep the minute her head touched the pillow. She had promised father to help and she meant to, as much as ever she could. The hard question was how to keep her word.

Next morning she put her plans into action. After breakfast she hunted up Mrs. Wales, who was in the sewing-room with a huge pile of mending on the table beside her. Betty heroically helped herself to one of Will’s stockings, and led up to her errand.

“When does the cook leave, mother?”

“This evening, I believe. She’s packing now. I haven’t dared ask her what she means to do about the breakfast dishes.” Mother laughed happily. “We had such a nice talk last night, your father and I. I feel as if I were back in the days when we were first married, and had to count all the pennies we spent. After all, being poor isn’t so bad as long as we have each other.”

Betty nodded sagely. She didn’t want mother to find out that any one else had been confided in first. “I knew you’d feel so—I mean I think it’s a lot nicer to know the worst. But are you going to get another cook?”

Mrs. Wales nodded. “I told your father that we could get on beautifully with a general maid, but he insists upon two. He thinks we must keep up appearances as far as possible, as a sort of business asset.”

“But a cook doesn’t appear,” Betty suggested. “She’s behind the scenes.”

“Exactly, and that gives the second maid a chance to be in front of them. A good many business acquaintances of your father’s come through the city, and he wants to be able to bring them up to dinner without worrying about its being properly served.”

“It would have to be properly cooked too, wouldn’t it?” Betty reflected solemnly. “Well, anyhow, there’s no harm in telling you what I want. I want to do the cooking. I hate sweeping and dusting and mending, and the things I mend are frights. But I love to mess in the kitchen, and I’ve always wanted a chance to do it without a fussy old cook to glare at me and make remarks about its being her kitchen, and a lot too full of people. I don’t know how to make very many things, except salads and chafing-dish ‘eats,’ but I’m wild to learn. Please let me, mother. How much does a cook cost?”

“Eight dollars a week, unless she’s a particularly good cook and gets ten,” laughed Mrs. Wales. “But you’re absurd, Betty. You don’t realize how much work it is to cook for a big family like ours. Besides, how would you manage when we had guests? It would be very awkward.”

“Oh, I’ve thought that all out,” began Betty eagerly. “I’d wait till the last minute and then just turn things over to the waitress,—we’d have to find a very accommodating waitress, of course,—whisk off my laboratory apron, and appear in the bosom of my family arrayed in my best dress.”

Mrs. Wales shook her head. “That sounds very simple, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t work. You’d be red in the face from bending over the fire, and your hands would be spoiled. I’m sorry, dear,” as she noticed Betty’s expression of disappointment, “but I’m afraid you’ll have to think of some other more practical ways of saving money.”

Betty stabbed viciously at the biggest hole in her second stocking. “All right, mother,” she said at last. “But please don’t say no to my being cook just until you can find one. You haven’t found one yet, have you?”

Mrs. Wales shook her head. “A friend of Maggie’s is coming to see me this afternoon, but I don’t imagine she’ll do.”

“Don’t engage her unless she sounds perfectly splendid,” urged Betty, folding up Will’s stockings and tossing them on top of the pile of finished mending.

A few minutes later she danced back, enveloped in a long, checked gingham apron. “The new cook, mem,” she announced, curtseying gravely. “And the ould wan is gone, mem, so wad yuz plaze be so kind as to lave me have the ordhers for the dinner.”

Betty’s first dinner was a great success. It was agreed not to tell father and Will who cooked it; and when father praised the roast, and Will loudly lamented the imminent departure of a cook who could make such “dandy” lemon ice, Betty blushed pink with pride and pleasure. Next morning it was only fun to get up early and dress in a hurry. But the first relay of toast burned up, and the eggs were done too hard, because the coffee wouldn’t boil at all and then boiled over. Will grumbled, father read his paper in gloomy silence, and though mother tried to smooth things over, she wore an “I-told-you-so” expression, and Betty felt sure she would be on hand to help with the next breakfast.

But before that there was luncheon, and Will, who was going out to see about his new position, announced that he would come home for it. Just as Betty was putting on her big apron to begin operations, Mary Hooper rang the bell. Betty discovered that Maggie had said she was at home, so she slipped off the big apron, and went down. Mary was chairman of the play committee, and she wanted to get Betty’s ideas about the cast and the costumes before she called the rest of her committee together.

“College girls are so clever at plays,” she explained. “I thought you and I could save a lot of time if we got everything decided beforehand.”

This wasn’t exactly Betty’s idea of good committee work, but Mary hadn’t asked her advice on that point, so they set to work. At half-past twelve Mary discovered that it was raining.

“How jolly!” she exclaimed. “That lets me out of a tennis match with the Bensons and Ted Farnum, and we can have the afternoon clear for this.”

“Then will you excuse me for a few minutes, Mary?” Betty asked anxiously. “Our cook has gone, and I’m taking her place. I want to be sure that you’ll have some luncheon.”

Mary lifted haughty eyebrows. “Can’t one of the second maids see to that?” she asked, getting up and going over to the window. “Oh, well, if it’s going to put you out, I won’t stay. Besides, it looks clearer already, so we may play tennis after all. Oh, no, thank you, I shouldn’t think of staying if you’re going to make company of me, as they say in the country. I remember at my aunt’s in New Hampshire, they never could have any one for Monday dinner, because it was wash-day. Well, we’ve got a good deal done. I’ll drop in at Milly’s, perhaps, on my way home, and see what she thinks about our cast.”

