“That wouldn’t be business,” Betty insisted firmly. “It isn’t but three weeks now before Christmas, and then we shall have to stop for a while at least. I’ll hire some girls to make the shades and you can show them how and then do cards for a while. No, think up some perfectly new thing. The new things take best.” Betty tactfully didn’t add “and keep you interested and at work best.”
“But I’ve got an idea for a story,” Madeline would grumble.
“Can’t it wait? Think of all the stamps you can buy with this money,” Betty suggested craftily.
“I’m getting to be dreadfully diplomatic,” she confided to Mary Brooks. “I used to hate the girls who were like that—Jean Eastman and her crowd. But now I scheme in all kinds of ways to get Madeline to do as I wish, and to keep Bridget good-natured, and make the customers think they’d a lot rather have English muffins, if the sandwiches are all gone.”
“You are developing a hard case of executive ability, my child,” Mary told her. “It’s perfectly comical, because you look so young and innocent with all that curly hair. By the way, Betty, hasn’t Bridget a recipe for cookies that you can christen ‘Cousin Kate’s’? I’ve been talking to ever so many girls about their relatives, and it seems as if they all had a Cousin Kate. And then by association of ideas, you see, they’d buy more presents.”
“Hasn’t Dr. Hinsdale finished his paper?” laughed Betty. “Because if he has you mustn’t bother too much about us, Mary. You’ve helped us now more than we can ever thank you for. You certainly ought to take the money for your candle-shades.”
“Remember you three girls made me famous as a hostess, through the length and breadth of Harding,” Mary told her. “I’ve got to even up for that. And Madeline has half promised that if I’m a very Perfect Patron indeed till Christmas she’ll show me the secret drawer. I think I’ll go up and make her promise me fair and square before I go to work on this new order-list.”
It was rather early for afternoon tea drinkers, but Betty didn’t like to follow Mary and leave the tea-room alone; and Nora was busy in the kitchen helping Bridget to transform chicken salad left over from lunch into “our special tea-sandwiches.” So she sat down at her desk and was soon so deep in the auditing of her weekly accounts that she didn’t hear the door open, nor see a tall young man stop just inside to look around the room with an appreciative smile and then cross hesitatingly to her desk, his smile growing broader as he found himself still unnoticed.
“Is there a sign anywhere: ‘No men allowed within’?” he asked, finally.
Betty looked up with a little gasp of surprise, and the tall young man bowed to her over the desk, still smiling reassuringly.