“The most important thing is an assistant for you,” Madeline went on. “You can’t do more than you are doing now. If we serve dinners, there will be more marketing, more accounts, more to see to all around the place, and longer hours for the cashier.”
“Oh, of course Betty must have an assistant,” chimed in Babbie, “and a bigger salary. It’s not fair for us to be making such good profits when she works so hard.”
“You’ll make more, even with a good many extra expenses, if the dinners go as I think they will,” put in Betty, forcing her associates to listen, while she explained what could be done if the average dinner check was so-and-so, the average attendance so-and-so, and the additional expenses kept down to this and that.
“All right; let’s serve dinners by all means,” said Babbie gaily. “I hate averages, because as far as I can see they never come out the way you want them, but I’m all for expansion. Mummy will like it too. She’s awfully proud of us. Now Betty can do a go-as-you-please on the details, can’t she, Madeline? We only bother by putting in our oars; we’re such ignoramuses.”
Empowered to choose her own assistant, Betty spent two days anxiously considering various possibilities. If only it were fall, and Katherine or Rachel were free to try this unconventional way of earning a living! And then, just at the crucial moment, when she had almost decided to ask a junior who was working her way through college to come and try the work for the rest of the term, arrived a letter from Emily Davis, with moving pathos behind its story of a bitter disappointment bravely accepted.
“I can’t blame my old eyes,” Emily wrote, “because they’ve served me long and well, and I’ve overdriven the poor beasties shamefully. So now they balk, and the doctor says they just must be humored. They’ll hold my position in the school for me until next fall. In the meantime I’m hunting for any honest means of livelihood that doesn’t require eyes. I should cry a few tears at having to give up this perfectly splendid position that I was so elated to get; but crying is very bad for the eyes, so I smile and smile and keep on thinking how in the world I can manage to earn my bread and butter until next September. This summer, if worse comes to worst, I can wait on table at a seaside resort. Please don’t think I’m hinting for a chance to do it at the Tally-ho. I should hate to explain to everybody I know at Harding how it happens that I’m back at an underclass girl’s last resort—I, who was a star tutor way back in my junior year, and who meant to come to our reunion in June a star teacher, with all the money I borrowed to go through college paid back, and enough left for board at my sister’s through a restful summer. And now the oculist’s bill is gobbling up everything in sight.
“What a growl! But this is a safety-valve letter, Betty. As you are earning your living too, I feel extra sure you’ll understand.”
“What she means is, she feels sure that I won’t offer her money,” Betty reflected shrewdly. “And isn’t it just splendid that I can offer her a good position!”
For of course Emily was the very one to be assistant manager. To be sure, Betty hated the clerical work, and had planned to have her assistant take charge of the accounts. But the keeping of those was a small thing compared to having dear old comical Emily Davis back, with her famous “stunts,” her cheerful fashion of meeting defeat and failure with a smile, and her marvelous ability to work twice as hard as any one else and yet always appear calm and collected and unhurried. Betty had a feeling that Emily would insist upon attending to the lamps and the stove. She wouldn’t let her do it all, of course—she knew too well how hard it was—but just a little help would be such a relief.
Of course Babbie and Madeline were as eager as Betty to have Emily join the tea-room’s force, and Emily could not have resisted the combined logic and pleading of the three letters they sent her, even if she had wanted to. So she wrote back post-haste a grateful acceptance of their offer and promised to be on hand within a fortnight.