“May I just glance at this letter before we talk?” asked Betty. “You’ll excuse me, won’t you, Mad? He probably wants me to kidnap you and make you invent another ploshkin, whether you want to or not.”
As Betty read, her expression grew serious, then amazed, then almost frightened. “What do you think now, Mad? He wants us to come and start another barn tea-shop for him round the corner from Fifth Avenue—oh, Madeline, in almost the very place we wanted when we started the Tally-ho—only of course we never thought then of looking around for a barn. And Madeline, what put it into his head was a letter he had from a department store in Chicago, wanting us to plan a tea-room for them,—with features. Mr. Morton thinks we’d better keep our ideas for our own use.”
“Certainly,” agreed Madeline, as calmly as if opening a tea-shop off Fifth Avenue was an every-day occurrence. “Tea-rooms aren’t like ploshkins. If you make them too popular, you spoil them. We can call the new place the Coach and Four.”
“Then you think we can really start it?” asked Betty anxiously.
“Easily,” returned Madeline. “We can manage the two places beautifully. You’ll have to go down right away and get things going. We can have our old Washington Square cook, I’m almost sure. When I’m in New York I’ll manage to be there a lot, and—we shan’t open till fall, I should say, so why not get Fluffy Dutton, who is planning to waste her talents teaching the Young Idea, to come and do the Proper Excitement act for the Coach and Four?”
“And Georgia, who is also going to teach, to do the hard, steady grind,” added Betty.
Madeline looked at her quizzically. “The hard, steady grind that you’ve always had to do for the Tally-ho,” she said repentantly. “I’m sorry I’m such a flyaway, Betty.”
Betty laughed at Madeline’s woebegone expression. “I’m not,” she said. “You’re a genius, and I rather think Fluffy is one too. I don’t mind the hard, steady pulling. I rather like it—generally. But I can’t be doing it in two places at once.”
Madeline nodded. “I know. There’s a lot of hard, steady grind to every book I write—along with a pinch or two, maybe, of the queer thing called genius. The grind in the books I do myself, because I have to, and it’s fun—the long, steady pull up to that lovely stopping place called Finis. I say, Betty, this old-maid business isn’t so bad. Just think of all the fun we’ve had doing things, and all the fun we’re going to have with the Coach and Four. Those others give up a lot for a mere man.”
Betty smiled indulgently at Madeline’s declaration of independence. “If it hadn’t been for a mere man named Morton, the Tally-ho would have gone to smash long ago,” she reminded her. “Mary Brooks hasn’t stopped doing interesting things because she’s married, and Babe could do anything she liked—have half a dozen tea-shops, if she wanted them. Mr. Morton would give them to her like that! Only of course you’ve got to find the right man.”