MORE “SIDE-LINES”
ON the afternoon of her arrival Babbie had tea, alone and very early,
at the Tally-ho. Just after Nora had served her, Mr. Thayer appeared.
He came over to Babbie’s table to shake hands, as a matter of course,
and he lingered over the process until the very least Babbie could do
was to invite him to share her repast.
“I met a cousin of yours,” she informed him, “at the week-end party
I’ve just come from--Mr. Austin Thayer. I saw a lot of him, and we got
quite chummy.”
“Austin’s a fine fellow,” agreed Mr. Thayer cordially, “but he and I
disagree about so many things--we don’t hit it off at all.”
“No,” said Babbie serenely, crushing a slice of lemon relentlessly with
her tiny wooden spoon--Japanese spoons, for the Japanese teas were
the latest innovation at the Tally-ho. “Your cousin Austin thinks you
are ‘a very foolish boy,’ to quote his own words. We discussed you at
dinner last evening.”
Mr. Thayer flushed. “And did you defend me just a little?” he asked.
“Because if you didn’t, considering what Austin has called me now and
then, I don’t see how there could have been much discussion.”
“Well, if you make a point of it, it wasn’t a discussion,” Babbie told
him coldly. “It was an--an exchange of experiences. He told me what he
knew about your past life, and I told him the very little I know about
your present activities.”
Mr. Thayer smiled a perfunctory smile. “It must have been a desperately
dull dinner. My affairs are never the least bit exciting. Next time you
meet Austin at anybody’s week-end, make him talk about himself.”
“Oh, he did that too,” Babbie explained, “sitting out dances the first
evening. He’s had piles of fascinating experiences. If I were a man I
think I should go in for the same sort of thing exactly. I love the
way he pounces down on the Stock Exchange, straight out of a South
African jungle, and after he’s made two or three millions calmly
departs again to climb Mount McKinley, or motor through Tibet. And when
his two millions are spent, he builds a town or sells a gold mine, and
then buys a castle on the Hudson and a car and a motor-boat, and tries
another kind of fun. He doesn’t bother with employees and fiddling
little plans for making them ‘safer and happier,’” Babbie quoted
maliciously.
“No, he doesn’t,” returned Mr. Thayer with asperity. “They mobbed him
once in Chicago, because he’d cornered the wheat supply and the price
of bread had nearly doubled.”
“Was that the time he made five millions in three months?” asked Babbie
blandly.
That evening, while Babbie, in a ruffly pink negligee, sat cross-legged
on Madeline’s couch, eating fudges and playing with the ploshkin, she
explained to her two friends that the week-end party had “bored her to
tears.”
“There wasn’t a possible man there, and Margot kept pairing me off with
a fright of a millionaire who was always getting you into a corner and
making you listen to wild tales of gigantic business ventures he’d
pulled off. I detest business. Money should be seen and not heard,”
ended Babbie sententiously.
But the next afternoon she rushed out of Flying Hoof’s stall, where she
was being entertained at tea by some adoring freshmen, to inform Mr.
Robert Thayer that his cousin Austin had sent him kind regards.
“In a note, you know.” She fluttered it before him tantalizingly.
“We’re both invited to another house-party, you see. He wants to know
if I’m going to accept.”
“And are you?” ventured Mr. Thayer. “That is, if I may ask, by way of
showing a cousinly interest in Austin’s happiness.”
“Most certainly not,” snapped Babbie fiercely.
“Ah, I beg a thousand pardons! I was only joking, Miss Hildreth.”
“I’m most certainly not going, I mean,” Babbie explained amiably, after
a moment of frowning perplexity, and swept back to her tea-party,
leaving a completely bewildered young man behind her.
He relieved his feelings by telling Betty the good news about the
club-house.
“I’ve bought that big, old-fashioned place across the street from the
factory. We couldn’t have begun building before April, and it seemed
out of the question to delay so long. Besides, this is just the thing,
or it will be in a month, when the architect and his minions have
finished with it. I told him that you people changed a barn into a
tea-shop in ten days, and if he can’t alter a few partitions, paper a
few walls, and get in the furniture in a month, he needn’t expect any
more work from yours truly. So bring on your college girls, find out
who wants to teach what and to whom, and tell me which ones are to
go on the pay-roll and which are ready to give their services. I’ll
send you a list of the prospective pupils, with ages and nationalities
attached.” He paused and looked sharply at Betty. “Are you tired
to-night, Miss Wales?”
