Times were none too prosperous with the Martha Washington Beauty Shop, upon the sixth floor of a Broadway building. In the hairdressing parlor half the long rows of chairs reached out empty arms except during the rush hours of afternoon; even then impatient patrons merely sprinkled the room with little oases of activity while the girls busied themselves with tidying shelves already immaculate, and prinking before the mirrors whenever they dared. An air of uncertainty pervaded the place, swept in by the rumor that the shop was going to cut down its force of operators. No one knew, of course, the exact truth of the matter, but that made it all the worse.
"'For one shall be taken and the other left,'" a blonde girl quoted into a dismal little group at the window that looked out over the city. "Has any one heard any more about it?"
"Rumley has been checking up the appointment lists, all morning," a short, fat girl with henna-auburn hair piled high on her head reported cheerfully. "Of course, you could never get a word out of her--but I know what she is up to. The girls that have the most steady patrons will stay, of course. I'm certainly glad I kidded that old widow into thinking she's puhfectly stunning with her hair hennaed. She don't trust anybody but me to touch it up. And she's good for a scalp and facial and manicure every week of her life, besides getting her hair dressed every Saturday anyway, and sometimes oftener when she's going out. And she always has a marcelle after a shampoo. She'd quit coming if I left--she told me so last week. She thinks I'm there on massages. And then I've got sevrul others that ask for me regular as they come in. You know that big, fat--"
"Miss Rose forward," the foreman's crisp, businesslike voice interrupted.
Miss Rose began nervously pulling her corn-colored hair into the latest plastered effect on her temples. "This isn't any appointment. I wonder if somebody asked for me, or if Rumley--"
"Well, kid her along, whoever she is, and talk a lot about her good points. You never can tell when some old girl is going to pull a lot of patronage your way," the fat girl advised practically. "Tell 'em your name and suggest that they call for you next time. You've got to get wise to the trick of holding what you get. Beat it, kiddo--being slow won't help you none with Rumley, and she's got the axe, remember."
Thus adjured, Miss Rose beat it, arriving rather breathlessly at her chair, which was occupied by a rather sprightly looking woman with pretty hands and a square jaw and hair just beginning to gray over the temples. She had her hat off and was regarding herself seriously in the mirror, wondering whether she should touch up the gray, as some of her intimate friends advised, or let it alone as her brother Fred insisted.
Miss Rose was too busy counting customers to notice who was in her chair until she had come close.
"Why, hello, Kate," she said then. "I was just wondering what had become of you."
"Oh, I've been so busy, Marion. I just had to steal the time today to come. You weren't out to my reading last night, and I was afraid you might not be well. Do you think that I ought to touch up my hair, Marion? Of course, I don't mind it turning, so much--but you know appearance counts everything with an audience until one begins to speak. Fred says to leave it alone--"
"Well, you do it." Miss Rose leaned over the chair with a handful of hairpins to place in the little box on the dressing shelf, and spoke confidentially in the ear of her patron. "It's not my business to knock the trade, Kate--but honestly, that sign up there, that says 'Hair Dyed at Your Own Risk' ought to say, 'to your own sorrow.' If you start, you've got to keep it up or it looks simply frightful. And if you keep it up it just ruins your hair. You have such nice hair, Kate!" She picked up a sterilized brush and began stroking Kate's hair soothingly. It was not such nice hair. It was very ordinary hair of a somewhat nondescript color; but Kate was her dearest friend, and praise is a part of the profession. "What do you want?--a scalp, shampoo, or just dressed, or a curl, or what?"
"What," Kate retorted pertly. "Just fuss around while I talk to you, Marion. I--"
"Rumley won't stand for fussing. I've got to do something she can recognize across the room. How about a scalp? You can talk while I massage, and then I'll show you a perfectly stunning way to do your hair--it's new, and awfully good for your type of face. How do you like mine today?"