Without waiting to find her apron, Betty rushed to the kitchen, fully expecting to find Mrs. Wales and Maggie there, and lunch well under way,—which would have been rather a disgrace to the young lady who had begged to be allowed to act as cook, but on the whole a comfortable arrangement. Instead, however, the kitchen was deserted.

“Oh, dear!” soliloquized Betty sadly. “I wonder what mother meant to have. I remember now that she went out. I wonder what there is to have. Maggie might know—but she probably wouldn’t. I’ll ask her, though, if she’s down setting the table.”

Maggie was laying the table, but she had no ideas on the subject of possible luncheon dishes. So Betty found some eggs, got a chafing-dish ready, and had all her preparations made for a delicious omelette, when Will came in, exasperated at Cousin Joe’s fussiness, and very hungry, and reminded her that he hated eggs.

“Oh, Will! I’m so sorry! Well, anyhow you love strawberry jam.”

“Bread and jam aren’t specially filling,” grumbled Will.

“Couldn’t you begin on that?” suggested Betty bravely. “And in the meantime I’ll find you something else that is filling.”

“When are we going to have a cook, anyhow?” demanded Will, when Betty had taken her seat again, having instructed Maggie to slice some cold roast beef.

“When are we going to have an experienced cook, you mean, monsieur,” Betty corrected him gaily. In the pantry she had decided that she should probably be cross herself in Will’s place, and had therefore resolved to take all his faultfinding in good part. “Because at present you’ve got me, such as I am. Suppose you give me a list of all your favorite dishes, Will, and I’ll make them, if they aren’t too hard. And just to relieve your mind I’ll confide to you that mother is hunting cooks this very morning.”

That afternoon Betty got a note from Roberta Lewis.

“I’m considering working for an M. A. at Bryn Mawr,” she wrote. “Father is away all day, and I don’t know enough people here in Philadelphia to keep me from getting lonely. Of course in some ways I should lots prefer going to Harding, but father wouldn’t consent to that. He wants me here whenever he is at home. We’re getting to be regular chums. We go to the theatre together, and he always takes me for supper afterward, because he’s heard that debutantes prefer theatre-suppers to almost anything. He wanted to have Aunt Nell come down from New York to help him give a big party for me; but I made him see how absurd it would be for a staid old lawyer like him and a quiet, stay-at-home, ’fraid-of-a-man like me, to bother about big fussy parties. So we just have nice little dinners for father’s old friends, and next summer he is going to teach me to ride horseback—I shudder whenever I think of it!—and to play golf, so that we can enjoy more things together. Write me what you think about the M. A.

“Roberta.”

Betty scribbled her answer at once.

“I’m doing an M. A. myself, Roberta dearest. It surprises you to hear that, doesn’t it? Well, in my case M. A. stands for Mother’s Assistant, and so far it’s the hardest course I ever took. But if mother ever finds a good cook—I’m the cook at present, and I should love it if everything didn’t go wrong—why, perhaps it will be easier. The other topics in my M. A. are mending and dusting and housekeeping odds and ends.

“If I am ever married and have any children, I shall bring them up to eat whatever there is on the table. Will hates eggs, and loves apple-pie. Dorothy hates pie and adores ice-cream. Father never eats ice-cream and likes his steak rare. Mother wants her steak actually burned, and nothing but crackers and cheese and coffee for desert; and father loves coffee, but mustn’t drink it. I am just as fussy as any of them, but I never shall be again. I must stop and get dinner. Pity the poor cook of this hard-to-suit family!

“I think it would be grand to be able to write M. A. after your name, but if you want to really and truly learn something take my kind.

“Yours, with her sleeves rolled up,

“Betty.”

CHAPTER III
THAT TEA-ROOM AGAIN

Betty Wales, arrayed in her cook’s regalia, sat by the kitchen table, one eye on the range, the other on the fly-leaf of the new cook-book that Will had given her. It was scribbled full of figures, which Betty added and subtracted and multiplied laboriously, with sighs and incredulous stares at the distinctly unpleasant results.

“Three weeks’ hard work, and so far as I can see I’ve saved the family exactly five dollars and sixty-four cents. And that Vermont maple sugar is boiling over again!” Betty made a dive for the saucepan in which she was cooking maple frosting for father’s birthday cake. “If it tastes burned, what’s left of it, I shall just give up!” she declared plaintively.

“Oh, Betty dear!” Dorothy’s shrill voice and pattering footsteps sounded down the hall. “You aren’t forgetting the kitten’s birthday, are you?”

“Of course not,” Betty assured her, tasting the frosting critically. “She’s to have oysters and whipped cream. By and by you can whip the cream, dearie, but it’s too soon now, and I’m very busy, so you’d better run and find mother.”

“All right. I’m busy too. I’ve got to tie on my kitten’s new neck-bow, and she wiggles so that it’s awfully hard work. And then I’m going to give her her box of corks that I bought for her.”

Betty tasted the frosting again, decided that it was done, put it away to cool, and went back to her figures.

