UNEXPECTED VISITORS
MADELINE composed the Masque of the Christmas Stockings in the
first frenzy of her enthusiasm, and then, declaring that genius
wouldn’t burn any more, she left the Pageant of Twelfth Night Cakes
until so late that Betty was in despair; and she persistently forgot
the Christmas Stockings’ rehearsals until Babbie, rallying to the honor
of the Tally-ho, took them in charge.
“Don’t you wish you were going to stay for the party?” Mr. Thayer asked
her, at her last rehearsal, while Madeline, who had come to take over
the reins again, was giving her final directions to the children. In
the intervals of the rehearsal, she had scribbled off some songs and
speeches for the Cakes, which were so clever that Babbie had been
compelled to drop what Madeline had wickedly dubbed her Perfect Manner
and laugh heartily over them, as she and Mr. Thayer read them together.
Her Perfect Manner was quite different from the one that she had
hastily called perfect on the day of her first visit to the stocking
factory. Madeline had written the other B’s about it, describing it
deftly as “Sweetness from a Long Way off.”
So now Babbie answered with distant courtesy, “Of course I’m very much
interested in the party, but I shouldn’t think of not going home for
Christmas.”
“Oh, certainly not,” Mr. Thayer agreed hastily. “I shouldn’t either,
only I haven’t been sufficiently urged. I had a letter from my father
yesterday saying that the laws I got passed last month by the state
legislature were going to ruin him, so now I’m not even expecting a
present.”
“Why do you go to work and have laws passed that your father doesn’t
like?” inquired Babbie severely.
“You wouldn’t want me to have any passed that could possibly please
him, would you?” Mr. Thayer retorted, and when he caught the flicker
of interest in Babbie’s eyes he went on, “You see, Miss Hildreth, my
father has the wrong point of view. He always thinks of the dollars,
where he ought to think of the workers. He holds to the old-fashioned
theory that the man who toils hasn’t any feelings. He’s never seen any
of his factories. He sits in an office in New York, at a shiny mahogany
desk with twenty nice little pigeonholes in it, one for each of his
factories. When a manager’s report shows fat profits, he smiles and
tucks it into its pigeon-hole. If the profits go down, he sends for the
manager--or bounces him without sending for him. When I left college he
gave me a pigeon-hole.”
“This factory, you mean?” asked Babbie.
“Not at first. He’s changed my pigeon-hole several times. First he
gave me a mill in South Carolina, and I went down and wrote about the
appalling conditions there for one of the prominent magazines.”
“That was rather unkind of you, wasn’t it,” Babbie demanded, “when he’d
just given you the factory?”
The young man smiled. “My father thought it was, but I maintained that
I could do as I pleased with my own property. Anyhow he took back his
little gift and sent me to a beet-sugar plant out in Michigan, and told
me to see if I could keep out of mischief there. Well, the railroads
were all giving us special freight rates, and we were fairly coining
money and crushing all our competitors to the wall. I told them they
must play fair, or I’d expose them. My father was furious,--but I think
he was just a little proud too, to find that I couldn’t be taken in. So
we had a big pow-wow about the duty of sons and fair play in business,
and he finally agreed to give me a free hand here, at the least
profitable factory he owns. Whatever profits there are I am to have to
improve conditions with, and I can take as long as I like to show my
father that it pays to treat your men like human beings.”
“I don’t see the use of fussing so much to prove that,” Babbie told
him coldly. “If they don’t like working for him, they can leave, can’t
they?”
“If they enjoy starving they can,” Mr. Thayer told her grimly. Then
he smiled the smile that Babbie always warmed to in spite of herself.
“You’re a capitalist and an employer yourself, Miss Hildreth. If you
have such mistaken ideas on the labor question, I think I ought to
stop patronizing your firm. You may be abusing the cook.”
“I’m afraid she is overworked days when there’s a rush,” Babbie
admitted soberly. “But if she says she’s tired, we always send her home
in a carriage, and she calls us all ‘me darlin’.’”
Mr. Thayer threw back his head and laughed. “Then I can certainly
patronize you with a clear conscience. I’m so relieved. It would be
terrible to have to call off the Christmas party.”
It would indeed have been tragic to call off the Christmas party, with
three hundred eager factory hands, not to mention twenty-five homesick
college girls, looking forward to it as the great event of the holiday
season. The whole college had heard about it, and took a deep and
envious interest in the proceedings.
