CHAPTER II
"PLEASED TO MEET YOU"
NO one had ever known Miss Keren-happuch Bradbury to miss anappointment.
The four girls were ready for her betimes, for she never kept any onewaiting and had the strongest objection to unpunctuality in another.
She rang the bell of the small apartment ten minutes earlier than theScollards had looked for her, and appeared erect and brisk as ever,with that combination of thorough breeding and disregard for externalswhich was peculiar to herself.
This time, however, it seemed that Miss Bradbury had passed her ownlimit of garments which, however fine and costly in their day, werestamped with the fact that their day had been marked on a calendar longsuperseded.
"My children, I'm a frump!" she announced on entering, without othergreeting. "I am sure that you will be ashamed to be seen with me. Ishould have made our investigating day a later one, and got myselfclad in the garments of the present year of grace first of all things.Do look at this coat! Its sleeves cry aloud, like the great-mouthedtrombones they resemble, that they were made two years ago. One'ssleeves always turn traitor and betray one! My coat is not so bad,except the sleeves. Will you mind seriously? And will you promise towalk one on each side of me, pressed close every minute, so no one cansee how disgraceful I am? I look as though I had indeed come out of theArk yesterday!"
"You always look like a dear, old-fashioned gentlewoman, Aunt Keren,"said Margery, sincerely and affectionately.
"It's beautiful cloth, Auntie Keren; it hasn't lost its gloss one bit,"Happie added consolingly. The Scollards were under the impression thatMiss Bradbury's obsolete effect was not a matter of choice, that shehad too little money to discard good garments merely because they wereout of fashion.
"There's one thing: you don't outgrow your things now!"
"Literally and physically?" cried Miss Keren-happuch. "Why should I?Surely there ought to be some compensation in being beyond the sixtiethgoal!"
"But we do," insisted Happie. "We are worse in our last winter's coatsthan you are in yours. Your sleeves are behind the times, but oursare above our wrists, Margery's and mine. Laura is safe because sheinherits. We were wishing for frilled muffs when you came."
"And I think it would be more sensible to wish for new coats," Pollyadded.
"Such as we are we must get under way. Those who know us will know wehave been rusticating, and the other four millions, more or less, won'tcare," said Miss Bradbury turning towards the door. "Are Polly andPenny to be safely left alone? We may not get back to luncheon."
"Mrs. Gordon promised to keep her eye on them," said Margery, stoopingto kiss her two little sisters good-bye.
How noisy, bewilderingly noisy, crowded and unclean the streets of thegreat city seemed to Margery and Happie after the wind-swept spaces,the deep silence of the mountains! Gretta did not see them in detail.She walked them clutching Happie's arm, her one idea to thread safelybetween trolleys, trucks, automobiles and all the other monsters thatcharged down upon her, to which Margery and Happie seemed recklesslyindifferent, and Miss Bradbury and Laura, each in her different way,horribly oblivious.
"Oh, Auntie Keren, it isn't here, is it?" cried Happie, as MissBradbury turned into a most desirable street, close to the shoppingdistrict and between Broadway and Fifth Avenue. She had steadilyrefused to tell the girls where she had found the place she thoughtwould be best for the proposed tea room. This neighborhood took theirbreath away. It was so dismaying, yet so very desirable!
"We never could pay the rent of a room near here, Aunt Keren," saidMargery.
"Higher rents mean more business, my novices in the Art of GettingRich!" said Miss Bradbury keeping on her unruffled way. "This block ismy judgment for you; we will talk it over afterwards. If the rent isnot forth-coming at first, you understand that I am responsible forit. If the tea room really amounts to anything it will be likely topay more than rent here. Elsewhere, I doubt it would get beyond makingits own lower rent. Do you see that house with the square bow window,like a shop, but close curtained with green sash curtains? That is Mrs.Stewart's dancing school, and she is anxious to sub-let the shop on thelower floor. She will give it to you at a reasonable figure, and it hasthe great advantage of being under the rooms which she uses, where youcan have the benefit of the dear little woman's advice and chaperonage.I have known Mrs. Stewart for a long time, admiring her and pitying herwith all my heart. Here we are!"
A curtained door led down three steps into the shop, but Miss Bradburyrang the house bell and a maid admitted her, with the four girls in hertrain, into the hall and into a reception-room at its rear.
