“I Elijah Peebles Martin, of the city and county of Harrison, in the state of Rhode Island, being of sound and disposing mind and memory, do make and declare the following, as and for, my last will and testament.’ ... I wish you’d take your head out of that barrel, Nancy, and listen to the document that is going to make you rich beyond the dreams of avarice.”

“I was beyond them anyway.” The young woman in blue serge made one last effectual dive into the depths of excelsior, the topmost billows of which were surging untidily over the edge of a big crate in the middle of the basement floor, and secured a nest of blue and rose colored teacups, which she proceeded to unwrap lovingly and display on a convenient packing box. “Not one single thing broken in this 2 whole lot, Billy.... What is a disposing mind and memory, anyhow?”

“You don’t deserve to know,” the blond young man in the Norfolk jacket assured her, adjusting himself more firmly to the idiosyncrasies of the rackety step-ladder he was striding. “You’re not human about this. Here you are suddenly in possession of a fortune. Money enough to make you independently wealthy for the rest of your life—money you didn’t know the existence of, two weeks ago—fed to you by a gratuitous providence. A legacy is a legacy, and deserves to be treated as such, and I propose to see that it gets what it deserves, without any more shilly-shallying.”

“I’m a busy woman,” Nancy groaned, “and I’ve hammered my finger to a pulp, trying to open this crate, while you perch on a broken step-ladder and prate to me of legacies. The saucers to these cups may be in here, and I can’t wait to find out. I’m perfectly crazy about this ware. It’s English—Wedgewood, you know.”

“I didn’t know.” Billy resignedly let himself to the floor, and appropriated the screwdriver. “I thought Wedgewood was dove color, 3 and consisted chiefly of ladies in deshabille, doing the tango on a parlor ornament. I smashed one in my youth, so I know. There, it’s open now. I may as well unpack what’s here. These seem to be demi-tasses.

he finished lugubriously, in a wailing baritone, taking an imaginary encore by bowing a head picturesquely adorned with a crop of excelsior curls, accumulated during his activities in and about the barrel.

“The trouble with the average tea-room, or Arts and Crafts table d’hôte,” Nancy said, sinking into the depths of a broken armchair in the corner of the dim, overcrowded interior, “is that when the pinch comes, quantity is sacrificed to quality. Smaller portions of food, and chipped chinaware. People who can’t keep a place up, let it run down genteelly. They won’t compromise on quality. I should never be like that. I should go to the ten-cent stores and replenish my whole establishment, if I couldn’t make it pay with imported ware and Colonial 4 silver. I’d never go to the other extreme. I’d never be so perceptibly second-rate, but in the matter of furnishings as well as food values, I’d find my perfect balance between quality and quantity, and keep it.”

“I believe you would. You are a thorough child, when you set about a thing. I’ll bet you know the restaurant business from A to Z.”

“I do. You know, I studied the organization of every well-run restaurant in New York, when I was doing field work from Teachers’ College. I’ve read every book on the subject of Diet and Nutrition and Domestic Economy that I could get my hands on. I’m just ready now for the practical application of all my theories.”

“Nancy Calory Martin is your real name. I don’t blame you for hating to give up this tea-room idea. You’ve dug so deep into the possibilities of it, that you want to go through. I get that.”

Nancy’s eyes widened in satiric admiration.

“You could understand almost anything, couldn’t you, Billy?” she mocked.

“All I want now,” Billy continued imperturbably, “is a chance to make you understand 5 something.” He smote the document in his left hand. “Of course, your uncle’s lawyer has explained all the details in his letters to you, but if you won’t read the letters or familiarize yourself with the contents of this will, somebody has got to explain it to you in words of one syllable. My legal training, slight as it is—”

“Sketchy is the better word, don’t you think so, Billy?”

“Slight as it is”—except for a prodigious frown, Billy ignored the interruption, though he took advantage of her suddenly upright position to encircle her neatly with a barrel hoop, as if she were the iron peg in a game of quoits—“enables me to put the fact before you in a few short, sharp, well-chosen sentences. I won’t again attempt to read the document—”

“You’d better not,” Nancy interrupted witheringly, “your delivery is poor. Besides, I don’t want to know what is in that will. If I had, it stands to reason that I would have found out long before this. I’ve had it three days.”

“You’ve had it three days and never once looked into it?” Billy groaned. “Who started all this scandal about the curiosity of women, anyway?”

“I don’t want to know what’s in it,” Nancy insisted. “As long as I’m not in possession of any definite facts, I can ignore it. I’ve got the kind of mind that must deal with concrete facts concretely.”

Billy grinned. “I’d hate the job of trying to subpœna you,” he said, “but you’d make a corking good witness, on the stand. Of course, you can proceed for a certain length of time on the theory that what you don’t know can’t hurt you, but take it from me, little girl, what you ought to know and don’t know is the thing that’s bound to hurt you most tremendously in the long run. What are you afraid of, anyway, Nancy?”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” Nancy corrected him, with some heat. “I just plain don’t want to be interrupted at this stage of my career. I consider it an impertinence of Uncle Elijah, to make me his heir. I never saw him but once, and I had no desire to see him that time. It was about ten years ago, and I caught a grippe germ from him. He told me between sneezes that I was too big a girl to wear a mess of hair streaming down my back like a baby. I stuck out my tongue at him, but he was 7 too near-sighted to see it. Why couldn’t he have left