“Cave-man stuff,” Billy said to Dick, pointing a thumb over his shoulder toward the interior of the Broadway moving-picture palace at the exit of which they had just met accidentally. “It always goes big, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Dick agreed thoughtfully, “in the movies anyhow.”

“Caroline says that the modern woman has her response to that kind of thing refined all out of her.” Billy intended his tone to be entirely jocular, but there was a note of anxiety in it that was not lost on his friend.

Dick paused under the shelter of a lurid poster—displaying a fierce gentleman in crude blue, showing all his teeth, and in the act of strangling an early Victorian ingenue with a dimple,—and lit a cigarette with his first match.

“Caroline may have,” he said, puffing to keep his light against the breeze, “but I doubt it.”

“Rough stuff doesn’t seem to appeal to her,” Billy said, quite humorously this time.

“She’s healthy,” Dick mused, “rides horseback, plays tennis and all that. Wouldn’t she have liked the guy that swung himself on the roof between the two poles?” He indicated again the direction of the theater from which they had just emerged.

“She would have liked him,” Billy said gloomily, “but the show would have started her arguing about this whole moving-picture proposition,—its crudity, and its tremendous sacrifice of artistic values, and so on and so on.”

“Sure, she’s a highbrow. Highbrows always cerebrate about the movies in one way or another. Nancy doesn’t get it at just that angle, of course. She hasn’t got Caroline’s intellectual appetite. She’s not interested in the movies because she hasn’t got a moving-picture house of her own. The world is not Nancy’s oyster—it’s her lump of putty.”

“I don’t know which is the worst,” Billy said. “Caroline won’t listen to anything you say to her,—but then neither will Nancy.”

“Nothing but—” Billy groaned.

“As for this cave-man business—theoretically, they ought to react to it,—both of them. They’re both normal, well-balanced young ladies.”

“They’re both runnin’ pretty hard to keep in the same place, just at present.”

“Nancy isn’t doing that—not by a long shot,” Dick said.

“She’s not keeping in the same place certainly,” Billy agreed. “Caroline is all eaten up by this economic independence idea.”

“It’s a good idea,” Dick admitted; “economic conditions are changing. No reason at all that a woman shouldn’t prove herself willing to cope with them, as long as she gets things in the order of their importance. Earning her living isn’t better than the Mother-Home-and-Heaven job. It’s a way out, if she gets left, or gets stung.”

“I’m not engaged to Nancy,” Dick said a trifle stiffly.

“Well, you ought to be,” Billy said.

Dick stiffened. He was not used to speaking of his relations with Nancy to any one—even to Billy, who was the closest friend he had. They walked up Broadway in silence for a while, toward the cross-street which housed the university club which was their common objective.

“I know I ought to be,” Dick said, just as Billy was formulating an apology for his presumption, “or I ought to marry her out of hand. This watchful waiting’s entirely the wrong idea.”

“Why do we do it then?” Billy inquired pathetically.

“I wanted Nancy to sow her economic wild oats. I guess you felt the same way about Caroline.”

“Well, they’ve sowed ’em, haven’t they?”

“There’s a pretty keen edge on Caroline this summer.”

“I’m afraid Nancy’s in pretty deep,” Dick said. “The money end of it worries me as much as anything.”

“I wouldn’t let that worry me.”

“She won’t take any of mine, you know.”

“I know she won’t. See here, Dick, I wouldn’t worry about Nancy’s finances. She’ll come out all right about money.”

“What makes you think so?”

“I know so. We’ve got lots of things in the world to worry about, things that are scheduled to go wrong unless we’re mighty delicate in the way we handle ’em. Let’s worry about them, and leave Nancy’s financial problems to take care of themselves.”

“Well, I am,” Billy said, “I’m her legal adviser, and with all due respect to your taste in girls, it’s a very difficult position to occupy. What with the things she won’t listen to and the things she won’t learn, and the things she actually knows more about than I do—”

The indulgent smile of the true lover lit Dick’s face, as if Billy had waxed profoundly eulogistic. Unconsciously, Billy’s own tenderness took fire at the flame.

“Why don’t we run away with ’em?” he said, breathing heavily.

Dick stopped in a convenient doorway to light his third cigarette, end on.

“It’s the answer to you and Caroline,” he said.

“Why not to you and Nancy?”

“It may be,” Dick said, “I dunno. I’ve reached an impasse. Still there is a great deal in your proposition.”

