Madeline frowned darkly and shook her head. “Ever since that tea-shop was started, I have sacrificed my Literary Career to its needs. Now I revolt. I’m going to write my play while I’m in the mood. If I should finish before Christmas, why, then I’ll help with the gift-shop business, not otherwise.”
“What shall I do?” sighed Betty. “The gift-shop pays splendidly. We can’t let it go, because if we do we shall make less money than we did last year, and then Mrs. Hildreth and Mrs. Bob would be disappointed. Besides, I’ve been promising some of my girls a regular harvest from it.”
“Mary Brooks invented a pretty candle-shade last year,” Madeline reminded her. “Tell her that she’s the Perfect Patron, and must dress the part. Command her to come to the rescue of the gift-shop.”
“I shall ask her to come and talk to you,” Betty murmured under her breath.
But even Mary’s lively arguments left Madeline unmoved.
“If it was an order that you’d had for a play,” Mary told her calmly, “I wouldn’t say a word. But you’re only wasting your time on a forlorn hope, just when you might be doing something really useful. I shall cross my thumbs at you and your old play.”
“You may cross your thumbs all you want to,” Madeline defied her smilingly. “Before the winter is over you’ll be sitting in a box at my Broadway opening—that is, if I’m magnanimous enough to ask you, after all the beautiful encouragement you’re giving me.”
“But, Madeline”—Mary was nothing if not persistent—“what makes you think you can write a play, when all your stories have come back, except a few of those college ones? A play is any amount harder to write than a short story.”
Madeline smiled back at her confidently. “Maybe I agree with you, little Mary. But in the first place every Tom, Dick and Harry is writing good short stories nowadays, and nobody is writing extra good plays. In the second place, I have discovered the secret of writing natural but amusing dialogue.”
“And I suppose you know all there is to be known about stage-craft,” added Mary, in her most sarcastic tones.