Mary-'Gusta Part 51

"Oh, but you ought to have one. Not of the ordinary kind, you know, but the--the other kind, the unusual kind. Why, I have a cousin--a second--no, third cousin, a relative of Daddy's, she is--who hadn't much money and whose health wasn't good and the doctor sent her to live in the country. Live there all the time! Only fancy! Oh, I forgot you were going to do the same thing. Do forgive me! I'm so sorry! WHAT a perfect gump I am! Oh, dear me! There I go again! And I know you abhor slang, Mrs. Wyeth."

"Tell me more about your cousin, Barbara," put in Mary, before the shocked Mrs. Wyeth could reply.

"Oh, she went to the country and took an old house, the funniest old thing you ever saw. And she put up the quaintest little sign! And opened a tea-room and gift shop. I don't know why they call them 'gift shops.'

They certainly don't give away anything. Far, far from that, my dear!

Daddy calls this one of Esther's 'The Robbers' Roost' because he says she charges forty cents for a gill of tea and two slices of toast cut in eight pieces. But I tell him he doesn't pay for the tea and toast alone--it is the atmosphere of the place. He says if he had to pay for all his atmosphere at that rate he would be asphyxiated in a few months.

But he admires Esther very much. She makes heaps and heaps of money."

"Then her tea-room and gift shop is a success?"

"A success! Oh, my dear! It's a scream of a success! Almost any day in summer there are at least a dozen motor cars outside the door. Everybody goes there; it's the proper thing to do. I know all this because it isn't very far from our summer home in Clayton--in the mountains, you know."

"So she made a success," mused Mary. "Were there other tea-rooms about?"

"Oh, dozens! But they're not original; hers is. They haven't the--the something--you know what I mean, Esther has the style, the knack, the--I can't say it, but you know. And you would have it, too; I'm perfectly sure you would."

Mary was evidently much interested.

"I wish I might meet your cousin," she said.

"Why, you can. She is here in Boston now, buying for the summer. I'll phone her and we three will lunch together tomorrow. Don't say you won't; you've just got to."

So Mary, rather reluctantly, consented to make one of the luncheon party. Afterward she was glad that she did, for Miss Esther Hemingway--this was the cousin's name--was an interesting person. She told Mary all about her tea-room and gift shop, how she started in business, the mistakes she made at first, and the lessons she had learned from experience. Because Barbara had asked her to do so she brought with her photographs of the establishment, its attractive and quaint exterior and its equally delightful interior.

"The whole secret," she said, "is in keeping everything in good taste and simple. Choose the right location, fit up your rooms in taste and cheerfully, serve the best you can find, and sell the unusual and the attractive things that other people do not have, or at least are not likely to have. Then charge adequate prices."

"Adequate being spelled A double D," observed Barbara significantly.

Mary parted from Miss Hemingway with a new idea in her head, an idea that sometime or other she meant to put into practice.

On Thursday afternoon she called upon Mr. Green. That gentleman, having had his opportunity to think, was ready with a proposition. Briefly it was this: He had personally seen the princ.i.p.al creditors of Hamilton and Company--they were all Boston business houses--and he and they had agreed to make the following offer: Hamilton and Company's credit upon debts already owed was to be extended six months. Mary was to go home, endeavor to collect what money she could, and with it buy for cash whatever goods were needed for the summer season. If that season was a success and the business promised well for the future, then arrangements could be made for future buying and for paying the old debt a little at a time.

"At any rate," concluded Mr. Green, "this postpones the mortgaging or selling for a time at least, and you always have it to fall back on if you can't make your new undertaking pay. I believe you can. I advise you to accept. Your other creditors feel the same way."

He did not add, as he might have done, that the opinion of those other creditors had been influenced almost entirely by his own and that in one or two instances he had been obliged practically to underwrite the payment of Hamilton and Company's indebtedness before gaining consent.

He had talked with Mr. Howe, who in turn had called his daughter into consultation, and Barbara's enthusiastic praise of her friend had strengthened the favorable impression which the girl had already made upon both gentlemen. "Do you know, I believe she may win out," observed Mr. Howe.

"I am inclined to think she will," concurred Green.

"Of course she will!" declared Barbara hotly. "No one who ever knew her would be silly enough to think she wouldn't."

Hence Mr. Green's underwriting expedition and the proposition to Mary as the representative of Hamilton and Company.

Mary accepted, of course. She was very grateful and said so.

"I don't know how to thank you, Mr. Green. I can't promise anything, but if trying hard will win, I can promise that," she said.

"That's all right, that's all right. I know you'll try, and I think you'll succeed. Now, why don't you go up and pick out some of those summer goods? You don't need them yet, and you needn't pay for them yet, but now is the time to select. Give my regards to your uncles when you see them and tell them I wish them luck. I may be motoring down the Cape this summer and if I do I shall drop in on you and them."

Mary had news to tell when she reached South Harniss. It was listened to with attention, if not entirely in silence. Captain Shadrach's e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of "You don't say!" "I want to know!" and "Jumpin' fire, how you talk!" served as punctuation marks during the narration. When she had finished her story, she said:

"And now, Uncle Zoeth and Uncle Shad--now that you've heard the whole of it, and know what my plan is, what do you think of it?"

Both answers were characteristic. Zoeth drew a long breath.