“Burned steak, two dollars,” she murmured; “salty ice-cream, a dollar and twenty cents; boiled-over coffee, thirty cents. I don’t believe I’ve forgotten anything important that I spoiled.” Then her smile flashed out suddenly. “But real cooks spoil things—why, of course they do! Not so many, maybe, but some.” She began stirring the frosting vigorously. “You always hear that figures lie. I suppose the reason is because it’s so hard to put down all about real cooks and other real things in figures. Anyway, I’ve tried to help hard enough. After this I shall always be sorry for cooks. I suppose there may be worse ways of earning your living, but I shouldn’t want to try them.”

“Here’s a letter for you, Betty!” The smallest sister was back again, having evidently intercepted the postman. “And the kitten has got a post-card that says ‘Birthday greetings.’ Isn’t it pretty? My chum at school sent it to her.”

Betty declared hastily that the kitten’s post-card was perfectly lovely, and asked Dorothy to put her letter, with the address in Madeline’s fascinating scrawling hand, and a foreign stamp, into the table drawer; for the cook’s fingers were sticky, the frosting obstinately refused to thicken, and dinner-time was approaching with alarming rapidity.

The day after Mary Hooper’s ill-timed call Betty had delivered an ultimatum: “You’ve either got to tend up to things or leave them alone. Hereafter, when I’m busy in the kitchen I can’t stop, no matter what happens. Just tell people the truth, please.”

It was trying that the first thing to happen should have been an invitation to go automobiling by moonlight; and missing the second—an impromptu tally-ho party, with a corn-roast and a barn-dance to follow—would have plunged Betty into the depths of woe if she had not sternly resolved to “smile and smile and go on cooking,” as Katherine had picturesquely advised her, no matter what happened. It was worth the cost too, when father called her into the library to tell her, in confidence, that he was proud of her, and that she was setting Will a splendid example.

Will was finding Cousin Joe quite as trying as he had been led to expect, and as he had gone through life hitherto on the easy theory that it is foolish to put yourself out much, because the people who expect the most of you are always cranks, nobody had thought that he would stay long with Cousin Joe, who was certainly an ideal instance of the theory. But though he came home every evening tired and discouraged, and grumbled a good deal about Cousin Joe’s unfairness and silly notions, he refused to give up his position.

“I’m no quitter. I can stick it out if the girls can,” he announced doggedly, and on his very first pay-day he bought Betty a cook-book inscribed “With deep respect, from a sympathetic fellow laborer,” which meant a great deal from reserved, undemonstrative Will.

Betty suspected that Will’s admiration was at the bottom of her mother’s tacit consent to her keeping on as cook. They had never discussed the matter after the first interview, but Mrs. Wales had gradually stopped visiting agencies and looking up advertisements, and Betty was beginning to feel that she was accepted as “permanent.” And now some bad fairy had put it into her head to see how much she had saved father, and all she could see was five dollars and sixty-four cents!

But that didn’t prevent the birthday dinner from being a great success. Three weeks’ experience had wrought a wonderful change in the new cook’s methods. Not only did she “tend up” to the business in hand, herself, but she could plan work for Maggie, and she was no longer too proud to call on mother or Dorothy for help if she needed it. So things went smoothly, not by happy accident, as things had always had a fashion of doing for Betty Wales, but because she had planned them to go that way. The cream soup did not curdle, the roast came on hot and done just as mother liked it at one end and as father liked it in the middle. The salad was crisp and deliciously flavored. The pineapple ice was not salty, and if the maple frosting was a little inclined to drip off the edges of the birthday cake, that was due, as Will pompously explained, to “the extreme age of the distinguished person whose semi-centennial we celebrate, and to the consequent over-heating of his cake by fifty burning candles.”

After dinner they went into the library to taste a wonderful cereal coffee, which Betty felt sure father would like just as well as the real thing that he mustn’t drink.

“Let me see, Betty,” said Will sipping his share reflectively. “This is the sixth near-coffee that glib-tongued salesmen have palmed off on you in three weeks.”

“It’s only the fifth,” returned Betty indignantly, “and besides they were all free samples.”

“In that case suppose you see if you can’t discover some more brands before we settle on one for family use,” suggested father gaily.

Betty made a wry face as she emptied her cup. “The trouble is the directions always say ‘the whole secret of success is in the cooking,’ and ‘one trial is a gross injustice,’” she quoted so solemnly that everybody laughed.

“Come and see the kitten eat her whipped cream,” begged Dorothy. “She gets it all over her little nose, and she hates to stop and wash it off. Besides, I think she ought to have more people than just Maggie and me at her party.”

So Betty went out to the kitchen to swell the numbers at the kitten’s party, and suddenly remembering Madeline’s neglected letter she slipped away to read it.

“Well, I’m coming back to my own, my native land,” Madeline wrote. “Father thinks he wants to sub-let the apartment in Washington Square. Of course he’ll jolly well change his mind before I get to New York, and then he’ll waste his substance cabling me frantically not to sub-let. And perhaps he and mother will come back too, later on. But I don’t mind coming along by myself. I’ve had enough of Italy and idleness. My head is full of tales that I want to get out of my system and into the magazines. I want to talk them over with Dick Blake. He’s a frightful cynic, and he’ll be sure to tell me that I can never make good. But he can’t stop me that way, not till I’ve sat on editors’ door-steps for a while and seen for myself.