A little lady with a charming face, who moved with the rhythm of apoem, came swiftly into the room to greet the arrivals.
"Oh, I hope you'll like the little shop!" she cried girlishly, givingMargery a quick glance of admiration that instantly included handsomeGretta and Happie, with her irregular, attractive face. "It never wasused as a shop. I am its first tenant and I used it for dancing classesuntil I decided that the children were better kept altogether on thefirst floor--this would be a basement shop, you know, if the house werequite normal."
"Then you are not dismayed by the apparition of such youthful tenants?"suggested Miss Keren. "Margery, this girl, will keep her eighteenthbirthday sooner than she would if she realized the penalties of beinggrown up. Happie, my unfortunate namesake, is fifteen, Laura isthirteen--but she is not a responsible person, only an assistant in theproject, as is Gretta, this Pennsylvania girl of ours who has turnedout the real owner of my farm--I mean the farm that I thought I owned.Then, little Madam Terpsichore, will you let us see the room?"
"Yes, indeed," agreed Mrs. Stewart, leading the way. She opened thedoor upon a large room, bare of all furniture except a piano, and a fewchairs neatly piled one upon another as if they had been arrested inplaying leap frog.
The woodwork of the room was white, panelled in green; there was aboutit great cheerfulness and suggestions of all sorts of possibilities.The girls looked at one another with bright, excited eyes.
"You like it," Miss Keren stated, not needing to ask.
"We love it, Aunt Keren--if we can afford to," said Happie whimsically.
"Love does not count cost," said Miss Keren. "Mrs. Stewart and I mappedout the general lay of the land--your kingdom--thus: a curtain acrosshere, partly drawn, to cut off some of the light at the rear and allowlanterns where you serve tea on small tables. A gas stove here--tappingthis pipe and hidden by a screen. On this, water perpetually boiling.A dresser here, also hidden as you see,--the screen would cut off thisentire corner,--for teacups, cakes and all that sort of thing. Aroundthe front, book-shelves, if you decide to add a circulating library toyour tea room, as you planned at first to do. And possibly tables here,too, if necessary--candies? Happie, your fudge could be a feature. Withhangings, touches of color wisely bestowed, and a little planning, thiscould be made a delightful room, Mrs. Stewart and I think. But I don'twant to bias you."
"It would be perfect, Aunt Keren," said Margery. "No one could helpliking it. And the street--there isn't a better location in town, ofcourse. If you think we may risk it. You see, we never had anything soimportant to decide, and it is hard to settle even less things withoutmother. You must decide for us. Only--please, Auntie Keren dear, don'treckon on your supplying deficiencies of rent. It would be bad enoughif you had to do it! So don't risk anything, counting on stepping in,will you?"
"Yes, and you know we are going to do this seriously, as a business.I'm sure it will be more fun than anything we ever did in all ourlives, but if it were only that, we ought to be at home scrubbing,"Happie supplemented her sister, leaving to her hearers the applicationof her remarks.
"Well, my girls, I truly think that your chance of success is greaterhere than elsewhere, warranting a little more rent. It isn't much more.Mrs. Stewart is most modest in her views. I think it is decided, Mrs.Stewart!" said Miss Keren.
"You will take it, Miss Scollard?" asked Mrs. Stewart.
"If Aunt Keren says I may," assented Margery, after a glance at Happie,who nodded hard.
"Then I shall ask the first favor," Mrs. Stewart said. "That piano! Ihave another up-stairs which I use for classes. This is a particularlygood one, and my young pianist has the true dancing school heaviness oftouch. Would you find it in your way to let this piano stand here--fora while?"
Laura, whom nobody had consulted, and who, with Gretta, had played therole of listener to the discussion of taking the room, suddenly spoke.
"If I may play on it sometimes," she said. "I was just wishing itcould be here so I might play to people taking tea in the shadow withlanterns lighting them."
Gretta looked distinctly shocked and Happie flushed, while Margery'smortification was easily seen. But Mrs. Stewart was evidentlyacquainted with the artistic temperament. She laughed and asked:
"Then you play, my dear?"
"I compose," said Laura. "I think soft music would add heaps to the tearoom."
"Soft music with weak tea, loud music with strong tea. Do come along,Laura!" cried Happie, who, however proud she really was of hergenuinely gifted junior, was perpetually wishing "she wouldn't!"
