“Friends of yours, Miss B. A.?” he inquired in a dreadfully loud whisper. “Friends of mine! Nonsense—merest acquaintances. Well, tell me their names again, and then bring ’em along. How do you do, Mrs. Valentine? Mr. Valentine, how are you? Your daughter—this one, no, that one—and Miss Force. Very glad to see so many New Yorkers, I’m sure. Miss B. A., don’t forget that I’m waiting for you. I hate to be kept waiting, but you’re one of the people that are worth waiting for. Do I know your father, Miss Force? It’s quite possible. I know so many people in one way and another that it takes several secretaries to keep me posted on the subject. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to my dinner, which is too good to let cool.”
Whereupon the “very wealthy” Valentines and “Miss Force” departed, and Jasper J. Morton chuckled to himself as he wondered if they had noticed that what he had left on his plate to cool was tomato salad. He had reached his coffee before Betty came to keep him company. She wasn’t hungry, she explained; she had snatched her dinner bit by bit between-times; but Mr. Morton insisted upon her beginning all over again and “eating like a Christian,” telling her meanwhile the latest news of John’s senior honors at Harvard, of which he was absurdly proud, and of the house he was building as a surprise for Babe, next to his own stately summer home.
“Now tell me all about yourself,” he commanded, when Betty finally declared that she couldn’t and wouldn’t eat anything more. “Are you well, and are you happy? It’s no use asking if your business is a success, after watching this evening’s crowd eat. But I’m afraid you’re overworked. Next time you’re shy a waitress just telephone me and I’ll have one sent up from New York in short order. But if she doesn’t get here soon enough, why, let ’em sit a while. Or let ’em run out and help themselves. The help-yourself style of restaurant is getting to be very popular. Now how about your latest ‘benevolent adventures’?”
Betty told him about the factory’s club-house, and promised to take him to see it in the morning, after they had been to chapel and made a tour of the campus. Mr. Morton watched her closely while she talked.
“You’re not happy, Miss B. A.,” he said at last. “You’ve got something on your mind. You don’t laugh right out the way you did last summer, and you were thinking about something else while I told you about the little tomboy’s new house. Out with it now; what’s the trouble?”
“Nothing,” Betty assured him.
“You say that very much as if you didn’t mean it, my dear young lady,” Mr. Morton told her.
“Well, nothing that I want to tell you then,” Betty amended, with her flashing smile. “You’ll want to do something about it and I don’t think you can—anyway I don’t want you to try, and you’ll only get awfully——”
“Mad,” put in Mr. Morton grimly. “Well, then you’ll have a chance to smooth me down the way you did last summer. You can do that, but you can’t get out of telling me what’s worrying you.”
So Betty told the whole story, beginning with Mr. Harrison’s unexpected visit and ending with Madeline’s hurried one. She explained why she had begun so suddenly with the dinners, and how unfortunate it was that there would be no time to sell the ploshkins, of whose charms she gave a lively description. She accounted for her disappointment purely on the ground of not wishing to have the Tally-ho Tea-Shop cease at the height of its success, saying nothing about the little sister, her responsibility for Emily, or the low ebb of her own finances. But just as she had predicted, Mr. Morton flew into a rage at once. Why hadn’t she written him to come and interview that rascal Harrison? Why had she gone into business in the first place without his advice and help? Where was the scamp’s office? If he did not meet his engagement to go to chapel with her the next morning she would know what had detained him.