"I might have told you," she said, "if you had wanted to know." She felt her knees sagging with fatigue, and drooped against the door-frame. "Come and sit in the car, and talk to me for a minute," he suggested. "Do you good, before you climb the stairs." He opened the car door for her ingratiatingly, but she shook her head. "I've done unconventional things enough for one evening," she said. "Unlock the door for me. Hitty'll be waiting up to take care of me." "What's that queer thing you're wearing?" he asked her, as he held the door for her to pass through, "I never remember seeing you wear that before." Nancy looked down wonderingly at the folds of the Inverness still swinging from her shoulders. She had been subconsciously aware of the grateful warmth in which she was encased ever since she snuggled comfortably into the depths of the taxi-cab into which Collier Pratt had tucked her. "No, I never _have_ worn it before," she said, answering Dick's question. CHAPTER V SCIENCE The activities of the day 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 entrée 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 _déjeuner_, and when you return from market, hungry too, we are not the same people who had thought our soup should be clear, and our entrée 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."