“Incidentally here I am in London buying china madly for the tea-room—yours and mine and Babbie’s, that we planned last summer. The plans are so lovely that we’ve simply got to carry them out. I ‘elect’ us to do it. I’ve written Babbie to come and spend October with me and help at one of my famous house-cleanings. You must come too, and then we can discuss it—the tea-room, I mean. I should hate to hear my house-cleanings discussed. And if we don’t have the tea-room, the china will be adorable in the apartment. It’s a blue Canton kind, and I’m getting mostly double-decker bread-trays, and little toast-racks, and mustard pots—such fascinating squatty fat ones—and pepper grinders. If you were here, we’d hunt up an English cooking school and learn to make scones and bannocks and Bath buns. I’ve asked a queer little English woman in my boarding-house to give me the recipes. Perhaps you can make them out. I can cook only by taste, just as I can play only by ear; and the taste of scones and bannocks is as complicated as Wagner. I got your letter about being the family cook. It will be valuable experience for the tea-room.

“Come down early in October. Wire and I’ll meet you any day after the fourth, when my boat is supposed to come in. If either of you could get there sooner, it would be terribly jolly, because then you could meet me. The key to the house is at the tailor’s underneath, the cook left her new address on the mantle in a pink cloisonné jar, and she’ll bring the usual black cat for company while you wait.

“Yours en route,

“Madeline.”

Betty read it all through twice. It was so delightfully haphazard and cheerful and Bohemian. To-day was the twenty-sixth of September. It would be such fun to go to New York and share Madeline’s welcome home to Bohemia. Babbie would go, of course, and they would have famous parties to make use of the blue Canton mustard pots. And if they should really open a tea-room! For the first time since the launching of the economy program Betty winked back some real tears. Then she carefully turned out the lights in the dining-room, which Maggie never could remember about, and went back to the library to read the family her letter, as she always did when any of the Old Guard wrote to her. As Will said, the penalty of writing entertaining letters to Betty was that she felt under obligation to celebrate your epistolary ability by turning herself into a town-crier, and crying your bon mots from the house-tops.

And the very next morning came a scrap of a note from Babbie:

“I’m going to spend October with Madeline. Mother is off paying visits, so I can get away easily. Be sure to come right away, because we ought to get the tea-room started at once. Mother says I may do just as I like about it, only of course I know that I can’t stay away from her all the time. When she says I can do as I like she really means that I may have all the money I want.

“Betty dear, if you really want to earn some money, why couldn’t you run the tea-room? Madeline will be too busy with her writing. Besides, she hates running things. I should love it, only there’s mother to be amused.

“Babe is too wrapped up in her beloved John to answer any letters. Bob is trying to make her father start a newsboys’ home, and he says perhaps he will if he can have his own home back again. Bob has some little ragamuffin or other up there all the time. I prefer tea-rooms myself to newsboys’ homes or fiancés.

“Babbie.”

“P. S. Jack and I have had a dreadful quarrel. He was the one who came to see me off, you know, and I never, never dreamed we could change our minds. But all is over between us. Please never mention his name to me again.

“P. S. Do you think we should have the tea-room in New York or Harding?”

This letter Betty read and reread, and finally put away in her writing-desk without so much as mentioning it to any one. But that afternoon she went all by herself to have afternoon tea at an attractive little shop that had just been opened down-town. She read the menu carefully, and finally asked the waitress if she might take it away with her. She counted the tables, the waitresses, and the patrons. She scanned the decorations with a critical eye. She frowned when she noticed that there were three different kinds of china in the tea service that the maid had brought her. Then she sat for a long while, sipping her tea and trying to remember little details of the fascinating Glasgow tea-rooms, and of the Oxford Street and Piccadilly shops that the B. A.’s abroad had haunted so persistently in the pursuit of Madeline’s “dominant interest.” Finally she tried to compare the prices on the cards with those at Cuyler’s and Holmes’s in Harding. And last of all, she extracted a tiny silver pencil from her shopping-bag, and put down a few figures on the back of the menu. But she soon gave up that. Hadn’t she just discovered that figures lie? And besides, when you can’t even guess at rents, and haven’t the least idea how much chairs and tables and china cost, and are even a little uncertain about waitress’s wages, the calculating of the probable expenses per month of running a tea-room becomes, to say the least, a difficult matter.

At last, having remembered her responsibilities about dinner, Betty rushed home and into her big apron—she had half a dozen big ones now—as fast as possible. She was very quiet during dinner, but afterward, as soon as she had helped Maggie clear the table, she put out the lights, walked into the library, and made an astonishing announcement.

“Father dear, if you’re willing and mother can get another cook and you won’t all miss me too much, I want to go to New York next week to see about running a tea-room for Babbie Hildreth. We haven’t decided yet whether to have it there or in Harding, but Babbie thinks I could run it, and I think so too.”

“Why, Betty, don’t be absurd!”

That was mother’s comment. Will whistled; Dorothy, scenting the loss of her beloved Betty, came over to hug her; but father threw away his cigar, folded his paper slowly, and pointed to the arm of his chair as the best available seat.

“Now begin again,” he advised, when Betty had established herself comfortably. “Your proposition does sound absurd, as mother says, but perhaps that’s because we don’t understand it. To begin with, has Miss Babbie Hildreth already gone into the tea-room business? I understood from Miss Bohemia’s letter of yesterday, that so far the sole assets of the tea-room were some double-decker bread-trays, whatever those may be, and some very fat mustard jars, which hadn’t yet left London, and which Miss Bohemia really wanted for her own use.”

