“Shan’t,” Jim assured her. “I’ve merely arranged it so I can meet all Eleanor’s friends’ trains. There’s everything in arrangement. I generally begin my arduous duties at nine, but to-morrow seven o’clock shall see me up and at ’em—meaning the carpenters, bricklayers, plasterers, sewing-machine agents, and all the rest of my menials.”
“With all the extra men that Mr. Morton had sent up, can’t you possibly get through before Christmas?” demanded Betty eagerly.
“I can’t say yet,” Jim told her. “Is it so long to wait for your sewing-machines and things?”
“Perfect ages!”
Jim frowned. Betty didn’t mean to be unkind, but any one else, he reflected sadly, would have considered the personal side of the matter. Betty was a jolly girl, but all she really cared for was this confounded philanthropic job—and her tea-shop, maybe. She expected a fellow to be the same—all wrapped up in his job.
Madeline arrived, according to custom, ten minutes before her telegram, and swung up the Tally-ho steps to the lilting tune of her famous song, “Back to the College Again.”
“Hello, Betty! Hello, Emily! Hello, Nora and Bridget! I say, but isn’t this Improved Version of the Tally-ho almost too grand? No, I didn’t write. I couldn’t; I didn’t decide in time. I had a special article on fresh air children to write up for a friend of Dick’s, and a Woman’s Page for the ‘Leader,’ because the person who does it usually, known to Newspaper Row as Madam Bon Ton, has gone on a vacation to Atlantic City. But I sat up all last night out at Bob’s, listening to her merry tales and writing them down, and then pinching her awake to tell me more whenever I ran out of material. And I did the Woman’s Page on the train coming up here. We ought to have a real celebration for me after I’ve worked so hard as all that just to come.”
“You go ahead and plan one and we’ll have it,” Betty promised recklessly.
Madeline nodded, and rushed on to something else. “Is Rachel really going to teach Zoo, and is Helen Chase Adams going to adorn the English department? Christy wrote me about her appointment for History. Why, Betty, there’ll be a regular Harding colony of the finest class this year. You round them all up for tea to-morrow, and I’ll have the celebration ready. Never fear about that!”
“You want Mary Brooks Hinsdale, of course,” Betty suggested.