“But if I do that,” Betty objected, “we can’t possibly fill our orders. Besides, I don’t believe the tea-room ought to be closed during the vacation. A good many girls stay over, and anyway it won’t seem businesslike.”
“I’ll keep it open then,” declared Madeline magnanimously.
“Oh, you couldn’t ever manage, Madeline. You’d make a mess——” Betty stopped short, with a swift effort to be tactful. “You’d ruin your imagination, I mean, thinking up new sandwiches and paying grocer’s bills.”
Babbie and Madeline exchanged despairing glances.
“I won’t dust our room, Madeline,” Betty promised, “not once in the whole two weeks, and you may scatter papers wherever you like. And you mustn’t think I mind terribly, Babbie. You’ve got to tend up to things you do for a living or else—— Oh, dear! who is that knocking?”
“I’ll go,” Babbie offered, “because I’ve just washed the paint off my hands.”
So Babbie Hildreth and not Betty, who had been sympathetic about lonely evenings, opened the door for Young-Man-Over-the-Fence, and after a frigid “Good-evening” stood frowning in disapproving silence while she waited for him to explain himself.
“I came to ask—that is, I wanted to see about placing an order. I suppose I shouldn’t have come this evening, only I was in a hurry to get things settled right away. Is Miss—the young woman who sits at the desk—could I see her?”
“I’m not sure,” Babbie told him coldly. “You can’t have dinner here, you know. This tea-shop closes at six, and it’s nearly eight now.”
“I’m very sorry,” murmured Young-Man-Over-the-Fence contritely. Babbie Hildreth in a blue gingham studio apron, with a distractingly becoming dinner-gown peeping out from underneath it, was a sight calculated to inspire contrition in the breast of any man who had unwittingly incurred her displeasure. “I’ll come back in the morning—no, in the afternoon,” he added humbly.