started in with
a great many ideas and ideals of service, with preconceived notions of
balanced rations, and exact distribution of fuel stuffs to the human
unit. She had come to realize very shortly, that the human unit was a
quantity as incalculable in its relation to its digestive problems as
its psychological ones. She had believed vaguely that in reference to
food values the race made its great exception to its rule of working
out toward normality; but she changed that opinion very quickly as she
watched her fellow men selecting their diet with as sure an instinct
for their nutritive requirements as if she had coached them personally
for years.

From the assumption that she lived in a world gone dietetically mad,
and hence in the process of destroying itself, she had gradually come
to see that in this phase of his struggle for existence, as well as in
every other, the instinct of man operated automatically in the
direction of his salvation. This new attitude in tie matter relieved
her of much of her responsibility, but left her not less anxious to do
what she could for her kind in the matter of calories. She was, as she
had shown in her treatment of Billy, not entirely blinded by her
growing predilection in favor of the doctrine of natural selection.

Every day she had Gaspard make, in addition to his regular table
d'hote menu, dozens of nutritive custards, quarts of stimulating
broths and jellies and other dishes containing the maximum of
easily digested and highly concentrated nutriment, and these she
managed to have Molly or Dolly or even Hildeguard--the Alma Tadema
girl--introduce into the luncheon or dinner service in the case of
those patrons who seemed to need peculiarly careful nourishing. Let a
white-faced girl sink into a seat within the range of Nancy's
vision,--she always ensconced herself in the doorway screened with
vines at the beginning of a meal,--and she gave orders at once for
the crafty substitution of invalid broth for soup, of rich nut
bread for the ordinary rolls and crackers, of custards or specially
made ice-cream for the dessert of the day. No overfed, pasty-faced
man ever escaped from Outside Inn until an attempt at least had been
made to introduce a portion of stewed prunes into his diet; and
all such were fed the minimum of bread and other starchy foods, and
the maximum of salad and green vegetables. Nancy had gluten bread made
in quantities for the stouter element of her patronage, a