r was the fact that their project put
upon Mother so great a burden in the way of preparations. At first he
took it for granted that only women could know about tea and tea-cups,
decorations and paper napkins and art and the disposal of garbage. He
determined to learn. By dint of much deep ratiocination while riding in
the Elevated between flat and store he evolved the new idea--cheapness.

It was nonsense, he decided, to have egg-shell china and to charge
fifteen cents for tea. Why not have neat, inexpensive china, good but
not exorbitant tea, and charge only five or ten cents, as did the
numerous luncheon-places he knew? Mother eagerly agreed.

Then the man of ideas began to turn his brain to saving Mother the
trouble of selecting the tea-room equipment. It was not an easy problem
for him. This gallant traveler, who wore his cap so cockily and paid a
three-dollar-and-sixty-cent check so nonchalantly when he was traveling,
was really an underpaid clerk.

He began by informing himself on all the technicalities of tea-rooms. He
lunched at tea-rooms. He prowled in front of tea-rooms. He dreamed about
tea-rooms. He became a dabster at tucking paper napkins into his neat
little waistcoat without tearing them. He got acquainted with the
waitress at the Nickleby Tavern, which was not a tavern, though it was
consciously, painstakingly, seriously quaint; and he cautiously made
inquiry of her regarding tea and china. During his lunch-hours he
frequented auction sales on Sixth Avenue, and became so sophisticated in
the matter of second-hand goods that the youngest clerk at Pilkings &
Son's, a child of forty who was about to be married, respectfully asked
Father about furnishing a flat. He rampaged through department stores
without buying a thing, till store detectives secretly followed him. He
read the bargain-sale advertisements in his morning paper before he even
looked at the war-news head-lines.

Father was no fool, but he had been known to prefer kindliness to
convenience. When he could get things for the same price he liked to buy
them from small struggling dealers rather than from large and efficient
ones--thereby, in his innocent way, helping to perpetuate the old
system of weak, unskilled, casual, chaotically competitive businesses.
This kindliness moved him when, during his search for information about
tea-room accessories, he encountered a feeble but pretentious
racket-store which a young Hungarian had established o