“Oh, father, that was just Madeline’s queer way of saying it. She’s written to Babbie, and Babbie has asked her mother for the money, and her mother is willing. So now Babbie has written me. Of course there are a lot of things still to be arranged,” Betty admitted reluctantly, “but it won’t take Babbie and Madeline long to arrange them.”

“I see.” This time Mr. Wales was quite serious. “And you think that under the circumstances—my circumstances, I mean—you would like to join in their project. I’m afraid I can’t spare you any capital, little girl.”

“Oh, I don’t want you to,” explained Betty hastily. “The others don’t expect it. But I’ve thought it over and—isn’t it likely to be a long while before business is good again, father?”

“I’m afraid it will be fully a year before I’m on my feet again.”

“Well, I want to help, to be really and truly earning something, I mean, like Nan and Will. I should perfectly hate to teach, but I should love to run a tea-room.”

“I don’t like the idea of my daughter’s going into the restaurant business,” put in Mrs. Wales stiffly.

“Oh, mummy dear!” Betty abandoned her father’s chair for a seat beside her mother on the sofa. “An adorable little tea-room isn’t a restaurant. College girls are always running tea-rooms. Why, Mary Hooper has a friend in Boston who does it, and Mary is always telling about her, for all she’s such a snob.”

“Would you have to sit at a desk near the door and see that everybody paid up before he could get out?” demanded Will, very scornfully.

Betty considered. “Why, I don’t know. I might. But if Madeline plans things she’ll have a desk that the Queen of England would be dying to sit at, if she saw it,” she ended gaily.

“But are you sure of making money?” demanded father dryly. “Times are bad——”

“But even in bad times people have to eat,” Betty took him up hastily. “And if tea is sixty cents a pound, and there are piles of cups in that, and you sell a cup for ten cents, how can you help making money? People do, in tea-rooms, or they wouldn’t be sprouting up everywhere. And if it can be done I’m sure Madeline and Babbie and I can do it. I just know we can!”

Mr. Wales’s glance traveled from Betty’s dancing eyes to her mouth with its pleading curves. “Well, mother,” he said, “shall we let her try?”

Mrs. Wales hesitated. “I don’t like the idea at all, but under the circumstances——”

“We’ll talk it over and let you know in the morning,” father suggested.

“Betty,” began little Dorothy forlornly, “you said I could be ’sistant cook as soon as I learned to toast the bread and not burn it. And now I’ve learned. If you go away and have a tea-room, I think I ought to be something in that.”

“You can be a silent partner, mademoiselle,” suggested Will teasingly.

“What’s that?” demanded Dorothy.

“About the same thing as a company, I guess,” explained Will. “Betty can call herself Betty Wales & Co., and you can be the Co. See?”

“Of course I see,” declared Dorothy with great dignity. “And I think I’d rather be a Co. than a ’sistant cook. Don’t forget that I’m the Co., Betty.”

“I won’t,” Betty promised laughingly. But she gave “Co.” a hug that made the little girl gasp for breath. The tea-room might be mere fun for Madeline and Babbie, and father and mother might look upon it as a foolish fad; but to Betty it was solemn earnest, and the unqualified interest and approval of even one little girl, who didn’t understand, helped.

CHAPTER IV
PLANS AND PARTIES

Next morning Mr. Wales called Betty into the library to tell her she might do as she liked about the tea-room. His voice broke as he explained that unless things took a sudden turn for the better they should probably have to give up their house, at least for a year or so.

“So your present position is likely to be abolished,” he went on with a rather forlorn attempt at gaiety, “and I heartily sympathize with your wish to be up and doing. I hate to think that a daughter of mine needs to work, but I’m glad she isn’t afraid to. It used to be the fashion for young ladies whose families had lost their money to sit at home, turning and mending their clothes and remembering better days.”

“I know—like Mary Hooper’s great-aunts,” laughed Betty. “That’s so stupid. I’m glad I was born later. But, father, did mother come around to the restaurant idea? Because maybe Nan or Rachel or somebody could get me a place to teach, if mother would be happier about it. But girls who want to work don’t all teach nowadays. Truly they don’t.”

Mr. Wales laughed. “That’s another antiquated notion, is it—that teaching is the only ‘genteel’ calling? Your mother and I about came to that conclusion last night. Anyway we’re quite willing that you should try out this project. I will give you the money that your board here would cost for the rest of the winter. You can use it as capital if you like, but I should strongly advise holding it as an emergency fund for personal expenses. Tea may be sixty cents a pound and ten cents a cup, but I imagine you’ll find that’s only one very small detail in the budget of a tea-room.”

“Of course,” agreed Betty, not daring to avow complete ignorance of the meaning of a budget. “And thank you ever so much, father, for letting me try. If we don’t succeed and my emergency fund gives out, will you send me some beautiful references as a cook?”

“Certainly not, after you’ve basely deserted us with less than a week’s notice,” retorted her father, pulling a yellow curl, and Betty danced off, perfectly delighted at the exciting prospects before her, to look over her clothes and make a list of other things she should need “in her business.” But her ideas of the duties of her position were so vague and businesslike, and clothes so very uninteresting, that she finally decided not to waste her last week at home over them. If Madeline thought her shirt-waists looked too frivolous, she could overwhelm her with the six big aprons and Will’s cook-book.

