She looked at the watch on her wrist, a platinum bracelet affair with an octagonal face that Dick 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 assured. 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 cushion, 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. Dick 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," Dick 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! Dick, there isn't any dinner. I forgot all about it. This is Mr. Collier Pratt and his little daughter,--Mr. Richard Thorndyke. 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," Dick said, "that paragraph is replete with interest, but I want to get it assimilated. 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?"