Outside Inn. Ethel M. Kelley
railroad accident when Ann, or Nancy as her mother had insisted on calling her from the day of her 20 christening, was about seven years old. She had been placed in the care of a maternal aunt, and had flourished in the heart of a well ordered establishment of the mid-Victorian type, run by a vigorous, rather worldly old lady.
From her lovely mother—Ann Winslow had been more than a merely attractive or pretty woman; she had the real grace and distinction, and purity of profile that placed her in the actual category of beauty—Nancy had inherited a healthy and equitable outlook on life, while her father, irresistible and impracticable being that he was, had endowed her with a certain eccentric and adventurous spirit in the investigation of it.
She had been educated in a boarding-school, forty minutes’ run from New York, and had specialized in the domestic sciences and basket ball; and on attaining her majority had taken up a course or two at Columbia, rather more to put off the evil day of assuming the responsibility of the stuffy, stately old house in Washington Square than because she ever expected to make any use of her superfluous education. She was conceded by every one to be her aunt’s 21 heir, but old Miss Winslow died intestate, very suddenly in Nancy’s twenty-third year; and the beneficiaries of this accident, most of them extremely well-to-do themselves, combined to make Nancy a regular allowance until she was twenty-five. On her twenty-fifth birthday fifteen thousand dollars was deposited to her account in the Trust Company which conserved the family fortunes of the Winslows, and Nancy understood that they considered their duty by her to be done. It was with this fifteen thousand dollars that she was to inaugurate her darling enterprise—Outside Inn.
Money, as she had truthfully told Billy, meant nothing to her. Her aunt, living and giving generously, had furnished her with a background of comfortable, unostentatious well being, against which the rather vivid elements that went to make up her intimate social circle—she was a creature of intimates—stood out in alluring relief. She had literally never wanted for anything. Her tastes, to be sure, were modest, but the wherewithal to gratify them had always been almost stultifyingly near at hand. The excitement and adventure of an income to which there was attached some 22 uncertainty had never been hers, and she was too much her father’s daughter to be interested in the playing of any game in which she could not lose. With all she possessed staked against her untried business acumen she was for the first time in her life concerned with her financial situation, and quite honestly resentful of any interruption of her experiment. Her life was closely associated with her mother’s family. Her father’s people had at no time entered into her scheme of living—her uncle Elijah less than any member of it, and she found his post-obit intervention in her affairs embarrassing in a dozen different connections.
The best friend she had in the world, before he had made the tactical error of asking her to marry him, was Richard Thorndyke. He was still, thanks to his immediate skill in trying to retrieve that error, a very good friend indeed. Nancy would normally have told him everything that happened to her in the exact order of its occurrence; but partly because she did not wish to exaggerate her eccentricity in eyes that looked upon her so kindly, and partly because she had the instinct to spare him the realization that there was no way in which he 23 might come to her rescue in the event of disaster—she did not inform him of her legacy. She knew that he was shrewdly calculating to stand behind her venture, morally and practically, and that the chief incentive of his encouragement and helpfulness was the hidden hope that through her experiment and its probable unfortunate termination she would learn to depend on him. Nancy was so sure of herself that this attitude of Dick’s roused her tenderness instead of her ire.
The two girls who were closest to her, Caroline Eustace and Betty Pope, had been actively enlisted in the service of Outside Inn and the ideals that it represented. Betty, a dimpling, dynamic little being, who took a sporting interest in any project that interested her, irrespective of its merits, was to be associated with Nancy in the actual management of the restaurant. Caroline, who took herself more seriously, and was busy with a dozen enterprises that had to do with the welfare of the race, was concerned chiefly with the humanitarian side of the undertaking and willing to deflect to it only such energy as she felt to be essential to its scientific betterment. She was tentatively 24 engaged to Billy Boynton—for what reason no one—not even Billy—had been able to determine; since she systematically disregarded him in relation to all the interests and activities that went to make up her life.
The affairs of the Inn progressed rapidly. It was in the first week of May that Nancy and Billy had their memorable discussion of her situation. By the latter part of June, when she could be reasonably sure of a succession of propitious days and nights, for she had set her heart on balmy weather conditions, Nancy expected to have her formal opening—a dinner which not only initiated her establishment, but submitted it to the approval of her own group of intimate friends, who were to be her guests on that occasion.
Meantime, the most extensive and discriminating preparations were going forward. Billy and Dick were present one afternoon by special request when Betty and Nancy were interviewing a contingent of waitresses.
“We’ve got three perfectly charming girls already,” Nancy said, “that is, girls that look perfectly charming to me, but a man’s point of view on a woman’s looks is so different that 25 I thought it would be a good plan to have you boys look over this lot. They are all very high-class and competent girls. The Manning Agency doesn’t send any other kind.”
“Trot ’em along,” Billy said; “where are they anyway?”
“In the room in front.” They were in the smallest of the nest of attic rooms that Nancy planned to make her winter quarters. “Michael receives them, and shows them in here one by one.”
“You like Michael then?” Dick asked. “I always said his talents were hidden at our place. He has a soul above the job of handy man on a Long Island farm.”
“He’s certainly a handy man here,” Nancy said; “I couldn’t live without him.”
“The lucky dog,” Billy said, with a side glance at Dick.
“You see,” Betty explained, “the girl comes in, and we ask her questions. Then if I don’t like her I take my pencil from behind my ear, and rap against my palm with it. If Nancy doesn’t like her she says, ‘You’re losing a hairpin, Betty.’ If we like her we rub our hands together.”
26
“It’s a good system,” Billy said, “but I don’t see why Nancy doesn’t take her pencil from behind her ear, or why you don’t say to her—”
“I wouldn’t put a pencil behind my ear,” Nancy said scathingly.
“And she never loses a hairpin,” Betty cut in. “If I approve this system of signals I don’t see what you have to complain of. Nancy couldn’t get a pencil behind her ear even if she wanted to. It’s only a criminal ear like mine that accommodates a pencil.”
“Speaking of ears,” Dick said, looking at his watch, “let’s get on with the beauty show. I have to take my mother to see Boris to-night, and she has an odd notion of being on time.”
“Aw right,” Betty said. “Here’s Michael. Bring in the first one immediately, Michael.”
“Sure an’ I will that, Miss Pope.” The old family servitor of the Thorndykes pulled a deliberate lid over a twinkling left eye by way of acknowledging the presence of his young master. “There’s quite a display of thim this time.”
The first applicant, guided thus by Michael, appeared on the threshold and stood for a moment framed in the low doorway. Seeing 27 two gentlemen present she carefully arranged her expression to meet that contingency. She was a blonde girl with masses of doubtfully tinted hair and no chin, but her eyes were very blue and matched a chain of turquoise beads about her throat, and she radiated a peculiar vitality.
Betty took her pencil from behind her ear.
“You’re losing a hair—” Nancy began, but Dick and Billy exchanged glances and began rubbing their hands together energetically and enthusiastically.
“I’m