"I was out at Anchorage for this last week-end," ran one of the messages. "And it rained so hard one night that what was to have been an informal dance was turned into an old-fashioned candy-pull. Not more than half a dozen guests managed to get there. Tell Mary that I tried to distinguish myself by making some of that Mexican pecan candy that they used to have such success with at the Wigwam. But it was a flat failure, and I think I must have left out some important ingredient. Ask her to please send me the recipe if she can remember it."
"Probably it failed because she didn't have the real Mexican sugar," said Mary, at the end of the reading. "It comes in a cone, wrapped in a queer kind of leaf, so I'm sure she didn't have it. I'll write out the recipe as soon as I get back from my geometry recitation, and add a foot-note, explaining about the sugar."
Somehow it was hard for Mary to keep her mind on lines and angles that next hour. She kept seeing a merry group in the Wigwam kitchen. Lloyd and Jack and Phil Tremont were all ranged around the white table, cracking pecans, and picking out the firm full kernels, while Joyce presided over the bubbling kettle on the stove. She wondered if Lloyd had enjoyed her grown-up party as much as she had that other one, when Jack said such utterly ridiculous things in pigeon English, like the old Chinese vegetable man, and Phil cake-walked and parodied funny coon-songs till their sides ached with laughing.
At the close of the recitation a hastily scribbled note from Betty was handed to her.
"I have just found out," it ran, "that Mammy Easter will be unable to furnish her usual pralines and Christmas sweets to her Warwick Hall customers this year. Why don't you try your hand at that Mexican candy Lloyd mentioned. If the girls once get a taste it will be 'advertised by its loving friends' and you can sell quantities. I am going to the city this afternoon, and can order the sugar for you. If they wire the order you ought to be able to get it within a week. E.S."
Mary went up stairs two steps at a bound, stepping on the front of her dress at every other jump, and only saving herself from sprawling headlong as she reached the top, by catching at A.O., who ran into her on the way down. She could not get back to her bank book and her Christmas list soon enough, to see how much cash she had on hand, and compute how much she dared squeeze out to invest in material.
A week later the Domestic Science room was turned over to her during recreation hour, and presently a delicious odour began to steal out into the halls, which set every girl within range to sniffing hungrily. Betty explained it to several, and there was no need to do anything more. Every one was on hand for her share when the samples were passed around, and the new business venture was discussed in every room.
"Wouldn't you like to know Jack Ware?" asked Dorene of Cornie, her mouth so full of the delicious sweets that she could only mumble. "Any man who can inspire such adoration in his own sister must be nothing short of a wonder."
"I feel that I do know him," responded Cornie, "That I am quite well acquainted with him, in fact. And I quite approve of 'my brother Jack.' It's queer, too, for usually when you hear a person quoted morning, noon and night you get so that you want to scream when his name is mentioned. Now there's Babe Meadows. Will you ever forget the way she rang the changes on 'my Uncle Willie'? I used to quote that line from Tennyson under my breath—'A quinsy choke thy cursèd note!' It was 'Uncle Willie says this isn't good form' and 'Uncle Willie says they don't do that in England' till you got worn to a frazzle having that old Anglomaniac eternally thrown at your head. But the more Mary quotes Jack the better you like him."
"I wonder how he feels about Mary taking this way to earn his Christmas present."