“Just mean of you to give it when I can’t come,” grumbled Georgia.
“Madeline, let us repeat the Pageant of the Twelfth Night Cakes for
Dramatic Club’s January meeting,” begged Polly Eastman.
“Make him have another party when we’re here,” put in the
fluffy-haired Dutton twin. “It’s hateful of you to keep him all to
yourselves.”
College closed at noon on Wednesday, and lunch hour at the Tally-ho was
a pell-mell rush of happy, hungry girls, loaded down with suit-cases,
running out between courses to look for “that dastardly cabman who said
he never in his life was late,” or hailing a passing car with a frantic
wave of a sandwich wrapped in a paper napkin. “And it’s all I’ll get
till eight to-night,” they assured Betty joyously, for lunch is a small
thing when you’re going home for Christmas. Betty reveled in the rush
and the gay confusion. She helped little Ruth Howard spirit Lucile
Merrifield’s suit-case into a secluded corner to tuck in a mysterious
little package tied with holly ribbon. She took orders for belated
gifts, repacked bags that simply wouldn’t hold their owner’s left-over
note-books and last purchases until she took them in hand. She looked
up trains, promised to forward trunk checks that hadn’t come in time,
and was here, there, and everywhere until, when she heard the far-away
whistle of the two-fifteen, she gave a little sigh of relief and
declared that she felt like the distracted centipede in the nonsense
rhyme.
And then a dismal quiet descended on the Tally-ho Tea-Shop. Madeline
was up-stairs with a bevy of Cakes, who were rehearsing and working on
their costumes. Betty refused to join them until she had straightened
out her accounts; she had a horror of being behind with them. So she
was sitting quite alone working busily, when Eugenia Ford came in.
Eugenia’s pretty face was tear-stained, her eyes were swollen half
shut, and her whole appearance was as limp and woebegone as it usually
was alert and aggressive. She hesitated for a minute, and then crossed
quickly to Betty’s desk.
“Good-afternoon, Miss Ford,” Betty said cheerfully, tactfully ignoring
the tear-stains, and then she waited, not knowing how to go on.
But Eugenia only nodded and stared at her in dumb misery, evidently
afraid to speak lest the tears should start again.
So, “Won’t you sit down?” Betty suggested cordially. “Or did you want
to go up and see Madeline and the Cakes? They’re behind the curtains
in the loft, rehearsing.”
Eugenia dropped into a chair. “I’m not going home for Christmas,” she
announced tremulously.
“Oh, aren’t you?” Betty began comfortingly. “Well, then you must
certainly have a part in the Masque of the Cakes. You’d make a lovely
Sugar Cooky, and I heard Madeline say they needed more.”
“I--I look like--a fr-fright,” choked Eugenia, stifling a sob, “if
that’s how a sugar cooky looks, and I don’t want to see anybody b-but
you.”
“All right,” Betty assured her hastily, “then you shan’t. There won’t
be a soul in here now for a while. Please don’t feel so unhappy, but
tell me what I can do to help you.”
“I’ve been warned in three different studies.” Eugenia’s voice was
weighted with the tragic significance of her words. “And I th-thought
I was doing beautifully,” she added, while two big tears rolled
slowly down her soft cheeks. Eugenia dabbed at them with a very damp
handkerchief.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” cried Betty sympathetically, racking her brains,
meanwhile, to think why in the world Eugenia Ford had come to her
with her tale of woe. “It’s the worst thing about freshman year,
I think--the not being able to tell how you’ve done, nor what the
teachers expect of you. I worried fearfully, I remember.”
“Were you warned too?” demanded Eugenia with the frankness of despair.
“N-no.” Betty was really sorry at the moment that she hadn’t been. “But
lots of my friends were,” she added consolingly.
“My father and mother think I ought to have known that I wasn’t
studying enough,” Eugenia explained. “You see, I didn’t pass my
prep. school exams one year and my father thought that was perfectly
dreadful, so he’s extra cross now. I had to write home about it,
because of all the money I shall need for a tutor, and when I did that,
my father said I should stay on here through the vacation and w-work.”
“It’s hard now not to go home, but you’ll be glad you didn’t next term,
I guess,” Betty suggested. “The time just flies, from the day college
opens again to midyears.”
“Well,” continued Eugenia gloomily, “then my tutor changed her mind at
the last minute and went off and left me, and Miss Ferris--she’s our
class officer--told me to come to you. I said I didn’t think you ever
tutored, but she said to come all the same and she sent you a note. Oh,
I ought to have given you the note first!” A big tear splashed down on
the address, as she handed Miss Ferris’s note to Betty.
