"That's a good idea. How's the food holding out? There are lots of people you know up-stairs," she rattled on, for Nancy, who was getting more and more distraught with each disquieting detail, made no pretense of answering her. "Dolly has probably kept you informed. Dick's aunt is here, and that terribly highbrow cousin of Caroline's; and that good-looking young surgeon that suddenly got so famous last winter, and admired you so much. Dr. Sunderland--isn't that his name? I never saw Collier Pratt here for lunch before. There's a little girl with him, too." "Collier Pratt?" Nancy cried, "Oh, Betty, he isn't here. He couldn't be. Don't frighten me with any such nonsense. He never comes here in the day-time." "He is though," Betty said, "and a queer-looking little child with him, a dark-eyed little thing dressed in black satin." "It seems a good deal to me as if you were making that up," Nancy cried in exasperation; "it's so much the kind of thing you do make up." "I know it," Betty said, unexpectedly reasonable, "but as it happens I'm not. Collier Pratt really is up-stairs with a poor little orphan in tow. Ask any one of the girls." At this moment Dolly, her ribbons awry and her china-blue eyes widened with excitement, appeared with a dramatic confirmation of Betty's astonishing announcement. "There's a little girl took sick from the peaches, and moved up-stairs in the room next to Gaspard's," she cried breathlessly. "The doctor that was sitting at the next table, had her moved right up there. He wants to see the lady that runs the restaurant, and he wants a lot of hot water in a pitcher, and some baking soda." "You see," Betty said, "go on up, I'll take your place here. Dolly, get the things the doctor asked for." Nancy stripped off her cap and her apron and resigned her spoons and ladles to Betty without a word. She was still incredulous of what she would find at the top of the three flights of creaking age-worn stairs that separated her from the nest of rooms that were the storm quarters of her hostelry, now converted by a sudden malevolence on the part of fate into a temporary hospital. As she took the last flight she could hear Gaspard's stertorous breathing coming at the regular intervals of distressful slumber, and through that an ominous murmur of grave and low-voiced conference, such as one hears in the chambers of the dead. The convulsive application of a powder puff to the tip of her burning nose--her whole face was aflame with exertion and excitement--was merely a part of her whole subconscious effort to get herself in hand for the exigency. Her mind, itself, refused any preparation for the scene that awaited her.