Betty shook her head. “I’ve lost something, and I’m being foolish and
worrying over it.”
“You work too hard,” Mr. Thayer decreed. “When I’m overworked I always
lose my gloves. It’s a sure sign. You’re not to be bothered with those
lists. But the trouble is, I don’t know the college girls. There’s got
to be somebody for a go-between. Could I hire one of the hire-able
ones for a sort of secretary?”
Betty considered. “Midyears are making everybody awfully busy now and
it wouldn’t do to wait ten days or so, till they’re over, would it?
Besides, this thing will have to be managed just right to give it a
good start. Why don’t you ask Babbie? She’s awfully good at things like
that, and awfully interested in the club-house idea.”
“Is she?” gasped Mr. Thayer.
Betty nodded. “She says she thinks the finest thing a rich man can do
is to look after the men and women who are making his money for him.”
“She said that?” gasped Mr. Thayer again. Then he looked pleadingly at
Betty. “Would you ask her to take charge, please? I think she’d do it
quicker for you.”
And he hurried off, leaving Betty to piece together all the things
Babbie had said and done in connection with Mr. Thayer, and all that
he had said and done in connection with Babbie. Her final conclusions
were, first, that Mr. Thayer was afraid of Babbie; second, that Babbie
was interested in Mr. Thayer’s work, but not in Mr. Thayer; and
third, that Madeline was therefore mistaken, owing to an over-romantic
tendency developed by the writing of a great many love-stories.
In any case Babbie readily agreed to post notices about the opening of
the stocking factory’s classes, see that the most promising volunteer
teachers got the most difficult pupils, interview the Student’s Aid
officers about the paid instructors, and be present during the evenings
of the first week to make sure that each teacher found her class and
that things ran smoothly.
“It’s a good excuse to delay going South until next month,” she said.
“Mother is just as bored by Southern resorts as I am, but she hasn’t
the strength of mind to break off the habit of going to them. So she’ll
be secretly relieved, and as proud as Punch, too, to think that I’m
bossing a big evening-school. Mother’s purely ornamental herself, so
she admires the useful type of woman. I must write her immediately
about the tea-shop’s latest departure. Betty, can’t you induce Mr.
Thayer to serve coffee and sandwiches to the ones that learn their
lessons nicely, and then the tea-shop will be making something out of
my school.”
“Wait till we get our dinners started, before we begin on nine-o’clock
lunches,” Betty advised her.
“I shall order the very grandest dinner you can imagine for the opening
night,” declared Babbie enthusiastically, “so you must manage to start
before I leave.”
“We can have new menu cards now,” put in Madeline. “I never did like
the color of these, and besides I think Bob Enderby ought to put a
gift-shop in one corner of the design he drew for us. It certainly
ought to be noticed in some way on the menu.”
“I think he ought to add a night-school too,” declared Babbie
playfully, “and a notice that Betty does tutoring. If we’re broadening
out so much, we ought to let people know all about it.”
“Just because you happen to be running it, the night-school isn’t a
branch of the tea-shop, Babbie,” demurred Madeline. “Wait until Mr.
Thayer actually promises to buy the sandwiches before you consider it a
part of the ‘eats’ business.”
“Well, it’s an outgrowth of it,” retorted Babbie. “The tea-shop is
responsible for the club-house.”
“Oh, if we’re going to put all that the tea-shop is responsible for on
the menu,” Madeline began, with a provoking little smile, “we should
have to put on a picture of a broken h----”
“Come, girls,” interposed Betty, hastily, foreseeing another blundering
reference from Madeline to Mr. Thayer’s devotion to Babbie, “don’t
quarrel about unimportant little things like menu cards, but let’s
discuss what we shall serve and what new china we need.”
“Oh, new china!” cried Madeline in great excitement. “I hadn’t thought
of that! I shall go to New York to buy it. Now, whoever said the fat
little mustard jars were an extravagance? We shall use them a lot for
dinners.”
Betty banged the table for order. “Now how many dinner plates shall we
buy to begin with?” she inquired in businesslike tones.
Madeline banged the table noisily in her turn. “I know something much
more important than dinner plates,” she declared ostentatiously. “Do
let’s be businesslike, Betty, and systematic. Your haphazard methods
jar upon my order-loving soul.”
Betty waited resignedly.
“The most important thing is an assistant for you,” Madeline went on.
