Mary Louise at Dorfield/Chapter 6

It was well named! If higgledy-piggledy meant topsy-turvy I am sure there was no place on the globe so suited to that name. Our young would-be shopkeepers were busily engaged trying to get order out of chaos when the Wright family came bursting in on them.

“Heavens, what a mess!” cried Gertrude.

“Yes, but we are not ready for callers,” said Elizabeth rudely. It was a great irritation to her that her family should have turned up at that particular moment. Why couldn’t they let her alone? After everything should be in order, she hoped they would come to see how clever their arrangements were, but just now it was too much to have them come poking in her place of business.

“We are very glad to have callers at any time,” declared Josie, who had been literally standing on her head in a packing box from which she had been unearthing the last of the encyclopedias. The astute Josie had no idea of going into business with the ill will of anyone it was possible to avoid. She well understood how the Wrights looked upon this seemingly mad venture of Elizabeth’s and she was anxious to do all she could to make things easier for her youthful partner.

“Our things have just come and we are trying to get them placed. Wouldn’t you like me to show you how nicely we are to be fixed up?” she asked Mrs. Wright, in whose energetic countenance she saw some hope of interest.

“Why, yes, I should,” answered that lady, looking at Josie earnestly. She rather liked what she saw in Josie O’Gorman’s countenance and certainly she could not help being interested in the girls’ plans.

They had rented a long narrow room that covered the entire second floor of the shabby old building which was squeezed in between two sky-scrapers so tightly that it seemed to be gasping for breath. It had been spared destruction and improvement because of some hitch in the title and nobody had been willing to put money in a piece of property with an unfortunate name for getting its owner into trouble. The consequence was that tenants were difficult to obtain and impossible to hold. Even real estate agents did not like to handle it. It was now in the hands of Mr. Markle and it was from him that Josie and Elizabeth had rented it. On the ground floor was a cleaning and dyeing establishment and the third floor was cut up into several rooms in which various small industries were carried on.

“It isn’t exactly what we wanted, but it was cheap and we can make it attractive, I believe,” Josie explained. “Thank goodness it has a fire place, not that that makes much difference right now but when next winter comes we will be glad of its cheeriness. We are planning to branch out in so many directions and this huge room will give us plenty of space in which to expand. In front we are to have our reception room and shop where we will display our wares. In the back I am to live and have kitchen, bedroom and bath. The middle part is to be our store room.”

“Are you to draw chalk marks to show which is which?” asked Mr. Wright, who was becoming more and more interested in her eager little hostess.

“I am to have partitions made in the back, not to go all the way to the ceiling but just high enough to give me some privacy, and we are to have a huge portiere to divide the front shop from the store room and a smaller one cutting off our information bureau. The carpenters are going to work to-day on our partitions and the plumbers also are to install our bath tub, kitchen sink, gas stove, etc. My furniture is here and I intend to set up housekeeping immediately.”

“Not in all this confusion?”

“But all this confusion will be worse confounded in a few hours. Mary Louise is coming in a few minutes and is bringing her own housemaid to help clean up and Danny Dexter is coming later in the afternoon with some of his friends to help.”

Mrs. Wright began to feel sorry that she had not put off their visit until afternoon. Her ruling passion of having her daughters receive attention from young men was uppermost. She had not thought of this absurd shop as a place where desirable young men might come. At any rate, she intended to wait until Mary Louise should arrive and set the matter at rest in regard to all of her daughters being invited to the wedding.

While Mrs. Wright’s ruling passion was the desire to have her daughters popular and married, another passion was almost as strong in her bosom and that was, cleaning up. What a field here presented itself! She was sure she could take hold of the disorder and get things cleaned and into place much better than could Mary Louise’s maid. This Josie O’Gorman might be able to scrub and clean, but she was pretty sure her daughter Elizabeth could not; at least she had never seen her do more than dust the parlor at home.

“Here, child, give me that hammer! You don’t know how to open a box,” she said to Elizabeth, who was drawing nails from the top of a huge box of books.

“But I can,” insisted Elizabeth; “at least I can learn.”

“Pooh! Just let me do it.” She grasped the hammer, but Elizabeth refused to release her hold.

“I am going to open the box,” she announced firmly and proceeded to carry out the statement in spite of her mother’s protests.

Amazement was depicted on the countenance of Mrs. Wright. Mary Louise arrived just then, followed by a maid carrying a great basket of provisions.

“Luncheon!” said Mary Louise. “The carpenters and plumbers are to have lunch with us.”

“What fun!” exclaimed Josie and Elizabeth.

“I am sorry I can’t ask all of you to join us,” said Mary Louise, graciously taking in Mrs. Wright and the four daughters in her polite smile, “but I did not count noses, or rather mouths, for so many, and carpenters and plumbers do eat so much.”

“I think Elizabeth had better come on home with me,” said her mother a little stiffly. She did not want to do anything to anger Mary Louise, but she did think she was coming it a little strong to be asking one of her daughters to sit down and eat with the carpenters and plumbers. No doubt they were very worthy persons but hardly fit associates for such aristocrats as the Wrights.

“Indeed I am not coming home,” spoke up Elizabeth quickly. “I have a great deal to do this afternoon and you people at home might as well get used to the idea that I am going to be away from home every day and all day.”

