"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." Billy gazed in perplexity at the half of a delicious grapefruit set before him by the duplicate of the pretty girl who stood smiling deprecatingly behind Caroline's chair. "Where's my soup, Dolly?" Billy asked with a thundering sternness of manner. "I'm sorry, sir," Dolly began glibly, "but the soup has given out. Will you be good enough to allow the substitution of--" "That's a formula," Billy said. "The soup can't be out. We're the first people in the dining-room. Go tell Miss Nancy that I will be served with some of that green soup at once, or know the reason why." The two waitresses exchanged glances, and went off together suppressing giggles, to return almost immediately, their risibility still causing them great physical inconvenience. "Intelligent supervision, she says." Dolly exploded into the miniature patch of muslin and ribbon that served her as an apron. "She says that's the reason why," Molly contributed,--following her sister's example. "Nancy doesn't serve soup to a fat man if she can possibly avoid it. That's part of her theory," Caroline explained. "There's no use making a fuss about it, because you won't get it." Billy sat looking at his grapefruit for some seconds in silence. Then he began on it slowly. "Well, I'll be damned," he said. Nancy was learning a great many things very rapidly. The practical application of her theories of feeding mankind to her actual experiments with the shifting population of New York, revolutionized her attitude toward the problem almost daily. She had started in with a great many ideas and ideals of service, with preconceived notions of balanced rations, and exact distribution of fuel stuffs to the human unit. She had come to realize very shortly, that the human unit was a quantity as incalculable in its relation to its digestive problems as its psychological ones. She had believed vaguely that in reference to food values the race made its great exception to its rule of working out toward normality; but she changed that opinion very quickly as she watched her fellow men selecting their diet with as sure an instinct for their nutritive requirements as if she had coached them personally for years.