Betty timed her arrival in New York a day after Madeline’s, but only Babbie Hildreth met her train.

“Madeline’s stuck in the fog down the harbor,” she explained. “So when I came last night I got the key from the tailor and hunted up the cook, all by myself, and she brought the cat just as Madeline said she would. And then that nice Mrs. Bob, the one we met before, helped me give a party.”

“How did you happen to be giving a party?” laughed Betty.

“Because Mrs. Bob was tired of her own apartment. It’s perfectly gorgeous, you know, since they got all that money, but she says it’s so elegant and well-kept that it spoils the informality of things. So the cook swept, and we dusted, and Mr. Bob invited the people and bought the food. It was great.” Babbie gave a comical little skip to emphasize her complete satisfaction with life. Then suddenly her small face took on its most serious expression. “And to think how miserable I’ve been lately. Poor mother was glad enough to let me come down here, I’m afraid, I was so cross. I’m never going to look at a young man again, Betty Wales, as long as I live. So there now!”

Betty patted Babbie’s arm soothingly. “That won’t prevent their looking at you, I’m afraid,” she suggested, “at least not unless you stop buying such becoming hats.”

Babbie frowned. “One can’t turn oneself into a frump, just on their account. Buying becoming hats is one of the chief consolations of life. I didn’t mean that I was going to retire from the world, but I shall never let any one fall in love with me, never. That’s settled!”

“All right,” laughed Betty. “Now let’s settle where we’re going.”

“That’s settled too,” explained Babbie. “Mr. Dick Blake is meeting Madeline, because I had to meet you. Then we are all to meet each other for a grand lunch party, to celebrate Mr. Blake’s getting into his scrumptious new offices,—the ones that your Mr. Morton arranged for, you know. And to-night Mrs. Bob is going to take us all for dinner to a new East Side place that they’ve discovered.” Babbie stopped to survey Betty critically. “You don’t mind wasting to-day, do you, and beginning on tea-rooms the first thing to-morrow? Your letter sounded as solemncholy as Helen Chase Adams when she was a freshman.”

Betty laughed. “How dreadful! Of course I don’t mind. But you see, Babbie, this tea-room business is just fun for you, but for me it’s dead in earnest. If we can’t make it pay pretty well, why, next year I may have to teach.”

Babbie nodded vigorously. “I see. That’s a prospect to make a person solemn, isn’t it? But by next year your father will probably be rich again. And I don’t want you to think I’m not in earnest too, Betty. I’m going into this thing head over heels, just to show a certain person that he doesn’t make one least little speck of difference to me.” Babbie’s big eyes flashed dangerously. “So to-morrow we’ll pursue tea-rooms like anything.”

But ten o’clock the next morning found the three pursuers of tea-rooms gathered rather languidly around Madeline’s dainty breakfast table. Mrs. Bob’s party had been, as usual, a continuous performance, beginning at a very foreign café in Little Italy, going on, because the Italian dessert had proved disappointing, to a glittering hotel on Fifth Avenue, thence back to a Yiddish theatre, whose leading lady was Mr. Bob’s latest enthusiasm, and winding up, very late indeed, at supper near the park, after which it took so long to get home that Mrs. Bob declared she was hungry again and made everybody come up to the apartment for more supper.

“If everybody in New York eats as often as we did last night, there ought to be a good chance for tea-rooms,” said Babbie, sipping her coffee meditatively.

“If it makes them feel so sleepy the next day, they won’t do it very often,” suggested Betty prudently.

“Yes, they will, but they’ll order breakfast at eleven instead of at ten,” amended Madeline. “Well, now,” she went on briskly, “how are we going to work? Having decided to start a tea-room, what does a person do next?”

“We have absolutely decided, haven’t we?” asked Betty, to make sure.

“Of course.” Madeline waved a hand at the huge box of china that an expressman had just delivered. “Coming over in the cab yesterday, Dick read the story I wrote on shipboard—the one I thought was going to make me a name instanter—and he says it’s amateurish. That’s the most hateful adjective in the language of Bohemia, and I’ll make him eat his words. But meanwhile I’ve got to eat something more sustaining than words, and I’ve spent all the money I had to live on this quarter. So I’ve got to get rid of that china. So we’ve got to take it for a tea-room.”

“If you think this tea-room is being started to confirm you in your extravagant habits, Madeline Ayres——” began Babbie, in mock indignation.

“HOW ARE WE GOING TO WORK?”

“Well, the point is that we’ve decided to start it,” pursued Madeline calmly, “and I might add that the china designated as my latest extravagance is likely to be its chief charm, if not exactly its reason for being. Now I should say the next question is where to have it. And as it’s such a glorious day, let’s go out and explore.”

The exploring expedition, being conducted by Madeline in true Bohemian style, bid fair to degenerate into a progressive course luncheon, leading from one of her favorite tea-shops to the next.

“But it’s very instructive,” she declared in answer to Babbie’s protests. “I’ve made a beautiful collection of menu cards for us to consider to-night. I’ll get Bob Enderby to do us a design that will make a regular hit by itself. What’s that, Betty? Of course a menu design isn’t the principal thing. But it will be a beautiful feature, like the china. Well, this is the sixth cup of tea I’ve had, so I don’t mind stopping now. If you girls don’t like my methods, suggest something else. I think we’ve had a most entertaining morning, and garnered in loads of valuable ideas.”

