Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 24).djvu/534



HE Cosy Corner Tea-Rooms were to be opened in Bond Street on the 24th June, two days before the coronation of the King. Eva and Muriel Stanley, who had put all their little capital and their great hopes into the venture, were filled with tremors as the day drew near. Suppose the rooms were not a success after all?

And yet the girls had done everything they knew to command success. They had taken, at an immense rent, three large and pretty rooms at the corner of Maddox Street, and Eva, who was artistic, had superintended the decoration and furnishing. She had hung the walls with a green trellis-work paper put on in panels on a white background, and having found in the pattern-book of Messrs. Spoylet and Sneerum an ivy-leaf frieze, she had had the original idea of cutting the garland out and applying it as a border round the panelling. The result was entirely happy. Then she had laid down a dark green velvet carpet with just a little sprig of lighter green thrown on it here and there, and the curtains were of pale green cashmere edged with broad bands of chintz over which roses of every shade of deep crimson and blushing pink bloomed almost as naturally as in an English garden. They only wanted fragrance to complete the illusion, and, after all, the fragrance was supplied by the bouquets of real roses which on the morning of the 24th stood on every one of the thirty little tables, ten in each room.

The roses had all been sent up from Crossways, the girls' home in Sussex, where Mumsie and the kiddies had rifled the garden of every single blossom in order to help in the success of the C.C.T.

For these tea-rooms were naturally a very great venture, and a great deal depended for the Stanley girls on their success. Each had put her whole fortune of a thousand pounds into the scheme, and while gentle Mrs. Stanley approved of it, as she would have approved of anything which her energetic