“Well, if you made fresh, sweet butter, and didn’t salt it at all, do you know that you could sell it to people in the city for fifty cents a pound?”
Mrs. Pratt gasped.
“Why, no one in the world ever paid that much for butter!” she said, amazed. “And, anyhow, butter without salt’s no good.”
“Lots of people don’t agree with you, and they’re willing to pay pretty well to have their own way, too,” she said, with a laugh. “In the city rich families think fresh butter is a great luxury, and they can’t get enough of it that’s really good. And it’s the same way, all summer long, at Lake Dean.
“The hotel there will take fifty pounds a week from you all summer long, as long as it’s open, that is. And I have got orders for another fifty pounds a week from the people who own camps and cottages. And what’s more, the manager of the hotel has another house, in Lakewood, in the winter time, and when he closes up the house at Cranford, he wants you to send him fifty pounds a week for that house, too.”
“Why, however did you manage to get all those orders?” asked Margery, amazed.
“I telephoned to the manager of the hotel,” said Eleanor. “And then I remembered the girls at Camp Halsted, and I called up Marcia Bates and told her the whole story, and what I wanted them to do. So she and two or three of the others went out in that fast motor boat of theirs and visited a lot of families around the lake, and when they told them about it, it was easy to get the orders.”
“Well, I never!” gasped Mrs. Pratt. “I wouldn’t ever have thought of doin’ anythin’ like that, Miss Mercer, and folks around here seem to think I’m a pretty good business woman, too, since my husband died. Why, we can make more out of the butter than we ever did out of a whole season’s crops, sellin’ at such prices!”
“You won’t get fifty cents a pound from the hotel,” said Eleanor. “That’s because they’ll take such a lot, and they’ll pay you every week. So I told them they could have all they wanted for forty cents a pound. But, you see, at fifty pounds a week, that’s twenty dollars a week, all the year round, and with the other fifty pounds you’ll sell to private families, that will make forty-five dollars a week. And you haven’t even started yet. You’ll have lots more orders than you can fill.”
“I’m wonderin’ right now, ma’am, how we’ll be able to make a hundred pounds of butter a week.”