Dorothy Dale in the City Part 22

"Didn't you like it?" exclaimed Cologne's friend, who was a New York girl. "The critics just rave over it! Everyone must see it before anything else! But I'm hungry; aren't you?" she asked, including all three.

Ned slipped back, but Tavia grasped his arm.

"There's the most wonderful little tea-room just off Fifth Avenue," said Helen Roycroft, with perfect self-possession and calm, "and I should so love to have you enjoy a cup of tea with me."

Tavia murmured in Ned's ear: "Of course you're crazy for a cup of tea."

Ned looked helplessly at Dorothy, and calculated the money in his pockets. Four girls and all hungry! Helen Roycroft, meeting a new man, lost little time in impressing him with the wonderful importance of herself, and together she and Ned led the little party over Thirty-eighth Street to Fifth Avenue, while good-natured Cologne, with Dorothy and Tavia, followed behind.

The tea-room they entered, as Helen explained, was the most popular place in town for people of fashion, for artistic souls, and the moneyed, leisure cla.s.s.

"Everyone likes to come here," continued Helen, in a manner that plainly suggested that she loved to show off her city, "mostly because the place was once the stable of a member of the particular four hundred, and as this is as near as most of its patrons will ever come to the four hundred, they make it a rendezvous at this particular hour every afternoon."

The "stable" still retained its original architecture, beamed ceiling and quaint stalls, painted a modest gray and white, in which were placed little tables to accommodate six persons, lighted with shaded candles.

Cushioned benches were built to the sides of the stalls for seats; dainty waitresses, dressed also in demure gray and white, dispensed tea, and crackers and salads.

Hidden somewhere in the dim distance, musicians played soft, low music and the whole effect was so charming that even Ned held his breath and looked around him in wonder. This tea-room was something akin to a woman's club, where they could entertain their men friends with afternoon tea, in seclusion within the stalls.

Helen Roycroft mentioned the name of a well-known actress and, trying hard to keep her enthusiasm within bounds, pointed her out to the party.

The actress was seated alone in a stall, dreaming apparently, over a cup of tea. The waitress stood expectantly waiting for the young people to select their stall. When Tavia saw the actress, with whose picture they were all very familiar, she pinched Dorothy hard.

"Surely we never can have such luck as to sit at the same tea table with her," indicating the matronly actress.

"Should you like to?" asked the New York girl.

And forthwith they were led to the stall. The matronly-looking woman languidly raised blue, heavy-lashed eyes to the gushing young girls who invaded her domain, then put one more lump of sugar in her tea and drank it, and Tavia breathlessly watched!

She was an actress of note, one of the finest in the world, and her pictures had always shown her as tall and slender and beautifully young!

The woman Tavia gazed at had the face of the magazine pictures, but she was decidedly matronly; there was neither romance nor tragedy written on the smooth lines of her brow. She was so like, and yet so unlike her pictures, that Tavia fell to studying wherein lay the difference. It was rude, perhaps, but the lady in question, understood the eager brown eyes turned on her, and she smiled.

And that smile made everyone begin to talk.

It was quite like a family party. Ned, as the only man present, came in for the lion's share of attention and it pleased him much. Just a whim of the noted actress perhaps, made her join gaily in the tea-party, or mayhap, it was a privilege she rarely enjoyed, this love of genuine laughter, and bright, merry talk of the fresh young school girls. And it was a moment in the lives of the girls that was never forgotten.

The voices in the tea-room scarcely rose above a murmur; the music played not a note above a dreamy, floating ripple; and the essence of the freshly-made tea pervaded the air.

At times Tavia could see the actress of the magazines, and again she was just somebody's mother, tired out and drinking tea, like every mother Tavia had ever met. But the most thrilling moment of all was when she said good-bye and asked the girls to call. And best of all, she meant it-Dorothy knew that! There was no mistaking the sincerity of the voice, the kindly light of her eyes, nor the simple words of the invitation to call.

"I must hurry now," she had said, "I'm due at the theatre in another hour; but I want to see you again. I want you to tell me more of your impressions of this great city. I've really enjoyed this cup of tea more than you know, my dears," and she smiled at Tavia and Dorothy.

Tavia and Dorothy had really talked so much that Helen Roycroft had little chance to display her fine knowledge of city life. Cologne was well content to sit and listen.

