scientific management could make it. The kitchen gleamed with
copper and granite ware; huge pots for soup and vegetables, mammoth
double boilers of white enamel,--Nancy was firm in her conviction that
rice and cereal could be cooked in nothing but white enamel,--rows
upon rows of shelves methodically set with containers and casseroles
and odd-shaped metal serving-dishes, as well as the ubiquitous blue
and rose-color chinaware presenting its gay surface from every
available bit of space.

Presiding over the hooded ranges, two of gas and one coal for toasting
and broiling, there was to be a huge Franco-American man-cook,
discovered in one of the Fifth Avenue pastry shops in the course of
Nancy's indefatigable tours of exploration, who was the son of a
French _chef_ and a Virginian mother, and could express himself in the
culinary art of either his father's or his mother's nativity. His
staff of helpers and dishwashers had been chosen by himself, with what
Nancy considered most felicitous results, while her own galaxy of
waitresses, who operated the service kitchen up-stairs, proved
themselves to a woman almost unbelievably superior and efficient.

The courtyard itself was a brave spectacle in its final aspect of
background for the detail and paraphernalia of polite dining. The more
unself-conscious of the statues, the nymphs and nereids and Venuses,
she managed either to relegate to the storehouse within, or to add a
few cunningly draped vines to the nonchalance of their effect, while
the gargoyles and Roman columns and some of the least ambitious of the
fountain-models she was able to adapt delightfully to her outrageous
ideal of arrangement. Dick had denuded several smart florist shops to
furnish her with field flowers enough to develop her decorative
scheme, which included strangely the stringing of half a dozen huge
Chinese lanterns that even in the daylight took on a meteoric light
and glow.

The night was clear and soft, and Fifth Avenue, ingratiatingly swept
and garnished, stretched its wake of summer allure before the never
unappreciative eyes of Billy and Caroline, and Betty and Dick
respectively, who had met at the Waldorf by appointment, and were now
making their way, thus ceremoniously and in company, to the formal
opening dinner of Nancy's Inn.

Two nondescript Pagan gentlemen of Titanesque proportions had joined
the watch of the conventional leonine twins, and the big gate now
stood hospitably open, ov