Then, fearing that she had seemed pert, Happie turned back to Mrs.Stewart. "Laura plays well enough for us to enjoy her music a greatdeal. She meant that she would like to play a little on that piano,if you weren't afraid of her hurting it, but she didn't mean thatit couldn't stay down here if you were afraid, though what she saidsounded like that. Of course it will not be in the way; it will makethe tea room ever so much more like a livable room, even though thepiano is locked."
"Which it certainly will never be," smiled Mrs. Stewart. "Perhaps yourLaura will let me steal down sometimes to listen to her music."
"Perhaps she can help you sometimes, playing for your classes," saidMargery, anxiously supplementing Happie's effort to cover Laura'sconceit and the glum expression with which the latter silentlyrecognized this effort.
"We shall have the nicest sort of times, in all sorts of ways, I amsure," said the girls' attractive little landlady. And Miss Bradburyled the new tenants away without their giving a thought to the factthat they did not know what their rent was to be, nor to the whollyunbusinesslike tone of the entire interview.
Miss Bradbury had taken the dimensions of the shop, a prevision whichhad hot occurred to Margery or Happie, so while the party lunchedanimatedly in the big hotel nearest to the future tea room, and whileGretta lost herself completely in the music of the first good stringorchestra she had ever heard, the plans for the arrangement of the tearoom were decided.
After lunch Miss Bradbury departed in search of the carpenter who wasto put up book-shelves and portiere poles, and the girls went home torelieve trusty Polly of her housekeeping.
Margery found a letter waiting for her, a letter with the Baltimorepostmark and addressed in the fine writing which Happie always regardedwith aversion. Margery carried the letter with her to their room,whither she went to lay off hat and coat, and Happie groaned to Gretta,a careful groan, in a low key, so Margery should not hear.
"That Robert Gaston will be turning up in New York this winter, mark mywords!" she darkly prophesied. "I don't believe in friends!"
Gretta laughed. "How about Ralph and Snigs?" she suggested.
"Boys, just boys!" said Happie. "But I don't believe in elegant youngmen friends who read aloud to you, the way Margery says this Baltimorecreature did at Bar Harbor last summer, and are six years older thanyou! Of course you know as well as I do how such things always turnout, and Margery is so perfectly lovely that a blind-deaf-feeble-mindedman would fall in love with her! It's no joke to see your dearestsister in danger, Gretta."
Happie's voice was so tremulous at the end of this speech that it tookaway from Gretta the desire to laugh, with which she had struggledas she listened. "We'll just have to hope he isn't blind, deaf andfeeble-minded, then maybe he won't fall in love with her, and maybeif he is all these things she won't care about him," Gretta saidcomfortingly, with considerable show of probability. "And if worstcomes to worst, why we'll know it won't be as bad a worst as it lookscoming. Don't worry, Happie, it's not your way."
"No," Happie agreed dismally. "But I'm certain he is horrid, wearsserious, too-well-fitting clothes, quotes poetry, talks elegantly, andonly smiles as if he were trying to be kind. Ug-gh, but I do de-spisethat sort of man!"
"I never saw one," said Gretta.
Happie stared at her thoughtfully for an instant, then she burst outlaughing, her face all wrinkling into fun-lines, and dimpling with oneof those sudden changes of mood that made Happie so lovable.
"Why, neither did I, Gretta, now you speak of it!" she cried. "I thinkI got him out of stories. I guess I'm a goose."
Margery reappeared, unchanged by this letter at least, so Happie putmenacing Robert Gaston out of her mind, and the Scollards talked tearoom until their mother and Bob came home, when they talked it morethan ever, and after dinner Ralph and Snigs came in, which multipliedthe tea-room talk by two.
There were exciting days, tiresome days too, included in the next twoweeks. Miss Bradbury hurried the preparations of the room in order tolet the girls have some of the benefit of the holiday shopping-time.They were delightful days of selection of materials for hangings,picking out teacups, spoons, dear little chunky Japanese teapots, sugarbowls and cream jugs and pretty plates. They were made by the artisticJapanese in such good designs and colors that only when one turned themover and saw the quality of the ware did one realize that they werepicked up on one of the tables at Mardine's where tempting Japaneseknickknacks play a sort of progressive game of their own, from thefifteen cent table up to the dollar one, after which they retire to theshelves as winners.
