“Then I’ll leave word for him to telephone you here of any change either way,” Betty decreed. “Mrs. Post is going to make German Christmas cakes this morning for the girls. She wanted me to help her, but I’ve got to go to the Tally-ho before chapel and then to the office, so you simply must help instead. I suppose you haven’t had any breakfast, have you now?”
Eleanor didn’t want any.
“Of course you do. I’ll send some up by a maid, and Mrs. Post will tell you when she’s ready to begin on the cakes. Remember, the telephone messages will come here, so you must stay till I get back.”
Six times that morning Betty left an accommodating friend in charge of her office, and in the short intervals between clients rushed over to inquire for the cakes, Eleanor, and Rafael. At noon she snatched a moment before luncheon to tell Mr. Thayer all about it—Eleanor had declared she never could do that—so that he could explain what was necessary to the authorities and avoid a futile search for non-existent Black Hand plots and family feuds. Mr. Thayer had seen Rafael and the doctor, and the doctor had been very encouraging. Betty flew back to assure Eleanor that he had not been deceiving her—that he had said the very same things to Mr. Thayer—and to beg her assistance that afternoon at the Tally-ho workshop. For Madeline had come out of her dramatic eclipse long enough to design some Christmas dinner-cards, and there was a small fortune in them if only they could be put on sale in time. Secretly Eleanor thought that Betty had grown just a little bit selfish and very commercial since they had left college; but she could not well refuse, after the dainty breakfast on a tray and all the calls and the arranging with Mr. Thayer, to help with the Christmas dinner-cards.
Next day Rafael was worse. The doctor looked serious and suggested a night-nurse and a consultation. At noon Eleanor declared that the air of the little workshop stifled her, and Betty gave up office-hours—an unheard-of proceeding—to go for a long tramp, during which she planned all sorts of delightful things that Eleanor should do for Rafael when he got well.
The next day the boy was better, the day after that worse. But at the end of a nerve-racking week of alternating hopes and fears the doctor pronounced him out of danger. That very afternoon Jim telegraphed that he was sick with a cold and needed Eleanor. Jim had always hated coddling, Eleanor commented wonderingly, and failed to notice Betty’s dimple flashing out in a tiny smile that was at once sternly suppressed. For Jim had written her that he only hoped he could preserve “the faded shadow of a suspicion of a snuffle” until Eleanor’s arrival. “After that,” he concluded, “I count on my new bull pup, suitors galore, and the diversions of little old New York to blow away any remaining relics of melancholy. When the poor little chap is well enough dad and I will see him through the best trade-school we can find and give him every chance that’s coming to him. Adoring some girls is a thing no fellow can or ought to help.”
CHAPTER XIII
GENIUS ARRIVES
Betty Wales was going home for Christmas—a “ploshkin” income puts life on such a comfortable financial basis! And between Christmas and New Year’s Babe was going to be married. That meant coming half-way back to Harding for the wedding; and it made easier Betty’s sad decision that since the stocking factory was willing to postpone its Christmas party till New Year’s, and since most of the Morton Hall girls would spend their vacations in town, and certainly be very forlorn indeed unless somebody looked after them, it was the duty of Miss B. Wales, Secretary, to come back early and lend a hand.
Betty breathed a deep sigh of relief when she had seen Eleanor off to New York, in the company of Madeline Ayres, who had finished her play and now flatly refused to delay the putting on of the final touches in New York for the interests of the Tally-ho’s gift-shop department.
“Why, my dear girls,” she declared tragically, “I’m not half through yet. I’ve got to see every success on Broadway now, to get into touch with the season’s fads. Then I shall ‘supe’ a few times, to catch the right feeling for one or two bare spots in my first act. Finally, I shall probably hate my play so that I’ll tear it up and take the next boat for Naples, to be consoled by my Bohemian family, who will laud me to the skies for tearing up a play because I considered it bad art.”