Six Girls and the Tea Room

by Marion Ames Taggart

  SIX GIRLS AND THE TEA ROOM

  CHAPTER I

  THE PATTY-PANS AGAIN

  "IS this the Patty-Pans?" asked Gretta, setting down the basket thatheld Jeunesse Doree, the yellow kitten, and looking around the littledining-room with great interest. And she asked it with her voice upon "Patty," and down on "Pans," because she was a true Pennsylvaniacountry girl.

  "This is our city residence, Patty-Pans-on-the-Hudson," said HappieScollard. "Isn't it beautifully queer, the way we're glad to seeanything again? We all were in the dolefullest dumps going toCrestville last April, then we felt dumpy coming away this morningbecause we'd got so attached to the farm--and it was a risk takingGretta away from home for the first time! And now we're all as glad tosee our dear little Patty-Pan flat as if we hadn't loved the farm, andin the spring we'll be perfectly crazy to see the farm again--and so itgoes! Sorry to leave one thing, and just jumping glad to see another!"

  Miss Keren-happuch Bradbury, the Scollards' adopted aunt whose unlikelyname Happie bore, laughed. "Your 'jumping gladness' is always more inevidence than your regrets, Happie," she said. "Now, my annexed family,I am going home. You can get on without me in your own domain, and Iwant to see what has happened in mine during these long months of ourexile. Margery, Happie, I will come down to-morrow and take you tosee the room that I thought would answer for your proposed tea room.There's the bell! Bob and Laura with supplies from the delicatessenshop, likely. Charlotte, go to bed early and rest well to prepare forto-morrow, if you want to resume responsibility. Good-bye, my dears. Iwonder how Noah liked parting from his animals!"

  She started down the tiny three-foot hall in her brisk way, but Happierushed after her and threw herself upon this "Noah" into whose Arkof refuge the Scollards had been taken the previous spring. Then thewaters of affliction had threatened to submerge them, and their bravelittle "Charlotte-mother" was in danger of slipping away altogether,broken down by her long struggle to support her six children, as wellas to educate them herself.

  The Scollards had dubbed Miss Keren-happuch's farm "the Ark," with goodreason, for it had preserved them, and their dearest of mothers hadcome back from it fit to take up her burden again. To be sure, duringthe nine months they had spent in Crestville the farm had proved tobelong rightfully to Gretta Engel, the young girl with whom Happie hadmade such fast friends and who had now returned with them to share theexperiences of a winter that promised to be interesting, but this didnot alter nor lessen the Scollards' debt to that fine old gentlewoman,their grandmother's eccentric friend, Miss Keren-happuch Bradbury.She had been indeed their "Noah" who had saved them from destruction,and Happie ran after her at her hint of regret in leaving them,precipitating herself upon her in such wise that it was evident she hadlost every bit of her former fear of her name donor. It was lucky thatthe little hall was but three feet wide, for Miss Keren staggered underthe onslaught, though she kissed Happie's glowing cheek as heartily asthe girl kissed her pale one.

  "I know how the animals felt when they saw Noah walking off, dearestAuntie Keren!" she cried. "They felt like bleating, and as if Shemand Ham and Japhet, and all their wives couldn't console them if Noahhadn't promised to come often to see that they were fed, and to pattheir heads and let them lick his hand! You dearest of Auntie Kerens!"

  "I hope the original Noah didn't have the bear as spokesman for therest of the animals!" gasped Miss Keren. "Happie, you are smotheringme. There, my dear, let me go! I hear Bob whistling up the stairs, andLaura begging him to go slower. Gretta owns the Ark now. Go and hugher!"

  Pretty Margery came out of a room farther down the hall and opened thedoor to let Miss Keren out and to let in Bob, the one Scollard boy,and Laura, the third girl. She kissed Miss Keren with her gentle, sweetmanner, conveying silently her sense of the blessed difference betweenthe circumstances of their return to the flat which Happie had dubbed"the Patty-Pans" and those under which they had closed that front doorbehind them in the spring to go to Crestville, and her realization thatthe Scollards owed this betterment to Miss Keren.

  Bob and Laura came in with arms filled with packages, most of whichhad to be carried so perfectly right side up that Laura's face was onepucker of solicitude.

  Penny--Penelope, the baby,--had been vainly trying to unfasten thecords holding down the cover of Jeunesse Doree's basket, stimulated byhis imploring mews. Polly had been conducting Gretta through the flat,which struck the girl, for the first time entering a domicile otherthan the Crestville farmhouses, as a sort of miracle for which previousdescriptions had not prepared her mind.

