“Certainly you can stay,” he told her affably, “only I’m going to raise the rent. The rent you pay is ridiculous. From the beginning of next month just multiply it by three, please.”
“But—but we can’t afford to pay as much as that,” Betty told him. “That’s why we didn’t start in New York—because rents were so high. The first thing we asked your agent, before we even came to look at this place, was the amount of the rent.”
Mr. Harrison looked at her coldly. “Well, he was an idiot, that’s all. I’m not in the real estate business for my health. This barn never paid decent returns. Now that we’ve found a use for it, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t. Think it over. Make up your mind to cut down expenses and profits; and if you should decide to quit, why, I’ll buy out your fixtures. I’ll warrant I can rent at my own price within a month.”
Betty had been thinking desperately. “I don’t know very much about business, Mr. Harrison,” she said at last, “but it seems to me that if we pay rent by the month we ought to have a full month’s notice that you have decided to raise the price. A maid who is paid by the week always gives at least a week’s notice, and if we wanted to leave we should certainly have told your agent at least a month beforehand.”
“Very well,” he said briskly. “This is the twenty-third. Next month goes at the old rate; after that multiply it by three or quit. Good-afternoon.”
“Good-afternoon,” Betty told him, with a sigh of relief that he had gone, even though he left such a dreadful ultimatum behind him. But he hadn’t gone. He stuck his head in the door to say that he would “call around again” in a few days for her decision.
Left alone at last Betty looked at her watch. Six o’clock—Belden-House-Annie’s waitress wouldn’t come now. Perhaps it was just as well. Perhaps Nora would stay for the month—the last month of the Tally-ho. They couldn’t pay three times their present rent. No matter how successful the dinners were, that was out of the question. The profits, outside of the gift department, had been comparatively small, and the busiest part of the year was now over. If Mr. Harrison persisted in his determination to raise the rent, they would have to stop, or move—and there was no place to move to.
Betty looked around the pretty room, with all its attractive “features,” and suddenly realized what the closing of the tea-shop would mean. Madeline and Babbie would be disappointed; Mrs. Hildreth and Mrs. Enderby would lose a part, at least, of their investment. But she—and little Dorothy—and Emily Davis—Betty reached out for a sheet of note-paper to write to Madeline the resourceful, and then dropped her head down on the big desk and cried as if her heart would break.
Why hadn’t she thought of all this before Mr. Harrison left? She had, in a confused fashion; but instead of helping her to argue with him her despair had made her dumb. If only he would let them stay until June! Then Emily would be provided for through the summer, and father and mother would be back from Mexico. Dorothy could go home and Betty too, with a nice little sum left over to show for her winter’s work. But if the Tally-ho stopped now, where could she sell the ploshkins? And with the emergency fund gone, and no salary after next month——
Betty could hear father saying with his twinkling, amused smile, “You oughtn’t to have counted your chickens before they were hatched, little girl. It’s a bad habit.”