“We’d better wait and see whether this rush keeps up,” advised Betty wisely. “Maybe those that came to-day didn’t like it and won’t come again.”
“Everybody was perfectly crazy over it,” declared Madeline. “I’m sure it’s all plain sailing, now that we’ve got started.”
Betty, tucking a complicated marketing list into her shopping-bag with a still more complicated memoranda of “things to be attended to,” said nothing. She wasn’t afraid of hard work, but the responsibility and the thought that perhaps she couldn’t possibly get through it all worried her a good deal. She could have hugged Georgia Ames next morning, when that brisk young person, having banged persistently on the tea-shop door, finally climbed in the kitchen window.
“Found you a room,” she announced breathlessly, “in that little white house in front. Woman has a big beauty left over, and you can have it cheap, because it’s so late in the season. With or without meals. Heard you say you wanted one. Now send me on more errands. I’ve got a free morning—no classes till twelve, and then only a snap course in psychology. What? You silly! As if I wouldn’t do anything for you after the way you treated me last year.”
It was Georgia who suggested applying to the Students’ Aid for more waitresses and who, when the Students’ Aid insisted that it couldn’t be expected to provide them on less than a day’s notice, sought out the spendthrift Dutton twins and pressed them into Betty’s service.
“They’re always poor after the second of the month, aren’t you, my children?” she asked them, as they presented themselves in two of Nora’s aprons, flushed and giggling, for Betty’s inspection. “Your hair is in a mess, as usual, Fluffy. Remember, Straight, your right hand is the one you take notes with—if you ever do take notes. Now run out to the kitchen, and Bridget and Nora will show you where things are. And remember it’s only a lark to you, but you mustn’t queer the Tally-ho Tea-Shop.”
These instructions they faithfully obeyed, seeking out Betty later to tell her so.
“And we think we ought to have our lunch extra,” the fluffy-haired twin explained, “because all our little pals came in to see us do our stunt.”
“And we egged them on to have all sorts of expensive things, more than they’d meant to order,” added her straight-haired sister. “Besides, we want to save our wages for lucky pieces.”
But while they were eating the lunch that was “extra,” Lucile Merrifield came in, and being noisily invited to join them, ate up the lucky pieces and much more, while she listened to the twins’ joyous account of their new “stunt.” “So the lunch wasn’t exactly extra after all,” said the fluffy-haired twin as she paid the bill, “because we egged Lucile on too. Extravagance is a good quality in a waitress, isn’t it, Miss Wales? I shall write my father that. It may tickle him so that he’ll raise our allowance, and if he does we’ll be right down here giving a party.”