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Page 24
She turned the pages eagerly. "It is a bloodstone. The very thing for
Jack, for his birthday is in March, too, and it is such a dark,
unpretentious stone that he would like it. _But_--it costs eight
dollars."
She said it in an awed tone as if she were naming a small fortune.
"Maybe we can think of some way for you to earn it," said Betty,
encouragingly. "I'll set my wits to work this evening as soon as I've
finished looking over the A class themes. Because none of the girls has
ever done such a thing before in the school is no reason why you should
not. Look! This is what I came in to show you."
It was several pages from Lloyd's last letter, and the samples of some
new dresses she was having made. For a little space the wolf at the door
drew in its claws, and Mary forgot her financial straits. Early in the
term Betty had divined how much the sharing of this correspondence meant
to Mary. She could not fail to see how eagerly she followed the winsome
princess through her gay social season in town, rejoicing over her
popularity, interested in everything she did and wore and treasuring
every mention of her in the home papers. The old Colonel sent Betty the
_Courier-Journal_, and the society page was regularly turned over to
Mary. There was a corner in her scrap-book marked, "My Chum," rapidly
filling with accounts of balls, dinners and house-parties at which she
had been a guest. This last letter had several messages in it for Mary,
so Betty left the page containing them with her, knowing they would be
folded away in the scrap-book with the samples, as soon as her back was
turned.
"I was out at Anchorage for this last week-end," ran one of the
messages. "And it rained so hard one night that what was to have been an
informal dance was turned into an old-fashioned candy-pull. Not more
than half a dozen guests managed to get there. Tell Mary that I tried to
distinguish myself by making some of that Mexican pecan candy that they
used to have such success with at the Wigwam. But it was a flat failure,
and I think I must have left out some important ingredient. Ask her to
please send me the recipe if she can remember it."
"Probably it failed because she didn't have the real Mexican sugar,"
said Mary, at the end of the reading. "It comes in a cone, wrapped in a
queer kind of leaf, so I'm sure she didn't have it. I'll write out the
recipe as soon as I get back from my geometry recitation, and add a
foot-note, explaining about the sugar."
Somehow it was hard for Mary to keep her mind on lines and angles that
next hour. She kept seeing a merry group in the Wigwam kitchen. Lloyd
and Jack and Phil Tremont were all ranged around the white table,
cracking pecans, and picking out the firm full kernels, while Joyce
presided over the bubbling kettle on the stove. She wondered if Lloyd
had enjoyed her grown-up party as much as she had that other one, when
Jack said such utterly ridiculous things in pigeon English, like the old
Chinese vegetable man, and Phil cake-walked and parodied funny
coon-songs till their sides ached with laughing.
At the close of the recitation a hastily scribbled note from Betty was
handed to her.
"I have just found out," it ran, "that Mammy Easter will be unable to
furnish her usual pralines and Christmas sweets to her Warwick Hall
customers this year. Why don't you try your hand at that Mexican candy
Lloyd mentioned. If the girls once get a taste it will be 'advertised by
its loving friends' and you can sell quantities. I am going to the city
this afternoon, and can order the sugar for you. If they wire the order
you ought to be able to get it within a week. _E.S._"
Mary went up stairs two steps at a bound, stepping on the front of her
dress at every other jump, and only saving herself from sprawling
headlong as she reached the top, by catching at A.O., who ran into her
on the way down. She could not get back to her bank book and her
Christmas list soon enough, to see how much cash she had on hand, and
compute how much she dared squeeze out to invest in material.
A week later the Domestic Science room was turned over to her during
recreation hour, and presently a delicious odour began to steal out into
the halls, which set every girl within range to sniffing hungrily. Betty
explained it to several, and there was no need to do anything more.
Every one was on hand for her share when the samples were passed around,
and the new business venture was discussed in every room.
"Wouldn't you like to know Jack Ware?" asked Dorene of Cornie, her mouth
so full of the delicious sweets that she could only mumble. "Any man who
can inspire such adoration in his own sister must be nothing short of a
wonder."
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