The Patty-Pans undeniably suffered from neglect on the part of itsgood housekeepers, and Mrs. Scollard and Bob patiently accepted whatBob called "imitation dinners." The girls took turns in seeing afterthe tea room arrangements, until Gretta volunteered to let Margery andHappie both go while she looked after the housekeeping, and then itwent better.
The tea room was to be opened on Saturday, the fifteenth. Ralph andSnigs were not allowed to see it until it was in order, save for thefinishing touches, and for these the Scollards and the Gordons made abee on Wednesday night.
They went down in high feather, Mrs. Gordon and her two tall boys, allthe Scollards, including even Penny, while Miss Bradbury was to comedown to meet them at the room.
Margery carried the key. She proudly put it into their own lock andopened the door. Happie sprang forward and touched the electricbutton, and light leaped joyously into each glass bulb, most of whichwere transformed by crepe tissue paper into blossoms of unclassifiedvarieties.
Cases stood around, which the bee party had come to open, but in spiteof them the room was already beautiful.
"Miss Keren!" expostulated Mrs. Scollard, realizing at a glance what anoutlay was represented by the tables, chairs, portieres, and lanterns,not to mention the contents of the still unopened cases.
"Charlotte, be still!" warned Miss Keren. "Was I not your mother'sclosest friend, bound to her by ties of peculiar tenderness? Andam I not spiritually kinless? I have told you before that you arenot to remonstrate if it is my whim to play with my old friends'grandchildren, and, I won't have you spoiling 'we girls'' fun by a look!Bless their hearts, they have no idea of money. Don't you hint of it!"
Miss Keren's law was laid down rapidly in a low voice, covered byRalph's salutation of the tea room.
"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure," he said, doffing his hat with an airthat suggested the plumed cap of a Romeo, as Bob introduced him: "R.Gordon, T. Room; T. Room, your servant, R. Gordon. Now get to work,ladies and gentlemen." He produced hammer and chisel from the pocketof his outer coat and set an example to accompany his exhortation, byvaliantly attacking the boarded top of the nearest case.
There were not many books to begin with, but what
there were provedto be in the case Bob was opening, and were quickly set up on theirshelves.
"We're going to ask any one who borrows from us to deposit the value ofthe book taken, which will be returned later, and we shall charge fivecents a reading," explained Margery, when Ralph expressed a doubt ofthe tea room maidens' keeping their stock of latest novels intact.
"And if this part of the business goes well we're going to buy lotsof books," said Laura. Then, with her usual indifference to laborthat needed doing, she went over to Mrs. Stewart's piano and began toimprovise, while the others briskly hurried through the work of takingout and dusting dishes and all the other contents of the cases andsetting them up on the shelves.
It did not take long--though it was long enough for Penny to get sleepyand to be put by Bob into one of the empty cases for a nap, well paddedaround with excelsior.
When everything was done, and the boys had carried the cases out intothe rear, and Penny had wakened as bright as a new penny from the mint,the tea room was a joy to look upon.
Softened lights, dull, warm draperies, pretty china, the bindings ofthe books, all contributed to an effect as homelike as it was artistic.
"She who comes once will come twice," said Mrs. Gordon looking aroundher.
"Sounds like a well-worn adage, mother," observed Ralph. "But it's astrue as 'tis new. Old maids and tea has always been the combination.Let's put out a quaint sign: "Ye Yonge Maids' Tea Room."
"Yes, with all the letters higgledy-piggledy to prove we know what'strue art," cried Happie. "I don't believe we want a sign out. Besides,it might keep away elderly people; they might think it meant theycouldn't come in."
"Or else flatter them so that they'd come in hordes," added MissKeren. "Light your gas stove, girls, and brew us your first tea. We'llchristen the tea room."
Gretta sprang to obey, secretly proud of having overcome her fear ofthe first spurt of the gas when it leaped to the match.
"We'll have to make hot lemonade for part of our guests, including me,"said Happie, bustling about to set out cups and crackers, with a glanceat the boys who liked tea as little as she did.
Margery put English breakfast and fragrant Formosa Oolong into twoof the prettiest teapots, and they drank, standing, the toast to thesuccess of the enterprise, which was proposed by Miss Keren.
"Good-night, pretty place," said Polly, peeping back into the room fromunder Margery's arm as she put the key in the door.
"Yes, good-night," said Ralph. "As I said when we came: 'We're pleasedto meet you.'"
Six Girls and the Tea Room Page 4