“Yes, we have those things, but we don’t care to sell any of them,” Betty told him shortly. The idea of any one’s coming to buy the Tally-ho’s most prized features, and in commencement week too, when every minute was precious. Mr. Smith’s hand was on the desk, but now he looked down as if he had but just discovered the fact.
“Oh, this is the desk I was told about, isn’t it?” he said, and came around to Betty’s side to see it to better advantage. “It’s a good piece—a very good piece. I’ll give you a good price for it, Miss Wales. Just name your figure.”
“I couldn’t, for the desk belongs to the firm—the tea-shop firm,” Betty answered. “And if we should even decide to sell,—though I don’t think we shall—two friends of ours are ready to give us the full value of the desk.”
“Now what would you consider the full value of the desk, Miss Wales?” Mr. Smith asked, in a tone that was meant to be half persuasive and half scornful of Miss Wales’s knowledge of antiques.
“I don’t know exactly, and it doesn’t matter at all, because we don’t wish to sell the desk or anything else that we have.” Betty’s tone was meant to be wholly anxious for the immediate departure of the importunate Mr. Smith.
“I’ll give you four hundred dollars for that desk, Miss Wales. That’s about five times what you paid for it, I guess, and twice what your friends would give. Furbush’s can pay top prices for a thing they like, because their customers are the top-price sort.”
Betty was inwardly amazed, both at the sum Mr. Smith offered and at the accuracy of his guesses about the price Madeline had paid and the advance Mrs. Bob had offered. But she reflected that if Furbush’s, of which she had never heard, would pay four hundred dollars for the desk to-day they probably would pay that or nearly that later in the week. Babbie was off walking with Mr. Thayer, whom she was keeping very much in the background because only Betty and the other two B’s were to know of the engagement until class supper night, when Babbie meant to run around the table with the other engaged girls. And Madeline had not yet torn herself away from her beloved studio apartment, where her latest diversion was papering her study with “rejection slips” from over-fastidious editors. The desk certainly could not be sold at any price without Madeline’s consent. So in the face of Mr. Smith’s munificent offer, Betty preserved a stony silence which finally evoked a low whistle from that gentleman.
“All right,” he said, slipping his hand lovingly across the carved panels and the inlaid fronts of the little drawers. “If you feel that way about it, Furbush must do without. Now have you the same objections to selling me a cup of tea?”
“Certainly you can have tea here,” Betty told him. “If you will sit down at one of the tables you will be served directly.” Then she turned her attention to Kate and the others, and forgot all about Mr. Smith, who chose a retired nook in Flying Hoof’s stall, ordered tea with three kinds of sandwiches, pulled a book out of his pocket, and explained to the waitress that he liked to eat slowly and read, without being disturbed.
The supper committee worked out its seating plan and departed, highly indignant that Betty wouldn’t come up to the campus with them to pay calls on the lesser stars of the senior play cast, who were on exhibition in their make-ups.