“And then it must be perfectly secure,” she explained on another occasion, just after she and Mr. Thayer had sat for almost an hour in the top story, among the branches that now made a most beautiful feathery screen. “Think how horrible it would be if the railing was too low and some silly little freshman fell out, or if the floor wasn’t strong enough and gave way. Mr. Thayer knows all about such things. He’s taking a lot of interest. We never could have done it properly except for him.”
But in spite of the accommodating slowness and stupidity of the untraveled carpenter, the Peter Pan Annex was finished at last.
“I’m a candidate now for the Perfect Patron’s Society,” Mr. Thayer told Betty, “so I want to give an opening-day tea up on the top floor for all the owners, managers, assistant managers, and small sisters. It’s to be this afternoon at four. I also want another stocking factory party, and hadn’t we better get it off our hands early, before commencement begins to loom up ahead?” Mr. Thayer looked very hard at Betty. “I suppose you are terribly busy?”
“Terribly,” returned Betty gravely, “but I think Babbie will help.”
Babbie would not.
“I’m going to your Cousin Austin’s Adirondack camp,” she explained, “to see spring come in the woods. Mother is the chaperon, and I have an awful suspicion that I am a sort of guest of honor. Anyway, the spring part of it appeals to me. And secondly, mother has been solemnly promised a reunion with her long-lost daughter.”
Later in the day Babbie, in a kimono, which is the attire of confidential intercourse, complained that “Mummy was as bad as Margot about a multi-millionaire,” and that she hated the woods in spring; they were always hot, and smoky from forest fires, there was no shade and no shooting, and the canoes leaked from being dry all winter.
“Moreover,” added Babbie wearily, a “so-called camp, with a butler and three other men, and a sunken garden, is going too much for me. But when mummy really insists, the laws of the Medes and Persians aren’t in it.” She gave a funny little mirthless laugh. “I suppose one ought to be very sure that one isn’t foolishly prejudiced against the popular idea of the idle rich.”
So Emily planned the factory party with much energy and originality, and Mr. Thayer was duly grateful. But his rare smile came only when Betty showed him a note from Babbie, inquiring carefully about the date of the party and stating in a postscript, with vehement underlining, that she never wanted to see spring come in anybody’s woods again.
“There are mosquitoes, and other things much worse,” ended Babbie enigmatically, with the blackest possible lines under the last two words.