  "No wonder Happie called it 'the Patty-Pans,'" said Gretta, as theyarrived at the parlor window through a series of telescopic rooms."It goes on, one room after another, just for all the world like suchsheets of baking tins! And are there many like this in this one house?"

  Polly felt delightfully experienced, at ten, beside tall Gretta offifteen, who did not know flats.

  "There are two on each floor, and this house is six stories high;this is the fourth floor, east. The Gordons--Ralph and Snigs, youknow,--are just across from us, fourth floor, west. That makes twelveflats in one house," she explained carefully. "I guess they're allrented; they generally are in December, like this. They're the nicestflats for this rent mamma saw. You have to have ref'runces to get in,and mamma wouldn't like to leave us alone all day when she's gone totake charge of foreign letters for that firm down in town 'less wewere in a house where they were strict about ref'runces." Polly--Mary,but no one called her that,--was a most reliable, painstaking, plumplittle person, and she intended to go on enlightening Gretta as to thepeculiarities of flats, when there came a horrible sound of ripping,tearing, pounding, thumping, that made Gretta jump half way across thelittle room and then lean against the wall holding both hands to herthroat, her pretty face utterly stripped of its rich color, her bigeyes bigger and darker than ever as she panted: "Wh-what's that?"

  Polly dropped into the nearest chair and laughed so hard that for aminute she could not speak. Before she caught her breath Happie camein and joined in Polly's mirth as she saw Gretta's face and heard thefrightful racket which was keeping on as loud as ever.

  "You thought we were going straight up through the roof, didn't you,Gretta?" she cried. "I don't blame you, but it's only the steam heatcoming on. It has been turned off so long that the pipes were full ofwater, and when the pipes are cold it always goes on like that. Itisn't half so nice as our fireplace and the logs up at Crestville, isit? But it's safe. Come out, both of you, and help get lunch first andthen eat it. What do you think? Doree went right under the sink theminute he was let out, and looked for his pan of milk where it sat lastwinter! Who would have supposed he would remember? He was nothing but akitten when we went away."

  She had wound her arm around Gretta and had related Doree's proof ofmemory as they went down the hall. Her telescopic home looked verypretty to Happie and she could not help being glad to be back to herold life, but it was such a new life to Gretta that she was afraid ofher not liking it. She was most anxious that the girl whom she lovedand who had never tasted happiness, should spend every day in New Yorkin entire content.

  Margery and Laura had the table set when Happie and Gretta arrivedon the scene. Bob saluted them waving a thin wooden dish with tinnedcorners from which he had just emptied the delicatessen-shop potatosalad.

  "You might run out to the pump and fetch some water, Gretta," hesuggested. But Gretta shook her head.

  "Come now, I'm not as bad as that!" she cried. "They have water runningfrom spigots up in the mountain hotels, and I've seen it! And I shallnot blow out the gas, either!"

  "Happie told you!" said Bob. "Don't you put on airs, Gretta! Mother,lady mother, come forth and regale yourself."

  Mrs. Scollard hastened to accept this invitation. She patted Penny'splump, country-browned little hand, as Margery lifted her into the highchair at her mother's side. She was a pretty mother--M
argery was likeher--and young still; it was no wonder that her children dropped intotheir old places around the table beaming with happiness at seeing heronce more at its head, all her old look of weakness and weariness blownaway somewhere beyond the Crestville mountains.

  The hastily prepared lunch tasted very good and everybody was doingfull justice to it, when there came a pounding from the direction ofthe little kitchen, which made Gretta drop her fork to cry: "What'sthat?" and sent Bob flying towards it with a partly articulateexclamation of: "Ralph and Snigs!"

  "They always pound with a stick from their dumb-waiter door on ours,and then we go to the door--the front door--and let them in," explainedPolly, in her role of instructress to Gretta.

  This time such informality was not to obtain, however. Bob came backwith a broad grin on his face and a note in his hand.

  "They weren't there when I got there; they must have pounded, and thendropped on the floor when they heard me coming," he said to his family."This note was pinned on our dumb-waiter door with a skewer."

  He proceeded to unfold the note and read: "Mr. Ralph Gordon, Mr.Charles (alias Snigs) Gordon, present their compliments to Mrs.Charlotte Scollard, Miss Scollard, the Misses Keren-happuch, Laura,Mary and Penelope Scollard, Miss Gretta Engel and Mr. Robert Scollard,and request the pleasure of being allowed to call upon them at theirearliest convenience. R. S. V. P."

