n's poison, and natural selection is the order of the
day?"

"Outside Inn is all the more necessary to the welfare of a nation
that's being starved out by the high cost of living. All I need to do
is to have a little more variety, to have all the nutritive
requirements in each meal, and such generous servings that every
patron can make out a meal satisfying to himself."

"Everybody knows that all fat people eat all the sweets that they can
get, and all thin people take tea without sugar with lemon in it."

"These people aren't healthy. That's where the intelligent supervision
comes in."

"What do you intend to do about them?"

"Watch over them a little more carefully. Regulate their servings
craftily. Be sure of my tables. I have lots of schemes. I'll tell you
about them sometime."

"_Sometime_,--for this relief much thanks," murmured Billy; "just now
I've had as much of these matters as I can stand. I don't see how you
are going to run this thing on a profit, though."

"I'm not," Nancy said, "I'm losing money every minute. That fifteen
thousand dollars is almost gone now, of course. Billy, do you think it
would be perfectly awful if I didn't try to make money at all?"

"I think it would be a good deal wiser. I'll raise all the money you
want on your expectations."

"All right then. I'm not going to worry."

Billy looked down into the courtyard from the room up-stairs in which
they had been talking. Already the preparations for lunch were under
way. The girls were moving deftly about, laying cloths and arranging
flower vases and silver.

"Can I get right down there and sit down at one of those tables and
have my lunch," Billy inquired, "or do I have to go out of the back
door and come in the front like a regular customer?"

"Whichever you prefer. There's Caroline coming in at the gate now."

"Well, then, I know which I prefer," Billy said, swimming realistically
toward the stairs.

"You are getting fat, Billy," Caroline informed him critically after
the amenities were over, and the meal appropriately begun. "You ought
to watch your diet a little more carefully."

"No," Billy said firmly, "I don't need to watch my diet, I'm perfectly
healthy, and therefore my natural cravings will point the way to my
most judicious nourishment. Nancy has explained all to me."

"That's a very interesting theory of Nancy's," Caroline said, "but I
don't altogether agree with it."

"I do," said Billy, then he added hast