I like better the holes especially when he mends them
on my feet."

Sheila could have presented no more appealing picture of her father to
Nancy's vivid imagination. Collier Pratt with the incongruous sewing
equipment of the unaccustomed male, using, more than likely, black
darning cotton on a white sock--Nancy's mental pictures were always
full of the most realistic detail--bent tediously over a child's
stocking, while the precious sunlight was streaming unheeded upon the
waiting canvas. She darned very badly herself, but the desire was not
less strong in her to take from him all these preposterous and
unbefitting tasks, and execute them with her own hands. She stared at
the child fixedly.

"You buy him some socks out of your allowance," she said at last. Then
she added an anxious and inadequate "Oh, dear!"

"Aren't you happy?" Sheila asked in unconscious imitation of Dick,
with whom she had been spending most of her time for days, while Nancy
superintended the additions and improvements she was making in the
up-stairs quarters of her Inn, preparatory to moving in for the
winter.

"Yes, I'm happy," Nancy said, "but I'm sort of--stirred, too. I wish
you were my own little girl, Sheila. I think I'll take you with me to
the Inn to-day. You might melt and trickle away if I left you alone
here with Hitty."

"_Quelle joie!_ I mean, how nice that will be! Then I can talk about
Paris to Gaspard, and he will give me some baba, with a _soupcon of
maraschine_ in the sauce, if you will tell him that I may, Miss Dear."

"I'll think about it." It was Nancy's dearest privilege to be asked
and grant permission for such indulgences. "Put on that floppy white
hat with the yellow ribbon, and take your white coat."

"When I had only one dress to wear I suppose I got just as dirty,"
Sheila reflected, "only it didn't show on black satin. Now I can tell
just how dirty I am by looking. I make lots of washing, Miss Dear."

"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 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 sort