“Dear little helper,” Miss Ferris had written, “here’s a chance for
you to cultivate the right kind of college spirit. That’s what Miss
Ford needs. She seems bright enough to keep up with her class easily.
You must inspire her with pride in her work and determination to do it
justice. I needn’t tell you that she’s a dreadful little snob. Some
day you must tell me why she begged me most pathetically to send her
to anybody else but you.
“Merry Christmas,
“MARGARET FERRIS.”
Betty read it all through twice, while Eugenia, huddled in a forlorn
little heap, watched her eagerly.
“Oh, dear, I just can’t,” she began at last. “Miss Ferris has forgotten
what a stupid I was. And if you should be----” She had started to
say “flunked out at midyears,” and paused in blank dismay at her own
thoughtlessness.
“Oh, but I won’t,” Eugenia took her up earnestly, reading Betty’s
thoughts in the light of her own guilty conscience. “I promise I won’t
be horrid. I was--the other day--I was--well, I’m awfully ashamed of
it now, Miss Wales, and I just hated to come and ask a favor of you,
after having been so disagreeable, but I couldn’t actually disobey Miss
Ferris, could I? If you’ll only take me, I’ll do just as you say, and
work awfully hard, and try not to be much bother.”
Betty gave a deep sigh, and then a comical little laugh. “I’m sure you
will,” she said. “And I shall have to do it. Don’t you see I shall?
Miss Ferris has gone away for the vacation, hasn’t she? Well, I can’t
disobey her either, or disappoint her. But just imagine me tutoring
anybody!” Betty sighed again resignedly.
“Miss Ferris said you’d be the best one she could possibly pick out
for me,” Eugenia told her, smiling wanly through her tears. “When shall
I come, so as to be the least trouble, Miss Wales?”
They arranged an hour, and then Betty asked Eugenia, as a great favor,
to help her make tea for Madeline and the Cakes, because Bridget and
Nora had both gone to a wedding, and their long talk had made her
late with the preparations. And by the time the sandwiches were made,
the lemons sliced, and the tea served, Eugenia’s face looked merely
interestingly pale and care-worn, and she was planning her Sugar Cooky
costume with positive enthusiasm.
Of course, Mr. Thayer’s party was a grand success. Had any party of
Madeline’s planning ever been otherwise? First the little Stockings
hopped merrily on to the stage that Mr. Thayer had had built at one end
of the big social hall on the top floor of the factory. Hopping was
their only means of locomotion, for each of them was tied securely into
a mammoth stocking, its toe stuffed with paper to give it the proper
shape, and its top gathered around the neck of its small occupant,
whose head peered inquiringly out above. There was a Mother-Stocking,
a Father-Stocking, a Good-Little-Willy-Stocking, and a Bad-Little-Billy
one; there was a fireplace, and a Santa Claus, who, being a jolly
fellow, relented even toward Bad-Little-Billy, and loaded the whole
family with comical gifts--for in Stocking Land Santa Claus is not the
mysterious, secretive apparition we know of, but a friendly visitor,
who slaps you familiarly on the back and lets you come up the chimney
and pat the reindeer. The frantic race of Billy and Willy Stocking to
get up the chimney with their costumes intact ended the Stockings’
performance, and left the audience tearful with mirth.
Then the Cakes appeared. Sponge Cake led the procession, in a
corn-colored gown trimmed elaborately with fringes of tiny sponges. She
wore a festoon of sponges in her hair, and carried before her a sort
of baton with the biggest sponge you could imagine stuck on the end of
it. After her came Chocolate Cake, with ruffles of brown and white, and
a necklace and bracelets made of chocolate candies. Next came Bride’s
Cake, all in white, with a veil and orange blossoms, and Wedding Cake,
with garlands of raisins, and wedding bells that tinkled when she
moved. Devil’s Cake, adorned with all the little red devils that could
be found on the Harding campus--relics of a fad that had prevailed
in Betty’s senior year--drove a regiment of Sugar Cookies before
her--yellow-haired girls, each carrying a huge cooky, whose framework
was a hoop, plentifully besprinkled with a glittering sugary paste.