"Why, I like it tremendously!" Kate gave her an appraising glance in the mirror. "It's something new, isn't it? Use plenty of tonic, won't you, Marion? They charge awful prices here--but their tonic has done my hair so much good! Listen, could you get off early today? I simply must talk to you. A perfectly tremendous opportunity has literally fallen our way, and I want you to benefit by it also. A friend of Douglas'--of Professor Harrison's, I should say--called our attention to it. This friend wants to go in on it, but he can't leave his business; so the idea is to have just Fred and the professor--and you, if you'll go--and me to go and attend to the assessments. All the other names will be dummy names--well, silent partners is a better word--and we can control a tremendously valuable tract that way. How about a henna rinse, Marion? Would it be worth while?"
"Why, a henna rinse would brighten your hair, Kate--and lots of nice women have them. But you'll have to have a shampoo, you know. The henna rinse is used with a shampoo. I believe I'd have one if I were you, Kate. You never could tell it in the world. And it's good for the hair, too. It--"
"Fred is so disagreeable about such things. But if it couldn't be told--" Kate began to doubt again. "Does it cost extra?"
"Fifty cents--but it does brighten the hair. It brings out the natural color--there is an auburn tint--"
"But I really meant to have a manicure today. And we can't talk in the manicure parlor--those tables are crowded together so! I've a tremendous lot to tell you, too. Which would you have, Marion?"
Miss Rose dutifully considered the matter while she continued the scalp massage. Before they had decided definitely upon the extravagance of a henna rinse, which was only a timid sort of experiment and at best a mere compromise art and nature, Marion had applied the tonic. It seemed a shame to waste that now with a shampoo, and she did not dare to go for another dish of the tonic; so Kate sighed and consoled herself with a dollar saved, and went without the manicure also.
Rather incoherently she returned to her subject, but she did not succeed in giving Miss Rose anything more than a confused idea of a trip somewhere that would really be an outing, and a tremendous opportunity to make thousands of dollars with very little effort. This sounded alluring. Marion mentally cancelled a date with a party going to Venice that evening, and agreed to meet Kate at six o'clock, and hear more about it.
In the candy shop where they ate, her mind was even more receptive to tremendous opportunities for acquiring comparative wealth with practically no initial expense and no effort whatever. Not being subjected to the distraction of a beauty parlor, Kate forgot to use her carefully modulated, elocutionary voice, and buzzed with details.
"It's away up in the northern part of the State somewhere, in the mountains. You know timber land is going to be tremendously valuable--it is now, in fact. And this tract of beautiful big trees can be gotten and flumed--or something--down to a railroad that taps the country. It's in Forest Reserve, you see, and can't be bought by the lumber companies. I had the professor explain it all to me again, after I left the Martha, so I could tell you.
"A few of us can club together and take mining claims on the land--twenty acres apiece. All we have to do is a hundred dollars' worth of work--just digging holes around on it, or something--every year till five hundred dollars' worth is done. Then we can get our deed--or whatever it is--and sell the timber."
"Well, what do you know about that!" Marion exclaimed ecstatically, leaning forward across the little table with her hands clasped. Nature had given her a much nicer voice than Kate's, and the trite phrase acquired a pretty distinctiveness just from the way she said it. "But--would you have to stay five years, Kate?" she added dubiously.
"No, that's the beauty of it, you can do all the five hundred dollars' worth in one year, Marion."
"Five hundred dollars' worth of digging holes in the ground!" Marion gasped, giggling a little. "Good night!"
"Now please wait until you hear the rest of it!" Kate's tone sharpened a little with impatience. She moved a petulant elbow while a tired waitress placed two glasses of water and a tiny plate of white and brown bread upon the table. The minute the girl's back was turned upon them she cast a cautious eye around the clattering throng and leaned forward.
"Four men--men with a little capital--are going into it, and pay Fred and the professor for doing their assessment work. Four five-hundreds will make two thousand dollars that we'll get out of them, just for looking after their interests. And we'll have our twenty acres apiece of timber--and you've no idea what a tremendous lot of money that will bring, considering the investment. Fred's worked so hard lately that he's all run down and looks miserable. The doctor told him the mountains would do him a world of good. And the professor wants to do something definite and practical--they are filling up the college with student-teachers, willing to teach some certain subject for the instruction they'll get in some other--and they're talking about cutting the professor's salary. He says he will not endure another cut--he simply cannot, and--"
"And support an elocutionist?"
