on with Molly and Dolly about the economic
problem, and discovered that they agreed with Gaspard about the
unnecessary extravagance of her management.

"Them health foods," Dolly said,--she was not the more grammatical of
the twins, "the ones that gets them regular gets so tired of them, or
else they gets where they don't need them any more. There's one girl
that crumbs up her health muffins and puts them on the window-sill
every day when I ain't looking, so's not to hurt my feelings."

"That accounts for all those chittering sparrows," Nancy said.

"And some of those buttermilk men threatens not to come any more if I
don't stop serving it to them."

"What do you say to them, Dolly, when they object to it?"

"Well, sometimes I say one thing, and sometimes another. Sometimes I
say it's orders to serve it; and sometimes I say will they please to
let it stand by their plate not to get me in trouble with the
management; and sometimes I coax them to take it."

"By an appeal to their better nature," Nancy said. "I'm glad Dick
can't hear all this,--he'd think it was funny."

"We don't have so much trouble with the broths," Molly said, "but so
many people would rather have the cream soups Gaspard makes, that we
waste a good deal."

"It sours on us," Dolly elucidated.

"What do you think would be the best way out of that?"

"I think to charge for the invalid things," Dolly said; "people would
think more of them if they was specials, and had to be paid good money
for. Health bread, if you didn't call it that, would go good, if it
cost five cents extra."

"What would you call it?" Nancy asked.

"California fruit nut bread, or something like that, and call the
custards creme renverse, and the ice-cream, French ice-cream."

"Oh, dear!" Nancy said, "that isn't the way I want to do things at
all."

"We can slip the ones that needs them a few things from time to time,
can't we, Molly?" Dolly said.

"We'll do it," Nancy said. "I hate the way that the most uninspired
ways of doing things turn out to be the best policy after all. I don't
believe in stereotyped philanthropy, but I did think I had found a way
around this problem of feeding up people who needed it."

"They get fed up pretty good if they do pay a regular price for it,"
Dolly said. "You can't get something for nothing in this world, and
most everybody knows it by now."

"I'm managing my restaurant a little differently," she told Collier
Pratt a few days l