“Well, but what have we actually decided?” demanded Betty, the matter-of-fact.

Madeline told off the points solemnly on her fingers. “To have waitresses with soulful eyes and, if possible, adorable French accents. To remember that it is the special features that people tell their friends to go and see, but the food must be passable too, or they’ll never come twice. To have immaculate linen, and china that matches. To provide dusky corners for romantic couples.”

Babbie sniffed. “I hate romantic couples!”

“They order recklessly,” Madeline argued. “Therefore, for mercenary considerations, they must be encouraged.”

“But aren’t those things we would have done anyway?” pursued Betty. “I think we ought to find a place and get started, and then look out for the features.”

Madeline considered. “That sounds sensible. Well, then, let’s discuss sites.”

“Wouldn’t it be a good plan to know something definite about rents?” suggested Betty, who foresaw that Madeline’s next move would be a leisurely promenade up Fifth Avenue, which would be very pleasant but productive of no tangible results.

“Rents—of course. I’ll tell you what!” Madeline had had another inspiration. “I know a man who is in real estate—the one we rent our place from. I’ll call him up and ask him if he’s too busy to enlighten us this very afternoon.”

Madeline came back from the telephone in high spirits. “He will be dee-lighted to see us. Oh, dee-lighted is out of fashion, isn’t it, since I went away? Well, proud and happy then. Come along. It’s only a little way from here, and we can do up the whole thing before dinner.”

But “the whole thing” proved much more complicated than Madeline had supposed. The agent treated them in a businesslike way, which was really very nice of him, Babbie said afterward, considering their vague and even childlike ideas on the subject of what they wanted. He had half a dozen suites on his books that seemed to Madeline suitable, and she went over them easily, suggesting their respective advantages to the other two girls, who were less familiar than she with the ins and outs of New York life.

“This is really the best, I think,” she decided at last, pointing to a Fifth Avenue address.

“It’s a rather expensive location,” suggested the agent politely. “But perhaps that’s no object”—with a glance at Babbie’s exquisite little figure.

“Oh, yes, it is,” Betty assured him solemnly. “You see we want to make a lot of money. How much is the rent, please?”

The agent’s figures fairly took the girls’ breath away. “And I believe they prefer a seven years’ lease,” he added.

“Seven years!” repeated Babbie incredulously. “Why, we shall all be mar—dead in seven years, probably. A month’s rent at that rate would take up about what I think mother meant to give me. But then she’ll have to give me more. Which is the very cheapest place, please?”

The agent pointed it out, but it was only cheap by comparison. And then, as if matters were not bad enough already, he made a disheartening suggestion. “You ought to have at least capital enough to keep you going for a year,” he said. “You couldn’t hope to make much the first year, you know. That’s usually reckoned a dead loss, in conservative business estimates, I believe.”

The girls exchanged glances of consternation.

“We’re very much obliged,” said Babbie, with a fine combination of dignity and her sweetest smile. “But I’m afraid we can’t decide on anything to-day. We may be back——”

“That’s all right,” the agent cut her short. “Always very glad to be of service. Good-day.”

“He doesn’t want us to come back,” Babbie declared hotly, outside the door. “He’s afraid we wouldn’t pay the rent on time.”

“We probably shouldn’t, any such rents as those,” Madeline assured her. “We acted like babes in the wood, I suppose. Never mind. We’ll ask Bob Enderby and Dick. They’ll know what to do. You were jolly right, Betty, about beginning on the essentials.”

That night Mrs. Bob’s sitting-room was the scene of a solemn council of war. Dick Blake was scribe, Henri, the Enderbys’ cook, who had once conducted what Dick irreverently described as the slowest quick lunch place in town, was called in as an expert, along with the girl in the top flat, because her two cousins had had a tea-room, until one of them discovered that drawing caricatures of the customers paid much better than selling them sandwiches and tea.

“But it was a splendid thing—that tea-room,” explained the girl earnestly, “because Arline never knew she could draw until then. She sat at the desk, you see, and took checks, and there wasn’t much she could do, so she got to sketching and thought it was fun, and went into an evening class, and now she’s got two things in the big autumn exhibit.”

“Listen to that,” cried Mr. Bob with enthusiasm. “Which of you is going to sit at the desk?”

“I suppose I am,” confessed Betty, “and I haven’t the least talent for drawing, so there won’t be any great artist discovered in our tea-room.”

“Well, my other cousin got married through the tea-room,” explained the girl from the top flat, naively. “They sold candy there, and she married the man they bought their candy boxes of. He’s a millionaire.”

“Hear! Hear!” cried Mr. Bob. “Now which of you is going to get the millionaire?”

“Come, Bob, do be serious,” begged Madeline. “We want to get at the facts.”

“A millionaire is a very valuable fact,” objected Mr. Bob flippantly. “That’s all, Henri, except that we shall want an extra fine supper by and by. Now, Miss Andrus, tell us some more about the profits of tea-rooms, the legitimate ones, if Madeline insists upon it.”

But Miss Andrus was vague about “legitimate” profits. She only knew that her cousin had had a darling shop, and had hated to give it up. Then she went over to the piano and played dreamy music, while Richard Blake and Mrs. Bob and the girls struggled with their estimates.