"The Almighty sent you to us, Mary-'Gusta," he vowed. "There was a time a little spell ago when I begun to think He'd pretty nigh deserted us. I was almost discouraged and it shook my trust--it shook my trust. But now I can see He was just tryin' us out and in His good time He sent you to haul us off the shoals. He'll do it, too; I know it and I'll thank Him tonight on my knees."

Shadrach shook his head. "By fire!" he cried. "Mary-'Gusta, I always said you was a wonder. You've given us a chance to get clear of the breakers, anyhow, and that's somethin' we'd never have done ourselves.

Now, if you can collect that money from Jeremiah Clifford I'll--I'll--I swan to man I'll believe anything's possible, even Jonah's swallowin'

the whale."

"Oh, Shadrach!" protested his partner. "If you wouldn't be so irreverent!"

"All right, I'll behave. But it's just as I say: if Mary-'Gusta can get Jerry Clifford to pay up I'll swallow Jonah and the whale, too. 'Twas Moses that hit the rock and the water gushed out, wa'n't it? Um--hm!

Well, that was somethin' of a miracle, but strikin' Jerry Clifford for ten cents and gettin' it would be a bigger one. Why, that feller's got fists like--like one of those sensitive plants my mother used to have in the settin'-room window when I was a boy. You touch a leaf of one of those plants and 'twould shrivel up tight. Jerry's fists are that way--touch one of 'em with a nickel and 'twill shut up, but not until the nickel's inside. No, sir! Ho, ho!"

"If you knew all this, Uncle Shad," suggested Mary, "why in the world did you sell Mr. Clifford at all? If he wouldn't pay, why sell him?"

Mr. Hamilton answered.

"He always did pay," he said. "You see, he had to have groceries and clothes and such and whenever he needed more and thought he owed us so much we wouldn't put more on the bill he'd pay a little on account. That way we managed to keep up with him."

"Not exactly up with him," commented the Captain. "We was always a couple of laps astern, but we could keep him in sight. Now the new stores have come and he can get trusted there he don't buy from us--or pay, either. What's the use? That's what he thinks, I cal'late."

Mary considered. "The mean old sinner!" she said. "I should judge, Uncle Shad, that what you told me once, when I was a little girl, about the Free Masons might apply to Mr. Clifford's pocketbook. You said that once in Masonry a man never got out. A dollar in Mr. Clifford's pocketbook never gets out, either, does it?"

Shadrach chuckled. "You bet it don't!" he agreed. "It's got a life sentence. And, so fur as that goes, they generally open a Mason lodge meetin' with prayer, but 'twould take more'n that to open Jerry's pocketbook, I'LL bet you!"

"And, nevertheless," declared Mary, laughing, "I mean to make him pay our bill."

She did make the tight-fisted one pay up eventually, but months were to elapse before that desirable consummation was reached. In the meantime she set herself to collecting other amounts owed Hamilton and Company and to building up the trade at the store. The collecting was not so difficult as she had expected. The Captain and Mr. Hamilton had been reluctant to ask their friends and neighbors to be prompt in their payments, and largely through carelessness accounts had been permitted to drop behind. Mary personally saw the debtors and in most cases, by offering slight discounts or by accepting installments, she was able to obtain at least the greater part of the money due. In some cases she could obtain nothing and expected nothing, but these cases, among them that of 'Rastus Young, were rather to be considered in the light of good riddance even at the price. As Shadrach said, it was worth a few dollars not to have to listen to 'Rastus or Mrs. 'Rastus cry over their troubles whenever they wanted to hold up the firm for more plunder.

"Last time 'Rastus was in to buy anything," declared the Captain, "he shed so blamed many tears into my rubber boots that I got wet feet and sent the boots to the cobbler's to have 'em plugged. I cal'lated they leaked; I didn't realize 'twas Rat workin' me out of four dollars worth of groceries by water power."

The collections, then, those from Mr. Young and his ilk excepted, were satisfactory. Mary was enabled to buy and pay for a modest a.s.sortment of summer supplies, those she had selected while in Boston. The store she had thoroughly cleaned and renovated. The windows were kept filled with attractive displays of goods, and the prices of these goods, as set forth upon tickets, were attractive also. Business began to pick up, not a great deal at first, but a little, and as May brought the first of the early-bird summer cottagers to South Harniss, the silent partner of Hamilton and Company awaited the coming of what should be the firm's busiest season with hope and some confidence.

CHAPTER XXI

During all this time she had heard from Crawford at least once a week.

He would have written oftener than that, had she permitted it. And in spite of her determination so bravely expressed in their interview over the telephone, she had written him more than the one letter she had promised. In that letter--her first--she told him the exact situation there at home; of her discovery that her uncles were in trouble, that the small, but to them precious, business they had conducted so long was in danger, and of her determination to give up school and remain at South Harniss where, she knew, she was needed. Then she went on to tell of her still greater discovery, that instead of being a young woman of independent means, she was and always had been dependent upon the bounty of her uncles.

You can imagine how I felt when I learned this [she wrote], when I thought of all the kindness I had accepted at their hands, accepted it almost as if it was my right, thinking as I did that my own money paid.

And now to learn that all the time I had nothing and they had given of their own when they had so little, and given it so cheerfully, so gladly. And, Crawford, when I told them what I had done, they would not accept thanks, they would not let me even speak of the great debt I owed them. So far from that they acted as if they were the ones who owed and as if I had caught them in some disgraceful act. Why, if they could, they would have sent me back to Boston and to school, while they remained here to work and worry until the bankruptcy they expected came.