Madeline shook her head vigorously. “Don’t you see, dearie, that the whole idea of a secret drawer is not to have the rules written down where anybody can get at them? Sometimes things get lost in secret drawers for a generation or two, and it’s so lovely having your grandfather’s will or your great-aunt’s love-letters, or your wicked uncle’s confession of a murder he committed, tumble out some day unexpectedly, just because you touched a spring that you didn’t even know was in existence. But the rules for the Perfect Patron are a different matter. I shall devote my evening to composing them.” Madeline sighed deeply. “I suppose I ought to devote it to my Literary Career. I simply mustn’t neglect that, Betty, even to make extra-special Tally-ho candle-shades.” She sighed again. “The trouble with a Literary Career is that you work on it for ages, and you’ve got nothing to show for your trouble but a story that ten editors have turned down. Whereas a candle-shade is a candle-shade, and a Rule for a Perfect Patron is sure to be amusing at least to yourself. Let’s see—‘First Rule for the Perfect Patron: Don’t act patronizing to the Firm; confine your patronage to the menu.’ How’s that, Betty?”
“Lovely!” declared Betty with enthusiasm. “Only Mary never can do it. She loves to call us my children.”
“That’s the point of the rule,” explained Madeline sagely. “Little Mary has got to work hard before we initiate her into the rite of the Secret Drawer. If I can think up enough joyous impossibilities for rules we might organize a Perfect Patrons’ Society, limited to six members.” Madeline threw aside her pencil and paper and curled up comfortably on Betty’s couch. “I foresee,” she announced blandly, “that the secret drawer is going to be our prize feature. First rule for tea-rooms: Take care of the features, and the patrons will take care of you.”
CHAPTER VIII
YOUNG-MAN-OVER-THE-FENCE
The only trouble with the gift-shop department was that it went too well. When Madeline and Mary had each made a dozen candle-shades and Betty had decorated some cards and blotters and secured a few pretty samples from needy undergraduates, Madeline painted a “postscript sign” to hang like a pendant from the big one in the gargoyle’s mouth, and tacked a gay poster, announcing the Tally-ho’s new departure, on to the barn door. By five o’clock that night all the shades, except those reserved for samples, and nearly all the cards were sold, and there was an order list for the “extra special” shades that Madeline declared would be the utter ruin of her Literary Career. The workshop in the loft fairly hummed with activity. Mary Brooks was its presiding genius. Dr. Hinsdale continued to work on his learned paper, so it was a mercy, Mary said, waving aside Betty’s thanks, that she had something to work on too. Every morning and nearly every afternoon she fluttered in, to see how things were getting on.
“I’ve thought up a splendid idea,” she would call, as she climbed the stairs.
Or, “Dreamed a scrumptious rhyme in the night, Madeline, for the cards with the half wreaths on them.”
Or, “I’ve heard of a girl who makes the loveliest stenciled things. Will she be reliable about filling orders? How in the world should I know about that, Betty Wales?”
That was Betty’s part—to make the undergraduates fill orders according to their agreements, to keep accounts for them and for Madeline and her assistants, to sift Mary’s “splendid ideas,” discarding the impractical and arranging to have the useful ones carried out, to spur on Madeline’s enthusiasm, and to help, whenever she could find a spare moment, with the actual work of making the pretty novelties for sale.
“Let’s stop. We’ve earned lots of money now, and I’m tired to death of cutting queer-shaped holes in cardboard,” Madeline would complain at least once every day.