Last of all came the Doughnuts, very big and beautifully browned, worn
like life-preservers around the shoulders of their representatives. The
Cakes sang and discussed their respective merits. The Sugar Cookies,
being challenged to show what they could do, had a hoop-rolling, in the
course of which all the sugar fell off them. Then the Twelfth Night
Bakers came in, in white caps and long white aprons, and the Sugar
Cookies, no longer sugared, reproached their makers, and were placated
with wonderful new Twelfth Night decorations in the shape of toys,
birds, and flowers.
Finally the Bakers produced a huge cake, and, served by the plebeian
Doughnuts, sat down to eat it. Hidden in it were a bean, a pea, and a
clove, and the three Bakers who were lucky enough to find these Twelfth
Night emblems in their portions of cake had the privilege of naming the
King and Queen of Revels, and the Twelfth Night Jester.
The King and Queen had really been chosen beforehand from the mill
hands, and they had nothing to do but sit on gilt thrones and look
imposing, while the Jester, a queer freshman who was wonderful at
sleight-of-hand tricks, gave a performance in which cakes and stockings
replaced the conventional rabbits and eggs.
It was all absurd and inconsequent and certainly quite different from
the usual mill party, even to the way the refreshments were served, for
the Cakes moved about among the audience carrying trays of ices, and
the Bakers peddled their wares in the shape of little cup-cakes whose
fantastic decorations rivaled those of the live Cakes in variety and
grotesqueness.
“Shure an’ they ain’t fit fur civilized humans to ate at all,” Bridget
had announced, as she surveyed them indignantly, “an’ it’s a shamefu’
waste of good material, not countin’ me slavin’ two days solid on ’em.”
But Betty had consoled her with explanations about the “foreignness” of
the mill people, and their consequent love for queer things. Betty felt
capable of consoling anybody that day. She fairly danced as she packed
the cakes on the afternoon of the party, and her infectious gaiety in
the evening was one of the best reasons why everything went off so well.
“It has been just lovely, girls,” she said to the group of Cakes who
crowded around her begging her to tell them how they looked and whether
they had done their dance well. “Those little Italian girls in the
front row told me they never knew a party could be so beautiful, and
their mothers almost cried when they thanked Mr. Thayer. We’ve had lots
of fun ourselves, but the best of it is that we’ve given them a good
time they’ll remember as long as they live.”
But Betty had a special reason for feeling happy. For two letters had
come in her morning mail. The one she opened first was directed in the
smallest sister’s round, painstaking hand.
“Darlingest Betty,” she began, “mother says I may come to see you.
She said I could go to see Nan. I love Nan, but I am your compiny. A
person who is compiny always comes to see you. I will be a good girl
and always run away when you are busy.
“DOROTHY.”
“The dear little midget,” laughed Betty, and tossed the letter to
Madeline. “She wanted to help with the tea-room, so Will told her she
could be a silent partner--the company in the firm. And now she wants
to come and see me because she’s my ‘compiny.’”
“She says she is coming,” Madeline corrected her. “Is that her own
idea, or is she really going to make us a visit?”
“I don’t know.” Betty was deep in her mother’s letter. “Why--oh, dear!
Father is going away off to Mexico, and he’s going to take mother with
him! He may have to stay all the rest of the winter. It’s some land
he’s going to see about, and he hates to go alone. He and mother are
such old lovers! oh, and he hasn’t been very well, and he hates to go
alone, and mother can’t bear to have him. He says that her fare now
will cost less than a doctor later, and she can just as well board down
there as in Cleveland, if I can manage Dorothy.”
“Well, you can, can’t you?” inquired Madeline placidly.
“I can, can I?” Betty’s eyes sparkled. “It’s plain, Madeline Ayres,
that you’re an only child. You haven’t the least idea how it feels to
get a letter like this from that cute youngster. Mother says they tried
to make her go to Nan’s school, but she wouldn’t come to any one but
me. Can I manage? I can manage anything with a dear little sister to
play with. Oh, Madeline, I’ve been homesick, and I never knew it till
now!”
“That’s a good brand of homesickness to cultivate,” laughed Madeline.
“She’ll have to go to school here, won’t she?”
Betty nodded. “Mother says she can go to the public schools in a nice
little town like this, but I shan’t have her. I’ve saved lots out of
my salary and my share of the gift-room profits, and I shall pay her
tuition at Miss Dick’s. She can prepare for college thoroughly there.
And some day, if we keep on having such good luck at the Tally-ho, I
can help put her through Harding. Won’t that be perfectly splendid,
Madeline Ayres?”