“Why, you can.  She is here in Boston now, buying for the summer.  I’ll phone her and we three will lunch together tomorrow.  Don’t say you won’t; you’ve just got to.”

So Mary, rather reluctantly, consented to make one of the luncheon party.  Afterward she was glad that she did, for Miss Esther Hemingway—­this was the cousin’s name—­was an interesting person.  She told Mary all about her tea-room and gift shop, how she started in business, the mistakes she made at first, and the lessons she had learned from experience.  Because Barbara had asked her to do so she brought with her photographs of the establishment, its attractive and quaint exterior and its equally delightful interior.

“The whole secret,” she said, “is in keeping everything in good taste and simple.  Choose the right location, fit up your rooms in taste and cheerfully, serve the best you can find, and sell the unusual and the attractive things that other people do not have, or at least are not likely to have.  Then charge adequate prices.”

“Adequate being spelled A double D,” observed Barbara significantly.

Mary parted from Miss Hemingway with a new idea in her head, an idea that sometime or other she meant to put into practice.

On Thursday afternoon she called upon Mr. Green.  That gentleman, having had his opportunity to think, was ready with a proposition.  Briefly it was this:  He had personally seen the principal creditors of Hamilton and Company—­they were all Boston business houses—­and he and they had agreed to make the following offer:  Hamilton and Company’s credit upon debts already owed was to be extended six months.  Mary was to go home, endeavor to collect what money she could, and with it buy for cash whatever goods were needed for the summer season.  If that season was a success and the business promised well for the future, then arrangements could be made for future buying and for paying the old debt a little at a time.

“At any rate,” concluded Mr. Green, “this postpones the mortgaging or selling for a time at least, and you always have it to fall back on if you can’t make your new undertaking pay.  I believe you can.  I advise you to accept.  Your other creditors feel the same way.”

He did not add, as he might have done, that the opinion of those other creditors had been influenced almost entirely by his own and that in one or two instances he had been obliged practically to underwrite the payment of Hamilton and Company’s indebtedness before gaining consent.  He had talked with Mr. Howe, who in turn had called his daughter into consultation, and Barbara’s enthusiastic praise of her friend had strengthened the favorable impression which the girl had already made upon both gentlemen.  “Do you know, I believe she may win out,” observed Mr. Howe.

“I am inclined to think she will,” concurred Green.

“Of course she will!” declared Barbara hotly.  “No one who ever knew her would be silly enough to think she wouldn’t.”