When they had finished, Madeline’s brow puckered. “It’s going to be too big for us to swing, I think. Mrs. Hildreth might give you all that money, Babbie, but I don’t think we ought to take it.” She swept the papers together. “Enjoy our society while you have it, ladies and gentlemen. To-morrow we’re going up to Harding to open a tea-room.”

“But, Madeline,” began Betty, “are you sure——”

“I’m not sure of anything except that rents are lower there, because it would be absurd if they weren’t, and that those college girls eat and eat, and they appreciate stunty features beyond anything. Now Cuyler’s isn’t stunty and Holmes’s isn’t stunty. With that china and the menu card that Bob is going to do for us—I forgot to ask you before, Bob, but of course you will—and all the other features that we can easily think up, why, at Harding our fortune is made. I can’t see how we ever hesitated!”

“But if you go up there we can’t patronize you,” objected Mrs. Bob forlornly.

“Oh, yes, you can,” Madeline assured her promptly, “you can motor up. And Dick can see that your escapade gets into the society columns of all the leading dailies. In a month it will be the fashion to motor up from New York for a cup of tea.”

“Madeline,” said Dick severely, “you’re a persuasive sophist. Who holds the controlling interest in this tea-room, anyhow?”

“Babbie, I suppose,” admitted Madeline cheerfully. “Because she furnishes all the money—or all that’s worth mentioning, at least. But Betty furnishes the sense, and I furnish the inspirations. Now what’s the matter with that combination?”

“Aren’t you about through with your business?” demanded Mr. Bob irrelevantly, from his place by the piano. “Because Miss Andrus is hungry, and I’m starved.”

Betty partook of Henri’s famous club sandwiches and Turkish coffee in forlorn silence. She ought not to have come. She ought to have realized that Madeline’s haphazard methods were splendid for getting up college “shows,” but not to be relied on when one’s bread and butter had to be earned. Madeline was in a corner by the fire talking earnestly with Mrs. Bob, who was saying something that made Madeline hug her and presently rush over to Betty and Babbie to explain.

“The lovely Mrs. Bob wants to invest in our tea-room,” she told them. “You say your mother spoke of four hundred, Babbie. Well, Mrs. Bob says she’ll put in the same, and after Betty’s salary is paid and the other expenses, the profits are to be divided—that’s what you said was right, isn’t it, Dick?”

“But half my profits go to Madeline,” Mrs. Bob took her up, “for the inspirations.”

“Then I know mother will want half hers to go that way, too,” put in Babbie, “and I shall take the other half, to pay her up for being pessimistic about profits. She just laughed when I spoke of them.”

“Well, it will be all kinds of fun, anyway,” said Madeline. “Goodness, but I feel as if the worst was over now! Does any one know about early trains up to Harding? By the way, father hasn’t cabled, so I suppose this domicile is to let. Just spread the report, please, everybody, and I’ll come back in a few days to see about it. It’s just as well, because I suppose I’ve got to live in Harding now. I never could manage long-distance inspirations.”

The three girls departed early to pack and telegraph Mary Brooks Hinsdale that her “standing invitation” to come and visit her should stand no longer unheeded by her little friends of old.

So perhaps it hadn’t been a wasted day after all, Betty thought, falling asleep while Madeline was still busily discussing where they should live in Harding, and how much they ought to pay the tea-shop for their meals, if they ate them there.

CHAPTER V
THE REAL THING

Mary’s “beamish” smile was dimmed when she met her guests at the station.

“I’m just terribly glad to see you all,” she explained, “and to-morrow we can begin to have some fun. But to-night I have an awfully particular faculty dinner-party on, and what do you think? My cook has gone and caught the jaundice.” Mary’s tone was positively tragic.

“This is what you get for marrying a distinguished member of the faculty,” Madeline told her, patting her shoulder sympathetically. “But don’t you give that very particular dinner-party another thought, my child. What’s the point of having a full-sized catering company invade your happy little home if you don’t make use of them?”

“A catering company?” Mary stared. “There isn’t such a thing in Harding.”

“Well, a tea-shop corporation then,” Madeline amended briskly. “We are that, you know. We’ve come up here to establish ourselves. Meanwhile we are not above displaying our talents for the benefit of our very best friends. Betty says she can cook, and Babbie and I are bursting with ideas for original menus and beautiful table decorations. Have you a waitress?”

“Yes, but she’s very green and needs piles of coaching. Betty, please explain a few of Madeline’s riddles.”

“Come up to Cuyler’s first,” suggested Babbie. “It’s such a very long story.”

So the story was told, in all its ramifications, over many cups of Cuyler’s hot chocolate, and Mary went into ecstasies over the idea of a tea-shop in Harding, and into more ecstasies over the prospect of having Betty, and probably Madeline, so near her. Then she returned to the subject of her dinner.

“Would you really cook it, Betty?”

“Would you really trust her to cook it?” jeered Madeline.

“Yes, because there’s absolutely nothing else to be done,” said Mary, so dismally that everybody else shrieked with laughter.

“Very well then,” agreed Madeline. “You and Betty go and do your marketing, and Babbie and I will examine tea-room sites. We ought not to lose any time, you know,” she added impressively, with a sly glance at Betty.

“Don’t decide everything without me,” begged Betty innocently.