“Most of them likes them too well. There was one old lady that got one whiff of them, and pushed back her chair and left. I guess she had took the pledge, and the brandy went against her principles.”
“I never thought of that. I only thought that brandied peaches would be a treat to so many people who didn’t have them habitually served at home.”
The picture in Nancy’s mind changed in color a trifle. She could see sour-faced spinsters at single tables pushing back their chairs, overturning the rose bowls in their hurry to shake the dust of her restaurant from their feet.
“Don’t accept any money from people who don’t like their luncheon,” she admonished Molly, who was next in line with several orders to be filled at once. “Tell them that the proprietor of Outside Inn prefers not to be paid unless the meal is entirely satisfactory.”
“I’m afraid there wouldn’t never be any satisfactory meals if I told them that, Miss Nancy.”
“I don’t want any one ever to pay for anything he doesn’t like,” Nancy insisted. “Slip 125 the money back in their coat pockets if you can’t manage it any other way.”
“There’s lots of complaints about the soup,” Dolly said; “so many people don’t like tomato in the heat. Gaspard, he always had a choice even if it wasn’t down on the menu. I might deduct, say fifteen cents now, and slip it back to them with their change.”
“Please do,” Nancy implored. “Tell Molly and Hildeguard.”
“Hilda would drop dead, but Molly’d like the fun of it.”
It was hot in the kitchen. The soup kettle bad been emptied of more than half its contents, but the liquid that was left bubbled thickly over the gas flame that had been newly lit to reheat it. The pungent, acrid odor of hot tomatoes affronted her nostrils. She had a vision now of the pale tired faces of the little stenographers turning in disgust from the contemplation of the flamboyant and sticky purée on their plates, annoyed by the color scheme in combination with the soft wild-rose pink of the table bouquets, if not actually sickened by the fluid itself. For the first time since his abrupt seizure that morning she began to 126 hope in her heart that Gaspard’s illness might be a matter of days instead of weeks. She served Hildeguard and one of the other waitresses with more soup, and then began to boil some eggs to eke out the chicken, which, owing to her unprecedented generosity in the matter of portions, seemed to be diminishing with alarming rapidity.