“Is it? Well, I’ll help make things too, if you’ll let me come,” he promised. “You keep it up evenings, don’t you? I was at the factory last night, and I saw your light going up there. I thought seriously of coming over to protest against your infringing on the working man’s rule for an eight-hour day. If I had, would you have let me in?”
“I presume so,” Betty admitted laughingly, “because we should have thought it was Georgia Ames come to say good-night, or some college girl, who had filled orders for us, bringing the things.”
Young-Man-Over-the-Fence nodded approvingly. “Then the next evening that I find myself perishing of loneliness I shall try it.” And he rushed for the door so violently that he almost ran down a pair of little freshmen, who were chattering too busily about their senior crushes to look out for human whirlwinds coming along in the opposite direction.
CHAPTER IX
AN ORDER FOR A PARTY
“I suppose people do sometimes have to be away from their homes on Christmas day.” Betty held the “extra-special” shade she had just finished up against the light, and gazed pensively at the prancing horses and the hospitable red roof of the inn.
“It has been done,” gurgled Madeline, her mouth full of pins, “and it will be done again, with the Washington Square homestead rented and Sorrento, Italy, a little inaccessible from Harding, U. S. A.”
“Poor, lonely lady! Come and eat your Christmas dinner with mummy and me,” urged Babbie sympathetically. “Is it Tuesday or Wednesday that college closes?”
“Not till Wednesday,” murmured Madeline, “and then it’s me for freedom and the literary life!” She took the pins out cautiously, one by one. “It’s dear of you to ask me for the vacation, Babbie, but I’ve got to improve the shining hours. While the tea-room is shut, and Betty, the cruel slave-driver, has gone to be clasped in the arms of her adored and adoring family, I shall turn our palatial apartment into an author’s paradise—papers everywhere, genius burning, and positively no dusting allowed. If the wallpaper gets on my nerves I shall come over and start a fire here, and try the effect of a desk with a secret drawer in it on the imagination that Dick Blake rudely says I haven’t got.”
“I’m sorry, Madeline, but I don’t think I can go home.” Betty was swallowing hard to keep back the tears. She had thought it all out in the night, and made up her mind not to care, but telling it made it seem more final some way, and consequently worse. “Some of the orders can’t be filled until the last minute, and some will surely be late and have to be mailed. I haven’t made any payments to outsiders for two weeks, because I couldn’t take time to go over the accounts. I shouldn’t enjoy Christmas with all those things hanging over my head.”
“Then stop making those everlasting candle-shades and go to work on the accounts this very minute,” commanded Babbie, with a tilt of her determined chin.