“I’ll think it over,” Dick added, as he gave up his hat and stick, “and let you know what decision I come to.”

In another five minutes they were deep in a game of Kelly-pool from which Dick emerged triumphantly richer by the sum of a dollar and ninety cents, and Billy the poorer by the loss of a quarter.

There is a town in Connecticut, within a reasonable motoring distance from New York that has been called the Gretna Green of America. Here well-informed young couples are able to expedite the business of matrimony with a phenomenal neatness and despatch. Licenses can be procured by special dispensation, and the nuptial knot tied as solemnly and solidly as if a premeditated train of bridesmaids and flower girls and loving relatives had been rehearsed for days in advance.

On the back seat of the big car he expected Billy and Caroline to be going through much the same sort of scene.

“We’ve come to a show-down now, Caroline,—either I sit in this game, or get out.” He could imagine Billy bringing Caroline bluntly to terms with comparatively little effort. That was what she needed—Caroline—a strong hand. Billy’s problem was simple. Caroline had already signified her preference for him. She wore his ring. Billy had only to pick her up, kicking and screaming if need be, and bear her to the altar. She would marry him if he insisted. That was clear to the most superficial of observers,—but Nancy was different.

Dick looked over his shoulder at the two in the back seat, and noted Caroline’s pallor, and the fact that she was allowing a listless hand to linger in Billy’s; but when he turned back to Nancy he discovered no such encouraging symptoms. She was sitting lightly relaxed at his side, but there was nothing even negatively responsive in her attitude. Her color was high; her breath coming evenly from between her slightly parted lips. She looked like a child oblivious to everything but some innocent daydream.

“You look as if you were dreaming of candy and kisses, Nancy,—are you?” he asked presently.

“No, I’m just glad to be free. It’s been a long time since I’ve played hooky.”

“I know it.” The “dear” constrained him, and he did not add it: “You’ve been working most unholy hard. I—I hate to have you.”

“But I was never so happy in my life.”

“That’s good.” His voice hoarsened with the effort to keep it steady and casual. “Is everything going all right?”

“Fine.”

“Is—is the money end of it all right?”

“Yes, that is, I am not worrying about money.”

“You’re not making money?”

“No.”

“You are not losing any?”

“I am—a little. That was to be expected, don’t you think so?”

“How much are you losing?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“You ought to know. Are you keeping your own books?”

“Betty helps me.”

“Are you losing a hundred a month?”

“Yes.”

“Five hundred?”

“I suppose so.”

“A thousand?”

“I don’t really know.”

“A thousand?” he insisted.

“Yes,” Nancy answered recklessly, “the way I run it.”

“It doesn’t make any difference, of course;” Dick said, “you’ve got all my money behind you.”

“I haven’t anybody’s money behind me except my own.”

“You had fifteen thousand dollars. Do you mean to say that you have any of that left to draw on?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Do you mind telling me how you are managing?”

“Billy borrowed some money for me.”

“On what security?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t he come to me?”

“I told him not to.”

“Nancy, do you realize that you’re the most exasperating woman that ever walked the face of this earth?” the unhappy lover asked.

Nancy managed to convey the fact that Dick’s asseveration both surprised and pained her, without resorting to the use of words.

“I wish you wouldn’t spoil this lovely party,” she said to him a few seconds later. “I’m extremely tired, and I should like to get my mind off my business instead of going over these tiresome details with anybody.”

“You look very innocent and kind and loving,” Dick said desperately, “but at heart you’re a little fraud, Nancy.”

She interrupted him to point out two children laden with wild flowers, trudging along the roadside.

“See how adorably dirty and happy they are,” she cried. “That little fellow has his shoestrings untied, and keeps tripping on them, he’s so tired, but he’s so crazy about the posies that he doesn’t care. I wonder if he’s taking them home to his mother.”

“You’re devoted to children, Nancy, aren’t you?” Dick’s voice softened.

“Yes, I am, and some day I’m going to adopt a whole orphan asylum,”—her voice altered in a way that Dick did not in the least understand. “I could if I wanted to,” she laughed. “Maybe I will want to some day. So many of my ideas are being changed and modified by experience.”

