EUGENIA FORD’S LUNCHEON
THE success of the Tally-ho Tea-Shop’s opening day left the amazed
proprietors somewhat aghast. When Babbie Hildreth arrived at twelve,
in a plumed hat and a trained gown, and with a lunch party of six in
tow, things were already at such a pass that after a whispered word
with Betty she shoved her guests hastily into the one empty stall,
pinned up her train, tucked her plumed hat under one of the benches,
and proceeded to take Betty’s place as cashier, so that Betty could
go to the rescue of her well-nigh distracted cook. At twelve-fifteen
Madeline appropriated Polly Eastman’s runabout and drove at a gallop to
the Hinsdales’ to borrow Mary’s waitress and a fresh supply of linen
and silver. At twelve-thirty Georgia Ames appeared, very hot and hungry
from a strenuous game of tennis, only to be mercilessly seized upon by
Babbie and rushed off for more oranges and bananas.
“They cry for fruit salad like children for castoria,” declared Babbie
fiercely. “And they have nothing but five dollar bills. Bring me all
the change you can carry.”
At one o’clock the real rush began. Girls sat on the broad steps or
swarmed over the lawn waiting for vacant tables. At half-past one
Madeline went out to them and explained that nearly everything was
gone, except tea and bread-and-butter sandwiches; and some of the girls
went off, after having engaged tables for next day. At half-past five,
when the last of the afternoon tea drinkers had departed, the managers
of the Tally-ho Tea-Shop held a solemn conclave in the front stall,
their aching feet tucked comfortably under them on the long benches.
“It was a fright,” said Babbie. “I took three hundred checks, and money
enough to pay the rent till Christmas. I hope I made right change some
of the time.”
“It’s great,” sighed Madeline, “simply great! There’ll be perfectly
huge profits for Mrs. Hildreth and Mrs. Bob and me.”
“If this is going to keep up,” put in Betty, “we’ve got to have more of
every single thing. I’m afraid we’ve killed off Bridget already.”
“Send her home in a carriage,” suggested Madeline recklessly. “Let’s
all go home in a carriage. Speaking of home, I’ve got to take the
sleeper down to-night. Poor Mrs. Bob has telegraphed twice. You see
I told her to advertise the apartment, and the would-be tenants are
standing on the door-steps shrieking to get in. I’ll be back here the
first minute I can, though.”
Betty looked at Babbie. “Didn’t you say your mother had changed her
plans and come home?”
Babbie nodded. “I’ve got to fly back to her or she’ll get blue and rush
me off to Palm Beach for the whole winter. You’ll be all right without
us, Betty. You must have all the extra help you want, and if we’re
going to do such a tremendous business I think you ought to have more
salary.”
“So do I,” chorused Madeline, “which is very sweet of me, considering
how it will wipe out profits.”
“We’d better wait and see whether this rush keeps up,” advised Betty
wisely. “Maybe those that came to-day didn’t like it and won’t come
again.”
“Everybody was perfectly crazy over it,” declared Madeline. “I’m sure
it’s all plain sailing, now that we’ve got started.”
Betty, tucking a complicated marketing list into her shopping-bag with
a still more complicated memoranda of “things to be attended to,” said
nothing. She wasn’t afraid of hard work, but the responsibility and the
thought that perhaps she couldn’t possibly get through it all worried
her a good deal. She could have hugged Georgia Ames next morning, when
that brisk young person, having banged persistently on the tea-shop
door, finally climbed in the kitchen window.
“Found you a room,” she announced breathlessly, “in that little white
house in front. Woman has a big beauty left over, and you can have
it cheap, because it’s so late in the season. With or without meals.
Heard you say you wanted one. Now send me on more errands. I’ve got
a free morning--no classes till twelve, and then only a snap course
in psychology. What? You silly! As if I wouldn’t do anything for you
after the way you treated me last year.”
It was Georgia who suggested applying to the Students’ Aid for more
waitresses and who, when the Students’ Aid insisted that it couldn’t be
expected to provide them on less than a day’s notice, sought out the
spendthrift Dutton twins and pressed them into Betty’s service.
“They’re always poor after the second of the month, aren’t you, my
children?” she asked them, as they presented themselves in two of
Nora’s aprons, flushed and giggling, for Betty’s inspection. “Your hair
is in a mess, as usual, Fluffy. Remember, Straight, your right hand is
the one you take notes with--if you ever do take notes. Now run out to
the kitchen, and Bridget and Nora will show you where things are. And
remember it’s only a lark to you, but you mustn’t queer the Tally-ho
Tea-Shop.”
These instructions they faithfully obeyed, seeking out Betty later to
tell her so.
“And we think we ought to have our lunch extra,” the fluffy-haired
twin explained, “because all our little pals came in to see us do our
stunt.”
“And we egged them on to have all sorts of expensive things, more than
they’d meant to order,” added her straight-haired sister. “Besides, we
want to save our wages for lucky pieces.”
