"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 naivete in the matter.

She looked at the vat of terra-cotta puree with considerable dismay when she had stirred in the last measure of cream. Twenty-five pints of tomato bisque is a rather formidable quant.i.ty of a liquid the chief virtue of which is its sparing and judicious introduction into the individual diet scheme. Nancy hardly felt that she wanted to be alone with it.

"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 macedoine 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 b.u.t.ter 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 Bechamel with the browning b.u.t.ter, _voila 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k'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 a.s.sistance she was soon able to fill the bewilderingly rapid orders from the line of girls stretching from the door to the open s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sembled 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.

"I hope they will steal a great many of them," she thought, for her patrons were given to despoiling her flower vases in a way that scandalized the good Hildeguard, who was a just but ungenerous soul in spite of her ample proportions and popular qualities. Molly and Dolly were rather given to encouraging the vandals, knowing that they had Nancy's tacit approval.

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.

"How do they like the lunch, Molly?" she asked, as she deftly deposited the forty-fifth serving of chicken with Bechamel sauce on the exact center of the plate before her. "Are they pleased with the soup? Are they saying complimentary things about the chicken?"

"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."

"I don't want any one ever to pay for anything he doesn't like," Nancy insisted. "Slip the money back in their coat pockets if you can't manage it any other way."

"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."

It was hot in the kitchen. The soup kettle bad been emptied of more than half its contents, but the liquid that was left bubbled thickly over the gas flame that had been newly lit to reheat it. The pungent, acrid odor of hot tomatoes affronted her nostrils. She had a vision now of the pale tired faces of the little stenographers turning in disgust from the contemplation of the flamboyant and sticky puree on their plates, annoyed by the color scheme in combination with the soft wild-rose pink of the table bouquets, if not actually sickened by the fluid itself. For the first time since his abrupt seizure that morning she began to hope in her heart that Gaspard's illness might be a matter of days instead of weeks. She served Hildeguard and one of the other waitresses with more soup, and then began to boil some eggs to eke out the chicken, which, owing to her unprecedented generosity in the matter of portions, seemed to be diminishing with alarming rapidity.

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 gla.s.s 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 inc.u.mbent was even more incompetent than his predecessors.

Even Nancy's impregnable nerves began to feel the strain of the continual clamorous a.s.sault on them.

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

"I'm sorry to intrude," she said. "Don't blame Michael, I'm breaking my parole to get in here. He locked me in and made me swear I'd keep out of the kitchen before he'd let me out at all, but I had to tell you this. The tomato soup has curdled and you ought not to serve it any more."

"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.

d.i.c.k'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."

"Collier Pratt?" Nancy cried, "Oh, Betty, he isn't here. He couldn't be. Don't frighten me with any such nonsense. He never comes here in the day-time."

"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."