“Yes, thank heaven,” Nancy said, unaccountably tearful of a sudden.
The first part of the day at the Inn went much like other days. Gaspard, eager to retrieve the record of the week when Hitty and a Viennese pastry cook had divided the honors of preparing the daily menus between them—for 161 Nancy had never again attempted the feat—never let a day go by without making a new plat de jour or inventing a sauce; was in the throes of composing a new casserole, and it was a pleasure to watch him deftly sifting and sorting his ingredients, his artist’s eyes aglow with the inward fire of inspiration. Nancy called all the waitresses together and offered them certain prizes and rewards for all the buttermilk, and prunes and other health dishes that they were able to distribute among ailing patrons,—with the result they were over assiduous at the luncheon hour, and a red-headed young man with gold teeth made a disturbance that it took both Hilda and Michael, who appeared suddenly in his overalls from the upper regions where he was constructing window-boxes, to quell. But these incidents were not sufficiently significant to make the day in any way a memorable one to Nancy. It took a telephone message from Collier Pratt, requesting, nay demanding, her presence in his studio for the first sitting on her portrait, to make the day stand out upon her calendar.
“Sheila is with me. Shall I bring her?” Nancy asked.
“No,” Collier Pratt said uncompromisingly, “I am not a parent at this hour. She would disturb me.”
“What shall I wear?”
“What have you got on?”
“That blue crêpe, made surplice,—the one you liked the other night.”
“That’s just what I want—Madonna blue. Can you get down here in fifteen minutes?”
“Yes, I’ll send Michael up-town with Sheila.”