Part 7 (1/2)
”I don't see but what this interesting theory lets you out altogether.
Why Outside Inn, with its foxy table d'hote, if what's one man's meat is another man'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 hastily, ”but I agree with you, too, Caroline. You are to all other women what moonlight is to sunlight, or I mean--what sunlight is to moonlight. In other words--you are the goods.”
”Don't be silly, Billy.”
”There's only one thing in all this wide universe that you can't say to me, Caroline, and 'don't be silly, Billy,' is that thing,--express this same thing in _vers libre_ if you must say it! Look at the handsome soup you're getting. What is the name of that soup, Molly?”
He smiled ingratiatingly at the little waitress, who always beamed at any one of Nancy's particular friends that came into the restaurant, and made a point of serving them if she could possibly arrange it.
”Cream of spinach,” she said, ”it's a special to-day.”
”Beautiful soup so rich and green,” Billy began in a soulful baritone, ”waiting in a hot tureen. Where's mine, Molly?”
”Dolly's bringing your first course, sir.”