There remained still the ploshkin project to consider. The tea-room’s uninvested capital would just about buy the extra china and other equipments needed for the dinner service. Betty was averse to asking Mrs. Hildreth or Mrs. Bob for more money, and the profits had been divided in January, so they were not available. But Betty had kept her emergency fund intact all winter, as her father had advised, and she had added to it appreciably from her salary, her tutoring money, and her work for the gift-shop department. It was now well on toward spring, and the tea-shop had fully proved its money-making capacities.
“So, if you don’t mind, I should like to have the ploshkins made with the money that father gave me, if it’s enough—and it will be if Madeline can get them done at about what she and Mary thought would be a good investment. Then I’ll sell them here, and give the shop a small commission, as the college girls did when we sold their things before Christmas.”
This was perfectly satisfactory to everybody, and Madeline departed gaily to pay visits in Bohemia, see editors, match china, and get ploshkins manufactured—a potpourri of assorted activities that thoroughly delighted her variety-loving temperament.
CHAPTER XIV
THE REVOLT OF THE “WHY-GET-UPS”
It was the dull season between midyears and spring vacation—a time that makes the ordinary Hardingite restless, and drives the clever ones to all sorts of absurdities and extravagances. The best stunts are always invented at this season, and the wildest pranks perpetrated. This year Prexy guilelessly announced in chapel that “bobbing” and “hitching” with sleds were not, in his estimation, dignified forms of recreation for the “womanly woman” who was Harding’s ideal. So with dust-pan coasting also under the ban, and the ice on the skating-rink frozen humpy—just to be spiteful, Georgia Ames declared—the dull season opened ten times duller than usual.
Of course Betty heard all about the “anti-bob” ordinance, and sympathized duly with its downtrodden victims.
“There are getting to be too many old rules in this place, anyway,” declared Lucile Merrifield hotly, as they discussed the matter over their teacups in Flying Hoof’s stall. “We’re supposed to be sensible, reasonable creatures and to know what’s permissible in this rural retreat. I shouldn’t go ‘hitching’ in New York. I should probably wear my hat there when I went out shopping. Prexy doesn’t give his sweet creation, the womanly woman, credit for ordinary intelligence.”
“He wouldn’t be able to if he heard you talk, my dear,” Polly Eastman told her soothingly. “Have some more of Betty’s Cousin Kate cookies. They’re very good for the temper, and not against the rules.”
“Are you sure?” demanded Lucile acidly. “There are so many rules now that I shouldn’t pretend to keep them all in my head at once.”
“Let’s get Madeline and make her tell tea-ground fortunes,” suggested Georgia. “I’m tired of all this fuss about rules.”