Part 14 (1/2)

Collier Pratt found his child in Nancy's arms when he again mounted the stairs to the third floor of Outside Inn. The place was curiously cool to one who had been walking the sun-baked streets, and he gave an appreciative glance at the dim interior and the tableau of woman and child. Nancy's burnished head bent gravely over the shadowy dark one resting against her bosom.

”All right again, is she?” he inquired with the slow rare smile that Nancy had not seen before that day.

”Yes,” Nancy said, ”she's better. She's under-nourished, that's what the trouble is.”

”I suspected that,” Collier Pratt said ruefully. ”I'm not specially talented as a parent. I feed her pa.s.sionately for days, and then I stop feeding her almost entirely. Artists in my circ.u.mstances eat sketchily at best. The only reason that I am fed with any regularity is that I have the habit of coming to this restaurant of yours. By the way, is it yours? I found you in charge to-day to my amazement.”

”I am in charge to-day,” Nancy acknowledged; ”in fact I have taken over the management of it for--for a friend.”

”The mysterious philanthropist.”

”Ye-es.”

”Then I will refrain from any comment on the lunch to-day.”

”Oh! that--that was a mistake,” Nancy cried, ”an experiment. Gaspard the _chef_--was ill.”

”He was very ill, father, dear,” Sheila added gravely, ”like crossing the Channel, much sicker than I was. I was only sick like crossing the ocean, you know.”

”These fine distinctions,” Collier Pratt said, ”she's much given to them.” His eyes narrowed as they rested again on the picture Nancy made--the cool curve of her bent neck, the rise and fall of the breast in which the breathing had quickened perceptibly since his coming,--the child swathed in the long folds of white linen outlined against the Madonna blue of the dress that she was wearing. Nancy blushed under the intentness of his gaze, understanding, thanks to Caroline's report of his conversation with Betty, something of what was in his mind about her.

”Gaspard is going to be taken away in an ambulance,” the child said, ”to the hospital.”

”Then who is going to cook my dinner?” Collier Pratt asked.

”Good lord, I don't know,” Nancy cried, roused to her responsibilities.

She looked at the watch on her wrist, a platinum bracelet affair with an octagonal face that d.i.c.k had persuaded her to accept for a Christmas present by giving one exactly like it to Betty and Caroline.

It was twenty-five minutes of five. Dinner was served every night promptly at half past six, and there was absolutely no preparation made for it, not so much as a loaf of bread ordered. Instead of doing the usual marketing in the morning she had sent Michael out for the things that she needed in the preparation of luncheon, and planned to make up a list of things that she needed for dinner just as soon as her midday duties in the kitchen had set her free. She thought that she would be more like Gaspard, ”inspired to buy what is right” if she waited until the success of her luncheon had been a.s.sured. The ensuing events had driven the affairs of her cuisine entirely out of her mind.

She was constrained by her native tendency to concentrate on the business in hand to the exclusion of all other matters, big and little. She had dismissed Betty during the excitement that followed Sheila's illness, and Betty had seemed unnaturally willing to leave the hectic scene and go about her business. Michael had made several ineffectual attempts to speak to her, but she had waved him away impatiently. She knew that neither he nor any one else on the restaurant staff would believe that she hadn't made some adequate and mysterious provision for the serving of the night meal. She had never failed before in the smallest detail of executive policy. She set the child back upon the cus.h.i.+on, and arranged her perfunctorily in position there.

”I don't know _what_ you are going to have for dinner,” she said, ”much less who's going to cook it for you.”

”Perhaps I had better arrange to have it elsewhere, since this seems to be literally the cook's day out.”

”There'll be dinner,” said Nancy uncertainly.

d.i.c.k came up the stairs three at a time, and in his wake she heard the murmur of women's voices--Caroline's and Betty's.

”I heard you were in difficulties,” d.i.c.k said, ”so I made Sister Betty and Caroline give up their perfectly good trip into the country, in order to come around and mix in.”

”I didn't know Betty was going driving with you,” Nancy said. ”She didn't say so. Oh! d.i.c.k, there isn't any dinner. I forgot all about it. This is Mr. Collier Pratt and his little daughter,--Mr. Richard Thornd.y.k.e. She's coming to live with me soon, I hope, and let Hitty take care of her.”

The two men shook hands.

”Hold on a minute,” d.i.c.k said, ”that paragraph is replete with interest, but I want to get it a.s.similated. Sure, Betty was going driving with me. I told her to ask you if she thought it would be any use, but she allowed it wouldn't. I am delighted to meet Mr. Pratt, and pleased to know that his daughter is coming to live with you, but isn't that rather sudden? Also, what's this about there not being any dinner?”

”There isn't,” Nancy was beginning, when she realized that Caroline and Betty, who had followed closely on d.i.c.k's footsteps, were looking at her with faces pale with consternation and alarm. She could see the antic.i.p.atory collapse of Outside Inn writ large on Caroline's expressive countenance. Caroline was the type of girl who believed that in the very nature of things the undertakings of her most intimate friends were doomed to failure. ”There isn't any dinner yet,”

Nancy corrected herself, ”but you go up to my place, d.i.c.k, and get Hitty. Tell her she's got to cook dinner for this restaurant to-night.