The road-house of his choice, when they reached it, proved to have deteriorated sadly since his last visit. The cool interior that he remembered had been inopportunely opened to the hottest blast of the day’s heat, and hermetically sealed again, or at least so it seemed to Dick; and the furniture was all red and thickly, almost suffocatingly, upholstered. Nancy had no comment on the torrid air of the dining-room,—she rarely complained about anything. Even the presence of a fly in her bouillon jelly scarcely disturbed her equanimity, but Dick knew that she was secretly sustained by the conviction that such an accident was impossible under her system of supervision at Outside Inn, and resented her tranquillity accordingly.

Caroline, behaving not so well, seemed to him a much more human and sympathetic figure, though her nose took on a high shine unknown to Nancy’s demurer and more discreetly served features; but Billy evidently preferred Nancy’s deportment, which was on the surface calm and reassuring.

“She doesn’t feel the heat the way I do,” Caroline snapped.

“I feel the heat,” Nancy said, “but I—”

“She’s got a system,” Dick cut in savagely: “she stands it just as long as she can, and then she takes it out of me in some diabolical fashion.”

Nancy’s gray-blue eyes took on the far-away look that those who loved her had learned to associate with her most baffling moments.

“Just by being especially nice to Dick,” she said thoughtfully, “I can make him more furious with me than in any other way.”

Nancy and Caroline finished their sloppy ices at the table together while Dick and Billy sought the solace of a pipe in the garage outside.

“I don’t understand coming into Connecticut to-day,” Nancy said as soon as they were alone; “it seems like such a stupid excursion for Dick to make. He’s usually pretty good at picking out places to go. In fact, he has a kind of genius for it.”

“He slipped up this time,” Caroline said, “I’m so hot.”

“So am I,” said Nancy, slumping limply into the depths of her red velour chair. “I want to get back to New York. Oh! what was it you told me the other day that you had been saving up to tell me?”

Caroline brightened.

“Oh, yes! Why, it was something Collier Pratt said about you. You know Betty has scraped up quite an acquaintance with him. She goes and sits down at his table sometimes.”

“She’s going to be stopped doing that,” Nancy said.

“Well, you remember the night when you went home early with a headache, and passed by his table going out?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know he saw me.”

“He sees everything, Betty says.”

“He didn’t suspect me?”

“So I am,” said Nancy, “the best friend she’s got. Go on, dear.”

“Then he said slowly and thoughtfully, ‘It’s a crime for a woman like that not to be the mother of children. If ever I saw a maternal type, Miss Ann Martin is the apotheosis of it. Why some man hasn’t made her understand that long ago I can not see.’”

Nancy’s cheeks burned crimson and then white again.

“How dare Betty?” she said.

“She would,” Nancy said. Then a storm of real anger surged through her. “I’ll turn her out of my place to-morrow. I’ll never look at her or speak to her again.”

“I think it would be more to the point,” Caroline said, “to turn out Collier Pratt. That was certainly an extraordinary way for him to speak of you to a girl who is a stranger to him.”

“Caroline, you’re almost as bad as Betty is. You’re both of you hopelessly—helplessly—provincially American. I don’t think that was extraordinary or impertinent even,” Nancy said. “I—I understand how that man means things.”

The car drove up in front of the office of the justice of the peace in the town beyond that in which they had had their unauspicious luncheon party.

“Are we stopping here for any particular reason?” Caroline said.

“Not now,” Dick said wearily. “I thought I’d point out the sights of the town. This place is called the Gretna Green of America, you know. A great many runaway couples come out here to be married. The man inside that office, the one with whiskers and no collar, is the one that marries them.”

“Does he?” Billy asked a trifle uncertainly.

Nancy turned to Dick with a real appeal in her voice. It was the first time during the day that she had addressed him with anything like her natural tenderness and sweetness.

“Oh! Dick, can’t we start on?” she said.

Gaspard was ill—very ill. He lay in the little anteroom at the top of the stairs and groaned thunderously. He had a pain in his back and a roaring in his head, and an extreme disorder in the region of his solar plexus.

“Sure an’ he’s no more nor less than a human earthquake,” Michael reported after an examination.

With the luncheon menu before her, Nancy decided that the hour had come for her to prove herself. She had assumed the practical management of the business of the Inn only to have the responsibility and much of the authority of her position taken from her by the very efficiency of her staff. She was far too good a business woman not to realize that this condition was distinctly to her advantage, and to encourage it accordingly, but there was still so much of the child in her that she secretly resented every usurpation of privilege.

Michael did the marketing, and the list went through as Gaspard had planned it, with some slight adaptations to the exigency, such as the substitution of twenty-five cans of tomato soup for the fresh vegetables with which Gaspard had planned to make his tomato bisque, and brandied peaches in glass jars instead of peach soufflé.