  Considering that the Gordon boys had been spending Thanksgiving at thefarm, and had come down from it with the Scollards that very morningof the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, it really did not seem as if thisformal note, nor even this pressing haste to see the family in theopposite flat, was necessary. Bob crumpled up the note, thrust it intohis pocket and dashed out into the hall, where he beat a lively tattooon the door across from the Patty-Pans' entrance, forgetting all aboutthe rule of consideration for people above and below them, and crying:"Come on over now, you chumps! Come on over!"

  Ralph and Snigs appeared, dodged Bob's affectionate blows, and camebeaming into the dining-room where they shook hands all around with theScollards from whom they had parted hardly an hour before, when theyhad all arrived from the train.

  "Glad to see you back!" cried Ralph heartily. "How well you're looking,all of you! I hear that you have been making a long summer of it upin Madison County, Pennsylvania, among the mountains. Evidently itagreed with you. I mean to take a run up in that part of the countrymyself one of these days. Is this Miss Engel, whose discovery of hergrandmother's will, in the horse-hair trunk where her step-grandfatherhad hidden it, resulted in her snatching from Miss Bradbury the farmwhich you called the Ark? Very glad to see you, Miss Engel. I don'tremember meeting an heiress before. You ought to have prevented yourgrandmother from marrying a scamp for a second husband. It's wrong tobe reckless with grandmothers!"

  "The farm isn't worth enough to call me an heiress, Mr. Gordon. I wishyou could have come up to see us this summer," retorted Gretta. Which,considering how she and Ralph had chased calves, made hay, and lookedafter Don Dolor, the horse, together, proved that Gretta was learninghow to talk nonsense with these new friends.

  "Gretta's grandmother married again before she was born, Ralph," saidPolly, who always set everybody right.

  "My souls and uppers, Ralph, but you are long winded! You'd better taketo the law where you can use your gift of gab!" exclaimed Bob.

  "Say, it was fine being up there in the Ark, but I'm mighty gladyou're all back here again!" said Snigs, looking around the room andthe Scollard circle in profound satisfaction. "Mother says if you couldknow how glad she was to get you back you'd be ashamed of having lefther alone on the other side."

  "No we wouldn't, because if we hadn't gone she wouldn't have been sohappy now," cried Happie. "Where's Whoop-la?"

  "Oh, cut back and fetch Whoop-la!" Ralph ordered his junior. And Snigshurried off, quickly returning with the Gordon tiger cat, grown big, atwhom Doree set up every hair inhospitably.

  "Aunt Keren is coming to fetch us to see the future tea room to-morrow,Ralph," said Margery, bringing her mother a cup of hot tea and passingthe crackers and cheese to the boys. "I am half afraid, now that theexperiment is to be experimented."

  "Always heard tea was bad for the nerves," said Ralph, deftly catchinga bit of Neuchatel cheese which was about to drop, on the edge of thecracker which it was meant to supplement. "What are you afraid of?You'll have a tea room that would make a Russian enlist in the Japanesearmy, and you'll coin money--like a counterfeiter."

  "Counterfeit Japanese?" suggested Happie. "I'm not much afraid of thetea room--though I might be of the tea! As long as I don't have todrink it I won't be afraid of that either. But it does seem ratherawesome to think of Margery and me running a tea room, with only Grettaand Laura to help, and mother down in town all day, superintendinga foreign firm's big correspondence--I mean a big firm's foreigncorrespondence--and Bob in Mr. Felton's office again, and you boys atschool, and nobody to fall back on till night, no matter what happened!"

  "It didn't seem possible," began Laura in her pompous way, "that wecould make our dream of the tea room a reality, until now. But with usback in town and Aunt Keren coming to-morrow to get our approval of theroom it is almost _un fait accompli_."