"Now, hush! It isn't--"
"Do I draw any salary as chaperone, Kate?"
"Now, if you don't stop, I'll not tell you another thing!" Kate took a sip of water to help hide a little confusion, clutching mentally at the practical details of the scheme. "Where was I?"
"Cutting Doug's salary. Is it up on a mountain, or up in the State, that you said the place was? I'd like being on a mountain, I believe--did you ever see such hot nights as we're having?"
"It's up both," Kate stated briefly. "You'd love it, Marion. There's a log house, and right beside it is a trout stream. And it's only six miles from the railroad, and good road up past the place. A man who has been up there told Doug--the professor. Tourists just flock in there. And right up on top of the mountain, within walking distance of our claims, is a lake, Marion! And great trout in it, that long!--you can see them swimming all around in schools, the water is so clear. And there is no inlet or outlet, and no bottom. The water is just as clear and as blue as the sky, the man told the professor. It's so clear that they actually call it Crystal Lake!"
"Well, what do you know about that!" breathlessly murmured Marion in her crooning voice. "A lake like that on top of a mountain--in weather like this, doesn't it sound like heaven?" She began to pick the pineapple out of her fruit salad, dabbing each morsel in the tiny mound of whipped cream.
"We'd need some outing clothes, of course. I've been thinking that a couple of plain khaki suits--you know--and these leggings that lace down the side, would be all we'd really need. I wish you'd go out home with me instead of going to a show. Fred will be home, and he can explain the details of this thing better than I can. If it were a difficult stanza of Browning, now--but I haven't much talent for business. And seriously, Marion, you must know all about this before you really say yes or no. And it's time you had some real object in life--time you settled down to regard your life seriously. I love you just the way you are, dear, but for your own sake you must learn to think for yourself and not act so much upon impulse. I couldn't bear to go off without you, and stay a whole year, maybe--but if you should go, not knowing just what it was going to be like, and then be disappointed--you see, dear, you might come to blaming poor Kate."
"Why, I wouldn't do anything of the kind! Even if it did turn out to be something I didn't care for, it would be so much better than staying here with you gone, that I don't see how I could mind very much. You know, Kate, I'm just crazy about the country. I'd like to sleep right outside! And I think a log cabin is the dearest way to live--don't you? And we'd hike, wouldn't we?--up to the lake and all around. I've got enough money to buy a gun, and if there's any hunting around there, we'll hunt! Kate, down in my heart I'm sick of massaging old ladies' double chins and kidding them into thinking they look young! And anyway," she added straightforwardly, "I don't suppose I'll be at the Martha much longer. They're going to let a lot of us girls out, and I'm almost sure to be one of them. There's enough of the older girls to do all the work there is now, till the tourist season begins again in the fall. I couldn't get in anywhere else, this time of the year, so I'd just about have to go out to one of the beaches and get a little tent house or something with some of the girls, and fool around until something opened up in the fall. And even if you live in your bathing suit all day, Kate, you just can't get by without spending a little money."
"Well, of course, you'd stay with me if I were here. I wouldn't hear to anything else. And even--why don't you come on out anyway, till we get ready to start? We could plan so much better. And don't you think, Marion, it would be much better for you if you didn't wait for the Martha to let you go but gave them notice instead?"
"Quit before I'm invited to leave? I believe I'd better do that, Kate. It won't be half bad to spring it on the girls that I'm going up in the mountains for the summer. I'll talk about that lake till--say, I'm just wild to start. How soon do you think it will be? Fred will have to teach me how to trout-fish--or whatever you call it. Only think of stepping out of our log cabin and catching trout, just any time you want to! And, Kate, I really am going to buy a gun. Down on Spring, in that sporting-goods house--you know, the one on the corner--they have got the cutest rifles! And by the way, they had some of the best looking outing suits in the window the other day. I'm going in there when I come down in the morning."
"Let Fred advise you about the rifle before you buy. Fred's tremendously clever about nature stuff, Marion. He'll know just what you want. I think a gun will maybe be necessary. You know there are bear--"
"Oh, good night!" cried Marion. But in the next breath she added, "I wonder if there are any nice hunters after the bears!"