“If I allow myself a little handicap in the matter of details,” she said, “I know I can put everything else through as well as Gaspard;” whereupon she enveloped herself in a huge linen apron, tucked her hair into one of the chef’s white caps, and attacked the problem of preparing luncheon for from sixty-five to two hundred people, who were scheduled to appear at uncertain intervals between the hours of twelve and two-thirty. Later she must be ready to serve tea and ices to a problematical number of patrons, but she tried not to think beyond the immediate task.

She could make a very good tomato bisque by adding one cup of milk and a dash of cream to one half-pint can of MacDonald’s tomato soup, enough to serve three people adequately, and she proceeded to multiply that recipe by twenty-five. She didn’t think of getting large cans till Michael in the process of opening the half-pint tins made the belated suggestion, which she greeted with some hauteur.

“I’m not the person to mind a little extra work, Michael, when I am sure of my results. Precision—that’s the secret of the difference between American and French cooking.”

“An’ sure and I fail to see the difference between the preciseness of a quart can and four half-pint ones, but I suppose it’s my ignorance now.”

“Your supposition is correct, Michael,” she said airily, but out of the corner of her eye she saw him smiling to himself over the growing heap of half-pint tins, and reddened with mortification at her naiveté in the matter.

“They’ll soon lick it all up, and be polishing their plates like so many Tom-cats,” Michael said, indicating their potential patronage by waving his hand toward the courtyard. “Here comes Miss Betty, now. She’ll be after lending a hand in the cooking.”

“Keep her away, Michael,” Nancy cried; “go out and head her off. Make her go up-stairs and sit with Gaspard,—anything, but don’t let her come in here. If she does I won’t answer for the consequences. I’ll—I’ll—I don’t know what I’ll do to her.”

“Throw her in the soup kettle, most likely,” Michael chuckled. “Faith, an’ I never saw a woman yet that wasn’t ready to scratch the eyes out of the next one that got into her kitchen.”

“She isn’t safe,” Nancy said darkly. “I need every bit of brain and self-control I have to put this luncheon through. You keep Miss Betty’s mind on something else—anything but me and the way I am doing the cooking.”

“’Tis done,” said Michael; “sure an’ I’ll protect her from you, if I have to abduct her myself!”

“I wish he would,” Nancy said to herself viciously, “before she gets another chance at Collier Pratt.—Creamed chicken and mushrooms. It’s a lucky thing that Gaspard diced the chicken last night, and fixed that macédoine of vegetables for a garnish.—She’s a dangerous woman; she might wreck one’s whole life with her unfeeling, histrionic nonsense.—I wonder if thirteen quarts of cream sauce is going to be enough.”

It turned out to be quite enough after the crises in which the butter basis got too brown, and the flour after melting into it smoothly seemed unreasonably inclined to lump again as Nancy stirred the cold milk into it, but the result after all was perfectly adequate, except for the uncanny brown tinge that the whole mixture had taken on. Nancy was unable to restrain herself from taking a sample of it to Gaspard’s bedside.

“Mais—but I can not eat it now,” he cried, misunderstanding the purpose of her visit, “nor again—nor ever again. Jamais!”

“I don’t want you to eat it, Gaspard, I want you to look at it, and tell me what makes it that color. It turned tan, you see. I don’t want to poison any one.”

“I am too miserable,” Gaspard said. “The sauce—you have made into Béchamel with the browning butter, voilà tout. It is better so,—it would not hurt any one in the world but me—and me it would kill.”

“Poor thing,” sighed Nancy, as she took her place by the kitchen dresser again, trying to remember where she had last seen brown eyes that reflected the look of stricken endurance that glazed Gaspard’s velvet orbs, recalled with a start that Dick had gazed at her in much the same helpless fashion on their drive home from their recent motor trip in Connecticut. She had been too absorbed in her own distresses to consider anybody’s state of mind but her own, on that occasion, but now Dick’s expression came back to her vividly, and she nearly ruined a big bowl of French dressing, at the crucial moment of putting in the vinegar, trying to imagine which one of the events of that inauspicious day might conceivably have caused it.

After the actual serving of the meal began, however, she had very little time for reflection or reminiscence. The distribution of food to the waitresses as they called for it required the full concentration of her powers. Molly and Dolly coached her, and with their assistance she was soon able to fill the bewilderingly rapid orders from the line of girls stretching from the door to the open space in front of her serving-table, which never seemed to diminish however adequately its demands were met.

