f meeting Mr.
Emerson when very young--when SHE was young, she meant; she always tells
every Freshman class that, you know--and one of the Freshies spoke up
and asked if she ever met him afterwards when he was older. They said
her face was a picture; I wish I might have seen it. But do tell me more
about that wonderful store of yours. I am sure it will be a darling,
because anything you have anything to do with is sure to be. Are you
going to have a tea-room?"

Mary shook her head. "No," she said, laughing. "I think not. There's too
much competition."

"Oh, but you ought to have one. Not of the ordinary kind, you know,
but the--the other kind, the unusual kind. Why, I have a cousin--a
second--no, third cousin, a relative of Daddy's, she is--who hadn't much
money and whose health wasn't good and the doctor sent her to live in
the country. Live there all the time! Only fancy! Oh, I forgot you were
going to do the same thing. Do forgive me! I'm so sorry! WHAT a perfect
gump I am! Oh, dear me! There I go again! And I know you abhor slang,
Mrs. Wyeth."

"Tell me more about your cousin, Barbara," put in Mary, before the
shocked Mrs. Wyeth could reply.

"Oh, she went to the country and took an old house, the funniest old
thing you ever saw. And she put up the quaintest little sign! And opened
a tea-room and gift shop. I don't know why they call them 'gift shops.'
They certainly don't give away anything. Far, far from that, my dear!
Daddy calls this one of Esther's 'The Robbers' Roost' because he says
she charges forty cents for a gill of tea and two slices of toast cut
in eight pieces. But I tell him he doesn't pay for the tea and toast
alone--it is the atmosphere of the place. He says if he had to pay for
all his atmosphere at that rate he would be asphyxiated in a few months.
But he admires Esther very much. She makes heaps and heaps of money."

"Then her tea-room and gift shop is a success?"

"A success! Oh, my dear! It's a scream of a success! Almost any day in
summer there are at least a dozen motor cars outside the door. Everybody
goes there; it's the proper thing to do. I know all this because it
isn't very far from our summer home in Clayton--in the mountains, you
know."

"So she made a success," mused Mary. "Were there other tea-rooms about?"

"Oh, dozens! But they're not original; hers is. They haven't the--the
something--you know what I mean, Esther has the style, the knack, the--I
can't say it, but you kn