Marie gave her a mournful look. “I suppose you think I haven’t tried. The girls are all willing to help, but they insist upon having the idea to start with. I know you hate committees, Madeline, and I’m not asking you to be on one—”
“You’d better not,” interpolated Madeline, darkly, remembering the drudgery she had submitted to to make the Belden House play a success.
“Just think up the idea,” Marie went on, persuasively, “and I’ll make a committee do the rest. I don’t care what we have, so long as it’s new and taking—the sort of thing that you always seem to have in your head. That’s what we want. Plays and lectures are too commonplace.”
“Marie,” said Madeline, laughingly, “you talk as if ideas were cabbages and my head was a large garden. I can’t produce ideas to order any more than the rest of you can. But if I should think of anything, I’ll let you know.”
“Thank you,” said Marie, sweetly, and went back to her room, where she gave vent to some forcible remarks about the “exasperatingness” of clever people who won’t let themselves be pinned down to anything.
It was Betty Wales who, dancing into Madeline’s room the next afternoon, gave, not Madeline, but Eleanor Watson,—who had been having tea with Madeline and listening to her absurd version of Marie’s request,—an inspiration.
“I wish it wasn’t babyish to like toys,” she sighed. “I’ve been down-town with Bob, and they’ve opened a big toy-shop in the store next Cuyler’s, just for the holidays, I suppose. Bob got a Teddy bear, and I bought this box of fascinating little Japanese tops for my baby sister. They’re all like different kinds of fruit and you spin them like pennies, without a string. I just love toy-stores.”
“So do I. So does everybody,” said Madeline, oracularly, clearing a place on the polished tea-table and emptying out the miniature tops. “They renew your youth. Let’s get all these things to spinning at once, Betty.”
“Why don’t you have a toy-shop for your senior entertainment?” asked Eleanor, watching the two absorbed faces.
“How do you mean?” asked Madeline, absently, trying to make the purple plum she was manipulating stay upright longer than Betty’s peach.