Mechanically she took soup and meat dishes from the hooded shelves at the top of the range where they were kept warming, and ladled out the brick-colored bisque, the creamed chicken and garnishing of the individual orders. The chicken looked delicious with its accompaniment of vari-colored vegetables,—Nancy had done away with the side dish long since—and each serving was assembled with special reference to its decorative qualities. The girls went up-stairs to put the salad on the plates, where the desserts were already dished in the quaint blue bowls in which stewed fruits and the more fluid sweets were always served.

In her mind’s eye Nancy could see the picture. At noon the court was almost entirely in the shade, and instead of the awning top, which shut out the air, there were gay striped umbrellas at the one or two tables that were imperfectly protected from the sun. She had recently invested in some table-cloths with bright blue woven borders. Flowers were arranged in low bowls and baskets on respective tables. Nancy instinctively grouped tired young business men in blue serge and soft collars at the tables decorated with the baskets of blue flowers; and pale young women in lingerie blouses before the bowls of roses. She could see them,—those big-eyed girls with delicate blue veins accentuating the pallor of their white faces—sinking gratefully into the wicker seats and benches, and sniffing rapturously at the faint far-away fragrance of the woodland blossoms.

Automatically dipping the huge metal ladle—one filling of which was enough for a service—into the big soup kettle, she stood for a moment gazing into its magenta depths oblivious to everything but the rhapsodic consideration of her realized dream. Now for the first time she was contributing directly her own strength and energy to the public which she served. She had prepared with her own hands the meal which her grateful patrons were consuming. The little girls with the tired faces, the jaded men, the smart, weary business women—buyers and secretaries and modistes,—who were occupied in the neighborhood were all being literally nourished by her. She had actually manufactured the product that was to sustain them through the weary day of heat and effort.

“Some of them is, Miss Nancy. Some of them is complaining that they can’t get any other kind of soup. Them that usually gets invalid broth don’t understand our running out of it.”

“I forgot about the specials,” Nancy cried.

“That red-haired girl that we feed on custards and nut bread and that special cocoa Gaspard makes for her, she acted real bad. They get expecting certain things, and then they want them.”

“I’m sorry,” Nancy said; “I’ll make all those things to-morrow.”

“The old feller that always has the stewed prunes is terrible pleased though. I give him two helps of the peaches, and he wanted another. He was pleased to get white bread too. He complains something dreadful about his bran biscuit every day.”

“I meant to send to the woman’s exchange for different kinds of health bread, but I forgot it,” Nancy moaned. “Do they like the peaches at all?”

“Most of them likes them too well. There was one old lady that got one whiff of them, and pushed back her chair and left. I guess she had took the pledge, and the brandy went against her principles.”

“I never thought of that. I only thought that brandied peaches would be a treat to so many people who didn’t have them habitually served at home.”

The picture in Nancy’s mind changed in color a trifle. She could see sour-faced spinsters at single tables pushing back their chairs, overturning the rose bowls in their hurry to shake the dust of her restaurant from their feet.

“Don’t accept any money from people who don’t like their luncheon,” she admonished Molly, who was next in line with several orders to be filled at once. “Tell them that the proprietor of Outside Inn prefers not to be paid unless the meal is entirely satisfactory.”

“I’m afraid there wouldn’t never be any satisfactory meals if I told them that, Miss Nancy.”

“There’s lots of complaints about the soup,” Dolly said; “so many people don’t like tomato in the heat. Gaspard, he always had a choice even if it wasn’t down on the menu. I might deduct, say fifteen cents now, and slip it back to them with their change.”

“Please do,” Nancy implored. “Tell Molly and Hildeguard.”

“Hilda would drop dead, but Molly’d like the fun of it.”

From the kitchen closet beyond came the clatter of dishwashing, the interminable splashing of water, and stacking of plates, punctuated by the occasional clang of smashing glass or pottery. She had discharged two dishwashers in less than two weeks’ time, with the natural feeling that any change in that department must be for the better, but the present incumbent was even more incompetent than his predecessors. Even Nancy’s impregnable nerves began to feel the strain of the continual clamorous assault on them.

Betty appeared in the doorway that led directly from the restaurant stairs.

“Well, I thought it looked rather funny,” Nancy moaned.