But while they were eating the lunch that was “extra,” Lucile
Merrifield came in, and being noisily invited to join them, ate up the
lucky pieces and much more, while she listened to the twins’ joyous
account of their new “stunt.” “So the lunch wasn’t exactly extra after
all,” said the fluffy-haired twin as she paid the bill, “because we
egged Lucile on too. Extravagance is a good quality in a waitress,
isn’t it, Miss Wales? I shall write my father that. It may tickle him
so that he’ll raise our allowance, and if he does we’ll be right down
here giving a party.”
After the first fortnight things began to settle themselves into a more
businesslike routine. The girls Betty knew, having recklessly indulged
themselves during the tea-shop’s first week, were obliged to be content
with campus fare for a while. One noon she realized with a little
start of amazement that there wasn’t a girl that she knew in the room.
Some of them doubtless knew her. Most of them had probably heard that
she was a Harding girl, who was suddenly obliged to earn her living.
Well, wasn’t she? And hadn’t she wanted to go into a really and truly
business, and been almost sorry that in Harding everything was too much
fun to seem like real work?
“We’ve been waiting a perfect age,” announced somebody over her
shoulder. “Will you send a waitress, please, right away? You ought to
give good service, you know, when you’re just starting in.”
The speaker was a tall, overdressed girl, with a scowl and a mouth that
drooped at the corners. Betty remembered distinctly having seen her
come in only a minute before. But she said, “I’m sorry,” and took the
order out to the kitchen herself.
When Bridget had served it in a hurry, Betty heard the tall girl laugh
disagreeably. “Wasn’t that neat?” she demanded of her companion. “I can
always get what I want. Maybe she did see us come in; she couldn’t say
so. That’s the way to treat tradespeople, even if they have been to
college.”
That very afternoon, while the tall girl’s speech still rankled in
Betty’s memory, recalling other petty slights and snubs, Miss Eugenia
Ford rustled in to order a luncheon for twelve for the next noon.
Eugenia Ford was small and fair, and as exquisitely dainty and delicate
as a French doll. She was universally conceded to be the prettiest girl
in the entering class, and the petting she had received had gone to her
head.
“If her grandmother dies before long, she may get a little real
expression into her face, and then she’ll be the college beauty,”
somebody had said about her.
“It will take heaps more than losing her grandmother to put any
expression into Eugenia’s face,” Georgia Ames had retorted wisely.
At present Eugenia was certainly as vain and frivolous as she was
pretty, and very badly spoiled indeed.
“Good-afternoon, Miss--Miss Welch,” she began in businesslike tones.
“Wales,” suggested Betty, smiling at the child because she was so
pretty, and because she had been so comical about gargles and gargoyles
at Georgia’s party.
“Wales.” Eugenia accepted the correction gravely. “I want a table for
twelve persons to-morrow, for a one o’clock luncheon. This is the menu
that I want served. I shall have my flowers sent here, and I suppose
you can arrange them. Here are my place-cards, and this list gives the
order that I want them arranged in. I want the front stall.” Eugenia
completed her directions without relaxing one iota of her unsmiling
dignity.
“I’m sorry,” Betty told her, “but the front stall is engaged for
to-morrow. You can have the third--that’s just as large--or the big
round table out here.”
“But I like the candle-shades in the first stall better,” announced
Eugenia calmly. “Change them to the third, and give me that. And please
serve us very promptly, because some of the girls have afternoon
engagements.” And Eugenia started off.
“I’m sorry, Miss Ford,” Betty called after her, “but the girl who
engaged the first stall particularly wanted those candle-shades. They
are understood to belong to the stall, you know.”
Eugenia’s smooth white forehead puckered itself into a disagreeable
frown. “Very well,” she said crossly, “but you ought to have two sets
of that kind of shade. They’re the only pretty ones in the place.” And
she rustled off, annoyance in every line of her dainty little figure.
Betty smiled sadly after her. “I suppose she’s forgotten that she ever
met me. Freshmen have so many people to remember. Madeline will be
pleased to know her opinion of all those candle-shades that she’s so
proud of.”
Betty arranged Eugenia’s roses herself, and inspected every detail of
the table with great care. Last of all she put around the place-cards
in the order that Eugenia had specified. Georgia’s name was on one, and
Lucile’s, and Polly’s, and the fluffy-haired Dutton twins’--the one
who wrote such cunning verses and was sure to go into Dramatic Club
the first time. It was plainly what Katherine used to call a “polite,
politic” luncheon.
Unfortunately for Eugenia she was late in arriving--or her guests were
early. When she hurried in, looking prettier than ever because her
cheeks were flushed with her quick walk down the hill and her eyes
sparkling in anticipation of a triumphant occasion, she found Georgia,
Polly, Lucile, and the Dutton twins all hanging over Betty’s desk, so
absorbed in their conversation that they entirely failed to notice the
advent of their small hostess.
“Oh, here you are,” began Eugenia, with a vague little nod toward the
group. “Shall we go and sit down while we wait for the others? Our
table is all ready, I think.”