“You can’t do more than you are doing now. If we serve dinners, there
will be more marketing, more accounts, more to see to all around the
place, and longer hours for the cashier.”
“Oh, of course Betty must have an assistant,” chimed in Babbie, “and a
bigger salary. It’s not fair for us to be making such good profits when
she works so hard.”
“You’ll make more, even with a good many extra expenses, if the
dinners go as I think they will,” put in Betty, forcing her associates
to listen, while she explained what could be done if the average
dinner check was so-and-so, the average attendance so-and-so, and the
additional expenses kept down to this and that.
“All right; let’s serve dinners by all means,” said Babbie gaily. “I
hate averages, because as far as I can see they never come out the way
you want them, but I’m all for expansion. Mummy will like it too.
She’s awfully proud of us. Now Betty can do a go-as-you-please on the
details, can’t she, Madeline? We only bother by putting in our oars;
we’re such ignoramuses.”
Empowered to choose her own assistant, Betty spent two days anxiously
considering various possibilities. If only it were fall, and Katherine
or Rachel were free to try this unconventional way of earning a living!
And then, just at the crucial moment, when she had almost decided to
ask a junior who was working her way through college to come and try
the work for the rest of the term, arrived a letter from Emily Davis,
with moving pathos behind its story of a bitter disappointment bravely
accepted.
“I can’t blame my old eyes,” Emily wrote, “because they’ve served me
long and well, and I’ve overdriven the poor beasties shamefully. So now
they balk, and the doctor says they just must be humored. They’ll hold
my position in the school for me until next fall. In the meantime I’m
hunting for any honest means of livelihood that doesn’t require eyes.
I should cry a few tears at having to give up this perfectly splendid
position that I was so elated to get; but crying is very bad for the
eyes, so I smile and smile and keep on thinking how in the world I can
manage to earn my bread and butter until next September. This summer,
if worse comes to worst, I can wait on table at a seaside resort.
Please don’t think I’m hinting for a chance to do it at the Tally-ho.
I should hate to explain to everybody I know at Harding how it happens
that I’m back at an underclass girl’s last resort--I, who was a star
tutor way back in my junior year, and who meant to come to our reunion
in June a star teacher, with all the money I borrowed to go through
college paid back, and enough left for board at my sister’s through a
restful summer. And now the oculist’s bill is gobbling up everything in
sight.
“What a growl! But this is a safety-valve letter, Betty. As you are
earning your living too, I feel extra sure you’ll understand.”
“What she means is, she feels sure that I won’t offer her money,” Betty
reflected shrewdly. “And isn’t it just splendid that I can offer her a
good position!”
For of course Emily was the very one to be assistant manager. To be
sure, Betty hated the clerical work, and had planned to have her
assistant take charge of the accounts. But the keeping of those was a
small thing compared to having dear old comical Emily Davis back, with
her famous “stunts,” her cheerful fashion of meeting defeat and failure
with a smile, and her marvelous ability to work twice as hard as any
one else and yet always appear calm and collected and unhurried. Betty
had a feeling that Emily would insist upon attending to the lamps and
the stove. She wouldn’t let her do it all, of course--she knew too well
how hard it was--but just a little help would be such a relief.
Of course Babbie and Madeline were as eager as Betty to have Emily join
the tea-room’s force, and Emily could not have resisted the combined
logic and pleading of the three letters they sent her, even if she had
wanted to. So she wrote back post-haste a grateful acceptance of their
offer and promised to be on hand within a fortnight.
There remained still the ploshkin project to consider. The tea-room’s
uninvested capital would just about buy the extra china and other
equipments needed for the dinner service. Betty was averse to asking
Mrs. Hildreth or Mrs. Bob for more money, and the profits had been
divided in January, so they were not available. But Betty had kept
her emergency fund intact all winter, as her father had advised, and
she had added to it appreciably from her salary, her tutoring money,
and her work for the gift-shop department. It was now well on toward
spring, and the tea-shop had fully proved its money-making capacities.
“So, if you don’t mind, I should like to have the ploshkins made with
the money that father gave me, if it’s enough--and it will be if
Madeline can get them done at about what she and Mary thought would be
a good investment. Then I’ll sell them here, and give the shop a small
commission, as the college girls did when we sold their things before
Christmas.”
This was perfectly satisfactory to everybody, and Madeline departed
gaily to pay visits in Bohemia, see editors, match china, and get
ploshkins manufactured--a potpourri of assorted activities that
thoroughly delighted her variety-loving temperament.