“It won’t do anybody any harm, you know. It just looks bad, and a lot of people are kicking about it. Did Molly tell you about the old fellow that got tipsy on the peaches?”

“No, she didn’t. I sent Michael out for some ripe peaches and other fruit to serve instead.”

“That’s a good idea. How’s the food holding out? There are lots of people you know up-stairs,” she rattled on, for Nancy, who was getting more and more distraught with each disquieting detail, made no pretense of answering her. “Dolly has probably kept you informed. Dick’s aunt is here, and that terribly highbrow cousin of Caroline’s; and that good-looking young surgeon that suddenly got so famous last winter, and admired you so much. Dr. Sunderland—isn’t that his name? I never saw Collier Pratt here for lunch before. There’s a little girl with him, too.”

“He is though,” Betty said, “and a queer-looking little child with him, a dark-eyed little thing dressed in black satin.”

“It seems a good deal to me as if you were making that up,” Nancy cried in exasperation; “it’s so much the kind of thing you do make up.”

“I know it,” Betty said, unexpectedly reasonable, “but as it happens I’m not. Collier Pratt really is up-stairs with a poor little orphan in tow. Ask any one of the girls.”

At this moment Dolly, her ribbons awry and her china-blue eyes widened with excitement, appeared with a dramatic confirmation of Betty’s astonishing announcement.

“There’s a little girl took sick from the peaches, and moved up-stairs in the room next to Gaspard’s,” she cried breathlessly. “The doctor that was sitting at the next table, had her moved right up there. He wants to see the lady that runs the restaurant, and he wants a lot of hot water in a pitcher, and some baking soda.”

Nancy stripped off her cap and her apron and resigned her spoons and ladles to Betty without a word. She was still incredulous of what she would find at the top of the three flights of creaking age-worn stairs that separated her from the nest of rooms that were the storm quarters of her hostelry, now converted by a sudden malevolence on the part of fate into a temporary hospital. As she took the last flight she could hear Gaspard’s stertorous breathing coming at the regular intervals of distressful slumber, and through that an ominous murmur of grave and low-voiced conference, such as one hears in the chambers of the dead. The convulsive application of a powder puff to the tip of her burning nose—her whole face was aflame with exertion and excitement—was merely a part of her whole subconscious effort to get herself in hand for the exigency. Her mind, itself, refused any preparation for the scene that awaited her.

“It’s nothing very serious, Miss Martin,” the young surgeon reassured her, “delicate children of this type are likely to have these seizures. It’s not exactly a fainting fit. It belongs rather to the family of hysteria.”

“Wasn’t it the peaches?” Nancy asked fearfully. “They—they had a little brandy in them.”

“All right,” Nancy said, “I’ll take care of her.”

“Here comes her poor father, now,” the lady in taffeta announced with the dramatic commiseration of the self-invited auditor. “He thought an iced towel on her head might make her feel better. Is the dear little thing an orphan—I mean a half orphan?”

The assembled company seeming disinclined to respond, she repeated her inquiry to Collier Pratt himself, as with the susceptive grace that characterized all his movements, he swung the compress he was carrying sharply to and fro to preserve its temperature in transit. “Is the poor little thing a half orphan?”

“Not at all.” Irony was wasted on the indomitable sympathizer in blue. “Hasn’t she really anybody but you to take care of her?”

Collier Pratt arranged the towel precisely in position over the little girl’s forehead, smoothing with careful fingers the cloud of dusky hair that fell about her face.

“She has not,” he answered with some savagery.

“Hasn’t she any women friends or relatives that would be willing to take charge of her?”

“No, madam.”

“Then some woman that has no child of her own to care for ought to adopt her, and relieve you of the responsibility. It’s a shame and disgrace the way these New York women with no natural ties of their own go around crying for something to do, when there are sweet little children like this suffering for a mother’s care. I’d adopt her myself if I was able to. I certainly would.”

The little girl on the couch stirred softly, and the hand that Nancy was holding, a pathetic, thin, unkempt little hand, grew warm in hers. The lids of the big eyes fluttered and lifted. Nancy looked into their clouded depths for an instant. Then she turned to Collier Pratt decisively.

“I’ll take care of your little girl for you, if you will let me,” she said.

“I had mal de mer when I was on the steamer,” the child said, in her pretty, painstaking English—she spoke French habitually. “I do not like to have it on the land. The gentleman in there,” she pointed to the room beyond where Gaspard was again distressfully sleeping the sleep of the spent after a period of the most profound physical agitation, “he does not like to have it, too,—I mean either.”

