class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[20]"/>und the room and the Scollard circle in profound satisfaction. "Mother says if you could know how glad she was to get you back you'd be ashamed of having left her alone on the other side."

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

"Oh, cut back and fetch Whoop-la!" Ralph ordered his junior. And Snigs hurried off, quickly returning with the Gordon tiger cat, grown big, at whom Dorée 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 passing the crackers and cheese to the boys. "I am half afraid, now that the experiment is to be experimented."

"Always heard tea was bad for the nerves," said Ralph, deftly catching a bit of Neuchâtel cheese which was about to drop, on the edge of the cracker 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 Japanese army, and you'll coin money—like a counterfeiter."

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

"It didn't seem possible," began Laura in her pompous way, "that we could make our dream of the tea room a reality, until now. But with us back in town and Aunt Keren coming to-morrow to get our approval of the room 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 of Laura's vanity. "I've not a doubt that the tea room will prove an accomplice of fate." He jumped up and mounted a chair with no warning of his intentions. "My brethren, and also my sisteren," he preached in a sermonizing voice. "This is a world in which one thing leads to another. 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 limited to a flatness that extended as far as my eye could reach. But I know—because Columbus proved it by smashing the end of an egg—that could my eye but go on and on it would soon roll over the declining edge of a rotund world. And so I know, although my sweet sixteen years have not carried me to the depths of human experience, that the world of each of us is also a round world, in which events roll around and around, much like the careless kitten that flitteth in circles after its coy tail. And even, my brethren and sisteren, as the flitting 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 doubt that Sister Laura has spoken as truly as she has spoken beautifully when, 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 of the future refreshment room, so shall the consequences of that room's existence flow through the lives of our beloved sisters Margaret and Keren-happuch, and possibly of others unknown to us."

Gretta groaned, after the fashion of congregations assembled in the old-time camp meetings in the woods, which she had seen when she was very small. Ralph and Snigs were about to applaud, but Happie checked them with a stern face as Bob descended from his chair. "Hush, you never applaud a sermon!" she whispered. "The congregation will join me in the hymn."

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

Ralph and Snigs shouted. "You are the greatest crowd!" exclaimed Ralph admiringly. "You are always springing something new on us. I never heard this sermon racket before. If I ought to be a lawyer, you ought to preach, Bob. And where did you catch the hymn?"

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

Polly came in from the kitchen looking guilty. "Whoop-la jumped on the table and took the rest of the sardines," she said. "So I gave them, even half and half, to him and Dorée. I didn't like to tell you for fear Ralph would scold Whoop-la. But it was good he stole—took them, for it made Dorée stop growling at him. There was one tail, with a little piece above it, that didn't come out even after I divided, so I gave that to Whoop-la because he was company. I hope you won't say anything to him about it."

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

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

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

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

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

"Of course; we're in a different state! Isn't this New York and wasn't that Pennsylvania?" inquired Happie. "Nonsense, Gretta; we're just the same, 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 we can make it go and be useful it will be beautiful. The only thing I really dread about it is its failing."

It had been partly Gretta's plan, at least she had suggested and added to Margery and Happie's idea of a tea room, in which they were to try to make a little of the money they needed that winter. Kind Miss Keren-happuch Bradbury had promised to guarantee their rent and had found the room for the purpose. To-morrow she was going to show it to them. It did seem formidable, now that it was taking such definite shape, the plan of setting up the library and tea room which they had discussed in far-off Crestville. But the Mrs. Stewart from whom they would rent the room was to be above them, with her dancing school, to chaperon them, and perhaps their youth would make the little enterprise go 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 little toss of her bright red-brown hair which Gretta knew and loved. And she led the way into the tiny kitchen of the flat like an amazon at the