When the actress was gone, Tavia said to Dorothy: "Must we really go? I could stay here drinking tea for a week."

"I never want to see a cup of tea again," declared Ned. "And say," he continued, "next time I'm dragged into a ladies' tea-room, I want an end seat! These stalls were never meant for fellows with knees where mine come!" And he painfully unwound himself from a cramped position.

"Ned does have so much trouble with those knees," explained Dorothy. "He never can have any but an end seat or box-seat at the theatre, because there is no room for his knees elsewhere. Poor boy! How uncomfortable will be your memory of this tea-room!"

"It will be the loveliest memory of my trip," Tavia declared. "We found something real and true!"

"I'd give the whole world to be able to stay over," said Cologne, plaintively.

"Just one more cup of tea!" cried Dorothy, "then we'll start for home in the yellow car."

"I'm glad it's dark," said Tavia, mischievously glancing at Ned, "the color combination is such wretched taste!"

"I'm sorry, Cologne," said Dorothy, "that you can't stay and come with us to-morrow to call on Miss Mingle."

Ned was cranking up the car, and the girls for a moment were just a confused ma.s.s of m.u.f.fs and feathers and kisses, then they jumped in, and drove home to the Riverside apartment.

CHAPTER XVI A STARTLING DISCOVERY

"How funny!" exclaimed Tavia, as she and Dorothy began to ascend the stairs in the deep, dark hallway of the apartment house that Aunt Winnie owned, and in which Miss Mingle and her sister lived. It was six stories high and had two apartments on each floor. A porter, with the unconcern of long habit, carelessly carried a rosy, cooing baby on his shoulder up the long flights of stairs, his destination being an apartment on the sixth floor. The mother of the child climbed up after him deep in thought, probably as to what to have for dinner that day.

"No, there are no elevators," explained Dorothy. "This house is one of the early apartments, built before the people knew the necessity for such luxuries as elevators."

"Luxuries!" said Tavia, stopping to catch her breath, "if elevators are luxuries in a six-story house, I'll vote for luxuries!"

"Just one more flight," said Dorothy, "it's the fifth floor, the left apartment, I believe," she consulted a card as they paused on a landing.

"I don't wonder now at Miss Mingle looking haggard," said Tavia, "if she must face this climb every time she comes back. Imagine doing this several times a day!"

"At least, one would get all the necessary exercising, and in wet, cold weather, could have both amus.e.m.e.nt and exercise, sliding down the banisters and climbing back," Dorothy said, determined to see the bright side of it.

Tavia slipped in a heap on a step and gasped: "Yes, indeed, I'll admit there may be advantages in the way of exercise."

"Courage," said Dorothy laughing, "we have only ten steps more!"

While Dorothy resolutely dragged Tavia up the last ten steps, Miss Mingle appeared in the hall.

"I heard your cheerful laughter," she said with a smile, "and I said to sister, prepare the pillows for the girls to fall on, after their awful climb. But I didn't say," she added, playfully, "feather pillows to fall on the girls!"

"We really enjoyed the climb," said Dorothy.

"It was lots of fun," agreed Tavia.

They entered a room which at first glance seemed a confused jumble of beautiful furniture, magazines, newspapers and books, grocer and butcher and gas bills, and a gentle-faced woman reclining languidly in an easy chair. Her smooth black hair fell gracefully over her ears; she had large gray eyes, whose sweet patience was the most marked characteristic of her face.

"My sister, Mrs. Bergham, has been quite ill," explained Miss Mingle, as she rushed about trying to clear off two chairs for the girls to sit on.

Every chair in the room seemed to be littered with what Dorothy thought was a unique collection of various sorts of jars, tea pots, and cups; and last week's laundry seemed to cover the radiators and tables. The room, however, for all the confusion, was quaint and artistic, and had odd little corners fixed up here and there.

"I'm so ill and I'm afraid I've been quite selfish, demanding so much of sister's time!" Mrs. Bergham said, extending a long white hand to the girls, and with her other removing a scarf from her shoulders, allowing it to drop to the floor. Miss Mingle immediately picked it up, folded it neatly, and laid it on the window seat.

"I've had rather a sad Christmas," she went on. "Sister, it's getting too warm in this room," and, removing a pillow from under her head, she permitted that also to drop to the floor. Miss Mingle stooped and picked it up.