“Are you comfortable now, Sheila?” Nancy asked. She had expected the child to have a French name, Suzanne or Japonette or something equally picturesque, but she realized as soon as she heard it that Sheila was much more suitable. The cloudy blue-black hair, and steel-blue eyes, the slight elongation of the space between the upper lip and nose, the dazzling satin whiteness of the skin were all Irish in their suggestion. Was the child’s mother—that other natural protector of the child, who had died or deserted her—Nancy tried not to wonder too much which it was that she had done,—an Irish girl, or was Collier Pratt himself of that romantic origin?

“Oui, Mademoiselle, I mean, yes, thank you. I do not think I will say to you Miss Martin. We only say their names like that to the people with whom we are not intime. We are intime now, aren’t we, now that I have been so very sick chez vous? In Paris the concierge had a daughter that I called Mademoiselle Cherie, and we were very intime. I think I would like to call you Miss Dear in English after her.”

“I should like that very much,” Nancy said.

“I am glad the sick gentleman is called Gaspard. So many messieurs—I mean gentlemen in Paris are called Gaspard, and hardly any in the United States of America. American things are very different from things in Paris, don’t you think so, Miss Dear?”

“I’m afraid they are,” Nancy acquiesced gravely.

“I’m afraid they are too,” the child said, “but afraid is what I try not to be of them. My father says America is full of beasts and devils, but he does not mind because he can paint them.”

“Yes, Miss Dear, but not like Paris. There we had a door that opened into a garden, and the birds sang there, and I was allowed to go and play. Here we have only a fire-escape, and the concierge is only a janitor and will not allow us to keep milk bottles on it. I do not like a janitor. Concierges have so much more politesse. Now, no one takes care of me when father goes out, or brings me soup or gâteaux when he forgets.”

“Does he forget?” Nancy cried, horrified.

“Sometimes. He forgets himself, too, very often except dinner. He remembers that because he likes to come to this Outside Inn restaurant, where the cooking is so good. He brought me here to-day because it was my birthday. I think the cooking is very good except that I was so sick of eating it, but father swore to-day that it was not.”

“Swore?”

“He said damn. That is not very bad swearing. I think nom de Dieu is worse, don’t you, Miss Dear?”

“Why, your eyes are wetting,” the little girl exclaimed as she nestled contentedly against Nancy’s breast, where Nancy had gathered her, converted table-cloth and all.

“It’s your not having enough to eat,” Nancy cried. “Oh! baby child, honey. How could they? It’s your calling me Miss Dear, too,” she said. “I—I can’t stand the combination.”

The child patted her cheek consolingly.

“Don’t cry,” she said; “my father cries because I get so hungry, when he forgets, but he does forget again as soon.”

“Would you like to come and live with me, Sheila?” Nancy asked.

“I think so, Miss Dear.”

“Then you shall,” Nancy said devoutly.

“All right again, is she?” he inquired with the slow rare smile that Nancy had not seen before that day.

“Yes,” Nancy said, “she’s better. She’s under-nourished, that’s what the trouble is.”

“I suspected that,” Collier Pratt said ruefully. “I’m not specially talented as a parent. I feed her passionately for days, and then I stop feeding her almost entirely. Artists in my circumstances eat sketchily at best. The only reason that I am fed with any regularity is that I have the habit of coming to this restaurant of yours. By the way, is it yours? I found you in charge to-day to my amazement.”

“I am in charge to-day,” Nancy acknowledged; “in fact I have taken over the management of it for—for a friend.”

“The mysterious philanthropist.”

“Ye-es.”

“Then I will refrain from any comment on the lunch to-day.”

“Oh! that—that was a mistake,” Nancy cried, “an experiment. Gaspard the chef—was ill.”

“He was very ill, father, dear,” Sheila added gravely, “like crossing the Channel, much sicker than I was. I was only sick like crossing the ocean, you know.”

“These fine distinctions,” Collier Pratt said, “she’s much given to them.” His eyes narrowed as they rested again on the picture Nancy made—the cool curve of her bent neck, the rise and fall of the breast in which the breathing had quickened perceptibly since his coming,—the child swathed in the long folds of white linen outlined against the Madonna blue of the dress that she was wearing. Nancy blushed under the intentness of his gaze, understanding, thanks to Caroline’s report of his conversation with Betty, something of what was in his mind about her.

