“Madeline’s stuck in the fog down the harbor,” she explained. “So when I came last night I got the key from the tailor and hunted up the cook, all by myself, and she brought the cat just as Madeline said she would. And then that nice Mrs. Bob, the one we met before, helped me give a party.”
“How did you happen to be giving a party?” laughed Betty.
“Because Mrs. Bob was tired of her own apartment. It’s perfectly gorgeous, you know, since they got all that money, but she says it’s so elegant and well-kept that it spoils the informality of things. So the cook swept, and we dusted, and Mr. Bob invited the people and bought the food. It was great.” Babbie gave a comical little skip to emphasize her complete satisfaction with life. Then suddenly her small face took on its most serious expression. “And to think how miserable I’ve been lately. Poor mother was glad enough to let me come down here, I’m afraid, I was so cross. I’m never going to look at a young man again, Betty Wales, as long as I live. So there now!”
Betty patted Babbie’s arm soothingly. “That won’t prevent their looking at you, I’m afraid,” she suggested, “at least not unless you stop buying such becoming hats.”
Babbie frowned. “One can’t turn oneself into a frump, just on their account. Buying becoming hats is one of the chief consolations of life. I didn’t mean that I was going to retire from the world, but I shall never let any one fall in love with me, never. That’s settled!”
“All right,” laughed Betty. “Now let’s settle where we’re going.”
“That’s settled too,” explained Babbie. “Mr. Dick Blake is meeting Madeline, because I had to meet you. Then we are all to meet each other for a grand lunch party, to celebrate Mr. Blake’s getting into his scrumptious new offices,—the ones that your Mr. Morton arranged for, you know. And to-night Mrs. Bob is going to take us all for dinner to a new East Side place that they’ve discovered.” Babbie stopped to survey Betty critically. “You don’t mind wasting to-day, do you, and beginning on tea-rooms the first thing to-morrow? Your letter sounded as solemncholy as Helen Chase Adams when she was a freshman.”
Betty laughed. “How dreadful! Of course I don’t mind. But you see, Babbie, this tea-room business is just fun for you, but for me it’s dead in earnest. If we can’t make it pay pretty well, why, next year I may have to teach.”
Babbie nodded vigorously. “I see. That’s a prospect to make a person solemn, isn’t it? But by next year your father will probably be rich again. And I don’t want you to think I’m not in earnest too, Betty. I’m going into this thing head over heels, just to show a certain person that he doesn’t make one least little speck of difference to me.” Babbie’s big eyes flashed dangerously. “So to-morrow we’ll pursue tea-rooms like anything.”
But ten o’clock the next morning found the three pursuers of tea-rooms gathered rather languidly around Madeline’s dainty breakfast table. Mrs. Bob’s party had been, as usual, a continuous performance, beginning at a very foreign café in Little Italy, going on, because the Italian dessert had proved disappointing, to a glittering hotel on Fifth Avenue, thence back to a Yiddish theatre, whose leading lady was Mr. Bob’s latest enthusiasm, and winding up, very late indeed, at supper near the park, after which it took so long to get home that Mrs. Bob declared she was hungry again and made everybody come up to the apartment for more supper.