y at Outside Inn began with luncheon and the
preparation for it. Nancy longed to serve breakfast there, but as yet
it had not seemed practicable to do so. Most of the patrons of the
restaurant conducted the business of the day down-town, but had their
actual living quarters in New York's remoter fastnesses,--Brooklyn,
the Bronx or Harlem. Nancy was satisfied that the bulk of her
patronage should be the commuting and cliff dwelling contingent of
Manhattanites,--indeed it was the sort of patronage that from the
beginning she had intended to cater to.

Nancy did most of the marketing herself at first, but Gaspard--the big
cook--gradually coaxed this privilege away from her.

"You see," he said, "we sit--us together, and talk of eating"--he
prided himself on his use of English, and never used his native tongue
to help him out, except in moments of great excitement. "It is
immediately after breakfast. Yes! I am full of milk-coffee sopped with
bread, and you of bacon with eggs and marmalade. We say, what shall we
give to our custom for its dinner and its luncheon? We think sadly--we
who have but now brushed away the crumbs of breakfast--of those who
must sit down so soon to the table groaning with viands. Therefore we
say, 'Market delicately. Have the soup clear, the entree light and the
salad green with plenty of vinegar.' Even your calories--they do not
help us much. They are in quantities so unexpected in the food that
weighs nothing in the scales. We say you shall go to market and buy
these things, and you go. I stir and walk about, and grow restless for
my _dejeuner_, and when you return from market, hungry too, we are not
the same people who had thought our soup should be clear, and our
entree more beautiful than nutritious. If I go to market myself _late_
I am inspired there to buy what is right, because by that hour I have
a proper relish and understanding of what all the world should eat."

"I know he is right," Nancy said to Billy afterward in reporting the
conversation, "I hate to admit it, but even my notion of what other
people should eat is colored by my own relation to food. I never
realized before how little use an intellect is in this matter of food
values. I can actually get up a meal that according to the tables is
scientifically correct that wouldn't feed anybody if they were
hungry."

"One banana is equal to a pound and three-quarters of steak," Billy
misquoted helpfully.

"The trouble is that it _i