  "Let's see, that means an accomplice of fate, doesn't it, Laura?"inquired Bob slyly. He never lost a chance of pricking the bubble ofLaura's vanity. "I've not a doubt that the tea room will prove anaccomplice of fate." He jumped up and mounted a chair with no warningof his intentions. "My brethren, and also my sisteren," he preachedin a sermonizing voice. "This is a world in which one thing leads toanother. It has not been my lot to journey far in this round planet,nor has it been my lot to see that it is round. I have been limitedto a flatness that extended as far as my eye could reach. But Iknow--because Columbus proved it by smashing the end of an egg--thatcould my eye but go on and on it would soon roll over the decliningedge of a rotund world. And so I know, although my sweet sixteenyears have not carried me to the depths of human experience, thatthe world of each of us is also a round world, in which events rollaround and around, much like the careless kitten that flitteth incircles after its coy tail. And even, my brethren and sisteren, as theflitting of the kitten causes the tail it pursues to circle, so do we,unknowingly, cause the events which seem to chase us. I have no doubtthat Sister Laura has spoken as truly as she has spoken beautifullywhen, in the language of the polite successors of the ancient Gauls,she has said that the tea room would prove an accomplice of fate.Even as the drops of tea flow from the noses of the small teapots ofthe future refreshment room, so shall the consequences of that room'sexistence flow through the lives of our beloved sisters Margaret andKeren-happuch, and possibly of others unknown to us."

  Gretta groaned, after the fashion of congregations assembled in theold-time camp meetings in the woods, which she had seen when she wasvery small. Ralph and Snigs were about to applaud, but Happie checkedthem with a stern face as Bob descended from his chair. "Hush, younever applaud a sermon!" she whispered. "The congregation will join mein the hymn."

  She began to sing, and Margery joined with an alto and Laura with atenor, as if the "hymn" were already familiar. It was sung to the airwhich has been called, "Tell Aunt Rhody," and its words ran thus:

  "A word of wisdom, a word of wisdom, a word of wisdom Is of use. This word is come, this word is come, this word is come From a goose."

  Ralph and Snigs shouted. "You are the greatest crowd!" exclaimed Ralphadmiringly. "You are always springing something new on us. I neverheard this sermon racket before. If I ought to be a lawyer, you oughtto preach, Bob. And where _did_ you catch the hymn?"

  "Bob used to preach when we were little, and we wanted a hymn to singat his sermons. We didn't dare sing a real hymn, for fear it would beirreverent, so mother wrote the words of this one for us. We hope thatit will be a benefit to you," said Happie demurely.

  Polly came in from the kitchen looking guilty. "Whoop-la jumped on thetable and took the rest of the sardin
es," she said. "So I gave them,even half and half, to him and Doree. I didn't like to tell you forfear Ralph would scold Whoop-la. But it was good he stole--took them,for it made Doree stop growling at him. There was one tail, with alittle piece above it, that didn't come out even after I divided, soI gave that to Whoop-la because he was company. I hope you won't sayanything to him about it."

  Polly was the champion of all animals, and she was Ralph's greatfriend. The big boy put his arm around her affectionately. "I'll callsardines 'herrings' before Whoop-la from this very day, for fear ofembarrassing him, Sweet P.," he said.

  The bell rang and Snigs cried, "That's mother, I'll wager what youlike."

  Penny ran to open the door, and Mrs. Gordon's voice called out: "Imissed my boys and felt sure where to find them. May I come?"

  Mrs. Scollard hastened out to meet her guest, and Margery, Happie andGretta fell to clearing the table and washing dishes as fast as theycould.

  "It's a good thing I lived with you in the country before we came intown, or I never should have got used to your ways. And even now youseem different here, though I can't tell how," Gretta said to Happie asthey removed the crumbs from the table.

  "Of course; we're in a different state! Isn't this New York and wasn'tthat Pennsylvania?" inquired Happie. "Nonsense, Gretta; we're just thesame, only more so."

  "Don't you dread that tea room, honest?" asked Gretta.

  "Just a wee bit, but don't you say I said so," returned Happie. "If wecan make it go and be useful it will be beautiful. The only thing Ireally dread about it is its failing."

  It had been partly Gretta's plan, at least she had suggested and addedto Margery and Happie's idea of a tea room, in which they were to tryto make a little of the money they needed that winter. Kind MissKeren-happuch Bradbury had promised to guarantee their rent and hadfound the room for the purpose. To-morrow she was going to show it tothem. It did seem formidable, now that it was taking such definiteshape, the plan of setting up the library and tea room which they haddiscussed in far-off Crestville. But the Mrs. Stewart from whom theywould rent the room was to be above them, with her dancing school, tochaperon them, and perhaps their youth would make the little enterprisego the better. At least it was not Happie's way to be timorous.

  "Of course I'm not really afraid, Gretta," she said, with the littletoss of her bright red-brown hair which Gretta knew and loved. And sheled the way into the tiny kitchen of the flat like an amazon at thehead of her warriors.