but apparently the waitress took him quite seriously,
and some time in the course of the afternoon actually brought him what
he had asked for.

Ye Tea Shoppe was artistic. You could tell that by the fact that none of
the arts and crafts wares exposed for sale were in the least useful. And
it was too artistic, too far above the sordidness of commercialism, to
put any prices on the menu-cards. Consequently Father was worried about
his bill all the time he was encouraging his guests to forget their
uncomfortably decorative surroundings and talk like regular people. But
when he saw how skinny were the sandwiches and how reticent the cinnamon
toast he was cheered. He calculated that the whole bill couldn't, in
decency, be more than ninety cents for the six of them.

In the midst of his nicest flow of fancy about Mother's fear of mice,
the bill was laid decorously on its face beside him. Still talking, but
hesitating somewhat, he took a peep at the bill. It was for three
dollars and sixty cents.

He felt congealed, but he talked on. He slid a five-dollar bill from his
diminutive roll and gallantly paid up. His only comment when, in the
car, Mother secretly asked how much he had been overcharged, was the
reflection, "They certainly ought to make money out of those tea-rooms.
Their profit must be something like five hundred per cent. That strikes
me as a pretty good way to earn a living, old lady. You live in a nice
comfortable place in the country and don't have to do any work but slice
bread and stick in chicken or cream cheese, and make five hundred per
cent. Say--"

CHAPTER IV

He didn't say it. But Father had been knocked breathless by an idea. He
was silent all the way home. He made figures on the last leaf of his
little pocket account-book. He manoeuvered to get Mother alone, and
exultantly shot his idea at her.

They were beginning to get old; the city was almost too much for them.
They would pick out some pretty, rustic spot and invest their savings in
a tea-room. At five-hundred per cent. they would make enough during
three months of summer to keep them the rest of the year. If they were
located on Cape Cod, perhaps they could spend the winter with the
Tubbses. They would have a garden; they would keep chickens, dogs,
pussies, yes, a cow; they would buy land, acre by acre; they would have
a farm to sustain them when they were too old for work; maybe they would
open a whole chain of tea-rooms and ride a