“By the way, my dear,” said her mother suavely, “I have rented the lake cottage for June, July and August, so you shall have to forego the pleasures of shop keeping for those months at least, as we are to shut the town house.”

“Oh, I’ll just stay with Josie then,” said Elizabeth. “I have no idea of giving up my business every summer.”

Mrs. Wright looked shocked. This was a new thing for a member of her family not to be accepting the arrangements she made for them. She would have to take this refractory Elizabeth in hand. In the meantime, she decided not to let her daughter remain to lunch with carpenters and plumbers unchaperoned. Besides, she did so want to get her finger in the pie of straightening up the debris incident to unpacking. She was sure Mary Louise’s maid knew nothing at all about how to go to work to get the place cleaned up.

“Gertrude, you and Annabel and Margaret and Pauline can go on home. I am going to stay and help these girls get this place in order. I can get it done in no time and then I’ll bring Elizabeth home with me.”

She began by taking off her hat and jacket and tying around her ample waist an old curtain that had been used in packing some of Josie’s treasures.

Elizabeth was aghast for a moment. It looked as though her mother could not even let her run the little shop without her assistance. Where would be her highly prized independence if Mrs. Wright was to superintend everything and even do the cleaning? Why couldn’t she let her alone? She looked appealingly at her sisters, who were reluctantly taking their departure. She caught Margaret’s eye. Margaret was the sister who was a little like Elizabeth in that she occasionally rebelled, at least in spirit, against the state of inertia in which the very managing mother held her entire family. Margaret was quick of tongue too and not in the least in awe of her efficient parent.

“Now, Mother!” she cried, coming to Elizabeth’s assistance. “I should think you could see with half an eye that you are not in the least needed here. For pity’s sake, let Elizabeth have half a chance and stop butting in.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Wright severely.

“I mean the girls were getting on perfectly well here without your assistance and you have a sempstress at home and the library was in a sad state when we left and company is coming to supper—and—”

“Heavens! I forgot all about that! But this seems more important. I—”

“Oh, come along, Mother!” insisted Margaret.

Mary Louise and Josie had retired to the back of the long room. They were intensely sorry for Elizabeth, but felt that it was something they could not very well interfere with. If her mother chose to come down to the shop to make a nuisance of herself, it could not be helped. After all she was Elizabeth’s mother and must be treated with respect. It was with a feeling of intense relief that they saw her untie the old curtain and don her hat and coat.

“I cannot stay to-day,” she said as the two girls came towards her. “I am extremely sorry, as I am sure I could have straightened you out in short order. You will never manage to get all of this trash cleared away, I am sure, unless you, Miss O’Gorman, are much more capable than Elizabeth.”

“I am not a bit more, but I am sure we can do it,” declared Josie with a twinkle in her eye.

“I am much interested in your wedding,” went on Mrs. Wright, riveting her attention on Mary Louise. “In fact I am going to put off our going to the lake for a few days so that we will be able to attend. I am deeply disappointed not to be making Elizabeth’s bridesmaid’s dress myself, but since it was decided Mrs. Barlow was to make them all, of course, I had to give way to her. At least, I can have the satisfaction of making dresses for my other girls.”

“Oh—yes—of course!” Mary Louise managed to say. “I’ll be so glad to have you stay over.”

With a triumphant swoop Mrs. Wright gathered together her four daughters and ushered them out of the shop and down the dusty stairs. She was so delighted that her superior management had drawn from Mary Louise an invitation for her entire family to the highly desirable wedding reception that she forgot all about making a point about taking Elizabeth home for luncheon.

“I hate to leave her,” she said, after Pauline reminded her of her remissness, “but one can’t manage everything at once.”

“No?” questioned Margaret with a rising inflection that might have been taken for impertinence by her mother had she not been taken up with gazing at an automobile full of young men stopping in front of the ramshackle building where the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop was coming into being.

“How do you do, Mr. Dexter?” she said graciously, as the young man who was driving the car raised his hat.

“I believe my soul they are going up to the shop,” she said with some irritation to her daughters. “And what are those things they are carrying? Why, it is plumbing! There is a bath tub and pipes right in the car with them. And look! The car behind them, also full of young men, is bringing a gas stove.”

“And there is Billy McGraw driving a lumber wagon!” exclaimed Gertrude.

Billy McGraw was known as the richest young man in Dorfield, the richest and the best dressed, and to see him in khaki trousers, evidently left over from his recent army experience, and olive drab sweater on top of a load of lumber was too much for the curiosity of the Wrights.

“What can it mean?” wondered Annabel.

“It means that those are the carpenters and plumbers who are to lunch at the shop,” laughed Margaret. “Now aren’t you glad you didn’t drag Elizabeth away by the hairs of her head?”

“Well, well!” was all Mrs. Wright could answer, but when she got her breath after the surprise of finding out who the carpenters and plumbers were, she began with her usual ease to congratulate herself on her superior management.

“Sometimes we are wise just to leave things in the hands of Providence,” she said.

“Yes, but I am afraid Provy would never have wormed out of Mary Louise an invitation to her wedding for the entire Wright family,” said Margaret, pertly. “Some things we must attend to ourselves.”