“Gaspard is going to be taken away in an ambulance,” the child said, “to the hospital.”

“Then who is going to cook my dinner?” Collier Pratt asked.

“Good lord, I don’t know,” Nancy cried, roused to her responsibilities.

“I don’t know what you are going to have for dinner,” she said, “much less who’s going to cook it for you.”

“Perhaps I had better arrange to have it elsewhere, since this seems to be literally the cook’s day out.”

“There’ll be dinner,” said Nancy uncertainly.

Dick came up the stairs three at a time, and in his wake she heard the murmur of women’s voices—Caroline’s and Betty’s.

“I heard you were in difficulties,” Dick said, “so I made Sister Betty and Caroline give up their perfectly good trip into the country, in order to come around and mix in.”

The two men shook hands.

“Hold on a minute,” Dick said, “that paragraph is replete with interest, but I want to get it assimilated. Sure, Betty was going driving with me. I told her to ask you if she thought it would be any use, but she allowed it wouldn’t. I am delighted to meet Mr. Pratt, and pleased to know that his daughter is coming to live with you, but isn’t that rather sudden? Also, what’s this about there not being any dinner?”

“All right,” Dick said, “I’ll do my best.”

“You’ll have to do more than that,” Betty laughed as he started off, “but you’re perfectly capable of it. How do you do, Mr. Pratt? This is Miss Eustace, pale with apprehension about the way things are going, but still recognizable and answering to her name.” Betty always enjoyed introducing Caroline with an audacious flourish, since Caroline always suffered so much in the process.

“And this is little Miss Sheila Pratt,” Nancy supplemented.

“Enchanté,” the little girl said, “I mean, I am very pleased to meet you. I was very sick, but I am better now, and I am going to live with Miss Dear.”

“It seems to be settled,” her father said, shrugging.

“Would you mind it so very much?” Nancy asked.

“I wouldn’t mind it at all,” Collier Pratt said. “I think it would be a delightful arrangement,—if I’m to take you seriously.”

“Nancy is always to be taken seriously,” Betty put in. “What she really wants of the child is to use her for dietetic experiment, I’m sure.”

“That’s what she’s used to, poor child,” Collier Pratt said ruefully.

Nancy’s eyes filled with inexplicable tears, and she caught Collier Pratt regarding them with some amusement.

“He’s such a dear,” she said somewhat irrelevantly. “I really didn’t care whether he was sick or not this morning,—but you get so fond of people that are around all the time.”

“I don’t,” said Collier Pratt,—he spoke very lightly, but there was something in his tone that made Nancy want to turn and look at him intently. She seemed to see for the first time a shade of defiant cruelty in his face,—“I don’t,” he reiterated.

“I do,” Nancy repeated stubbornly, but as she met his slow smile, the slight impression of unpleasantness vanished.

“We artists are selfish people,” he said. “I’m going to run away now, and leave my daughter to cultivate your charming friends. Will you come and eat your dinner at my little table to-night, and talk, discuss this matter of her visit to you?”

“I will if there is any dinner,” Nancy said, putting out a throbbing hand to him.

“Where’s the coffee?” Nancy asked Dolly miserably, when the humiliating meal was drawing to its close.

“She won’t make coffee,” Dolly whispered; “she says it will keep everybody awake, and they’re much better off without it, but Miss Betty, she’s watching her chance, and she’s making it.”

Collier Pratt had received each course in silence, but had eaten heartily of the food that was set before him.

“I suppose he was hungry enough to eat anything,” Nancy thought; “the lunch was humiliating enough, but this surpasses anything I dreamed of.”

“That was a very excellent dinner,” Collier Pratt broke through her painful reverie to make his pronouncement. “Astonishing, but very satisfactory. It reminds me of days on my grandfather’s farm when I was a youngster.”

“I should think it might,” Nancy said, for the first time in her relation with her new friend becoming ironical on her own account. Then she added seriously, “It’s Hitty, you know, that will have all the real care of Sheila. I’m pretty busy down here, and I—” she hesitated, half expecting him to threaten to remove his child at once from the prospective guardianship of a creature who reverted so readily to the barbarism of ham and eggs.

“Well, if it’s Hitty that is to have the care of Sheila,” Collier Pratt said, and Nancy was not longer puzzled as to which element of her parentage Sheila owed her Irish complexion, “why, more power to her!”