“Why, Madeline Ayres,” objected Helen Adams solemnly, “it’s a charitable enterprise. I don’t suppose snap courses are exactly wrong, though they never amount to much, and so they waste the time of the ones that take them. But it would be positively wrong for the Student’s Aid to waste its money, when so many more poor girls want educations than can have them.”
Madeline listened, frowning intently. “‘The Immorality of the Snap Course’—I’ll do a little essay on that for the alumnæ department of the ‘Argus.’ It will rattle the editor awfully, but she will almost have to print it, after having teased and teased me for a few words from my facile and distinguished pen. Thanks a lot, Helen, for the idea. I’d give you the credit in a foot-note, only it might scare girls away from your courses.”
“Aren’t you thankful, girls,” began Mary, waving her teacup majestically around the circle, “that only one of us is a literary light? I wonder if real authors are as everlastingly given to changing the subject back to their own affairs as is our beloved Madeline. Now let’s get down to business——”
“Hear! Hear!” cried Madeline. “Little Mary will now voice her own and George Garrison Hinsdale’s sentiments on the immorality of the snap course. Lend me a pencil, somebody, so I can take notes of her valued ideas.”
“The business,” continued Mary, scornfully ignoring the interruption, “is to find more work for Betty, so she can earn her munificent salary properly. The meeting is now open for suggestions.”
“Well, Mary, fire away,” ordered Madeline briskly. “Of course a person with your head for business is simply overflowing with brilliant thoughts.”
“You think you’re being sarcastic, but just the same,” declared Mary modestly, “I have got a head for business——”
“Witness the way you used to make your accounts balance when you were in college, and the way your allowance lasted,” put in Rachel laughingly.
Mary smiled reminiscently. “My dear Rachel, a head for business is entirely different from being able to remember what you’ve spent. And even if I remembered, I couldn’t add it all up. But that’s bookkeeping, not business. As for using up my allowance ahead of time, I’m naturally an expansionist, and where would any respectable business be, may I ask you, if it didn’t go out every now and then and get more capital to expand with? I expanded the possibilities of the Harding course, and my father paid the bills; unfortunately there are always bills,” concluded Mary with a sigh.
“Do you still finish your allowance on the fourth of the month?” demanded Christy.