“It’s two weeks, and two days, less two hours,” she explained, when she had kissed Dorothy and examined the ploshkin. “I couldn’t come at the proper time, because my Uncle Marcellus has been to visit us—the one that gave us the desert island for a wedding gift, you know.” Mary sighed deeply. “A desert island is a lovely thing to own, but when it involves an Uncle Marcellus I’d advise anybody to think twice. Well, he’s gone at last and here I am, to open the drawer.”
“Why didn’t you bring your Uncle Marcellus in to lunch?” demanded Madeline severely. “You haven’t been any kind of a patron lately. And where’s your new feature for the shop that I told you to think up? You’re trying to shirk your responsibilities, little Mary.”
“Uncle Marcellus,” said Mary calmly, “is a vegetarian with dyspepsia. Of course I didn’t bring him in here to find fault with everything. New rule for the Perfect Patron: Keep the dyspeptic vegetarian away from the Tea-Room. As for features, I’d thought of something. Let me see—oh,—why, of course! Make ploshkins.” Mary smiled her beamish smile at the two proprietors.
“Now, Mary, you thought that up on the spur of the minute,” began Madeline. “It’s not fair——”
“Nonsense,” Mary denounced her affably. “You’re always preaching the advantage of impromptu inspirations.”
“But why should we make ploshkins?” demanded Betty.
“Why indeed?” Mary beamed. “Have you forgotten the day when the Gibson girl hung over every desk on the Harding campus? And after that came the Winged Victory. Last year it was red devils, wasn’t it? Well, now it shall be ploshkins. The Harding girl must have her little idol, and the Tally-ho Tea-Shop may as well have the Harding girl’s money.”
“But they’d take ages to make,” objected Madeline. “Fluffy and I spent two long and weary afternoons on this one.”
“Don’t be so literal, child,” advised Mary. “Have them made, I mean, of course. Get one of those plaster statuette places in New York to turn them off for you. Let me see—three—five—order five hundred. Three hundred girls will rush to buy them, and two hundred out of the three will get that wing broken off before June and sorrowfully buy another.” Mary smiled blandly. “I ought to have been the wife of a shopkeeper, oughtn’t I? Now may I play with your secret drawer?”
Being of a fickle disposition, Mary had no sooner received full and free permission to play with the drawer whenever she liked, than the secret springs lost their tremendous attraction for her. She had just got the drawer open when Georgia Ames appeared and Mary promptly deserted her new plaything to secure Georgia’s advance order for ploshkins, and then to help her concoct a beautiful little notice about them to be circulated discreetly through the college.