“Come on, Betty, and give us the rest of it while we’re waiting,”
coaxed Lucile, pulling Betty toward Eugenia. “She’s been telling us
how Babe the man-hater fell in love. It’s a joyous tale. You met Babe,
Eugenia, when she was up this fall--and you’ve met Betty Wales, of
course.”
Eugenia looked gravely at Betty. “Yes, I believe I’ve met Miss Wales,”
she said.
“Of course, at my gargoyle party,” put in Georgia. “Go on, Betty, about
that fascinating Paris pension, and their rubbering out into the garden
and planning to have breakfast together every morning.”
Betty, watching Eugenia, shook her head, with a brave little smile.
“Some other time. I’m busy now. That is, I can’t desert my post to play
with you, as I’ve told you all sixty times before.”
“Shall we go and sit down?” asked Eugenia again, sweetly. And as they
filed off, her clear high voice came back distinctly to Betty. “I
didn’t ask her to come,” she was explaining to Georgia, “because I
think it’s much better not to mix business and society, don’t you, Miss
Ames? Of course if I saw her up on the campus I should be nice to her.
But here it’s rather awkward, because some of my friends would think it
was awfully funny to be introduced to the cashier.”
Betty couldn’t hear Georgia’s low, emphatic retort, but she could
guess at its tenor, and later, when Polly Eastman leaned around the
edge of the stall, wearing her widest, most provoking smile, and waved
her handkerchief, she could imagine how she and Lucile and the Dutton
twins were making poor Eugenia’s life a burden to her by those subtle
methods of persecution that had won the trio their reputation for
being the best friends and the worst enemies that a Harding girl could
have. It was four to one, and Betty pitied poor Eugenia, who felt the
hostile atmosphere--without in the least understanding what it meant,
and spent the afternoon writing a tearful letter to her boarding-school
chum, all about the hatefulness of Harding upper-class girls who were
“too sweet for anything” one minute and “perfectly horrid” the next.
She thought she would leave at Christmas time, she wrote, even if her
father had said she couldn’t keep changing her mind. Then she made out
a check to the Tally-ho Tea-Shop for her luncheon and mailed it, with a
disagreeable little note, complaining of the waitress’s awkwardness and
too much pepper in the soup. “The table wasn’t decently laid, either,
and the flowers were a mess,” she concluded, and addressed the note to
“Miss Welch.”
“That’s what Georgia Ames gets back for calling me an idiotic little
snob,” muttered Eugenia, as she posted her letters.
Eugenia’s note, which Betty couldn’t find time to read until late the
next afternoon, was the last straw in the load of a very hard day. The
week before, business had been so dull that Betty had reluctantly
decided to dispense with two of the Students’ Aid waitresses, and,
having tried to choose the ones who could best do without the money,
she had screwed up her courage and explained the situation. They had
both cried, and now, the very day after they were gone, the Tally-ho
Tea-Shop was crowded to overflowing, and poor Nora and her one
remaining assistant fairly ran back and forth between the kitchen and
the stalls in their efforts not to keep impatient customers waiting.
Then everybody had been seized with a mad desire for English muffins
just on the very day when Bridget had decided only to make up a few,
and the sandwiches that there never had been enough of before were all
left over. Several people had complained that they could never get
what they ordered, and some had gone away. Betty stood it until five
o’clock, and then, confiding to the Students’ Aid waitress that she
felt as if she should fly, she left her in charge and went up to see
Miss Ferris.
“What’s the trouble now, little girl?” demanded Miss Ferris, when she
had established Betty in a big easy chair by the open fire, with a box
of chocolates at her elbow.
“Nothing,” said Betty bravely, “or at least there oughtn’t to be
anything. What would you do, Miss Ferris, if things that you knew
oughtn’t to bother you, bothered you awfully all the same?”
Miss Ferris considered. Anybody else would have said, “What things, for
instance?” but Miss Ferris never asked stupid questions like that. She
only smiled back at you and read what she wanted to know in your face.
“Well,” she began slowly after a minute, “I’d go to bed very early,
so as to get well rested, and next morning I’d look around to find
somebody with a big, real trouble that I could help, perhaps--or try to
help anyhow. And first of all I’d take off my hat and stay to dinner at
the Hilton.”
When Betty bid Miss Ferris good-night after a merry evening in the
Hilton House parlors, she was her smiling self again.
“I’m all right even without the going-to-bed-early part,” she declared
eagerly. “The things I can’t help I won’t worry about. The things
I oughtn’t to mind I won’t mind--not one little speck. I guess that
disposes of all my troubles, and the first thing to-morrow I’ll begin
hunting for somebody to help. I don’t believe I’ve thought much about
helping lately--except helping father by earning this money. Things are
so different----”
“No, they’re not,” Miss Ferris cut her short, “because you’re the very
same Betty Wales.”
“Am I?” Betty wondered, as she buttoned the coat of her last year’s
suit and ran down the hill. “I suppose I am. Now there’s Rachel--she
couldn’t be any dearer if she owned a gold mine. Besides, I promised
father I wouldn’t care and I won’t.”