almost the liveliest season in and around Chicago, for having its own
refrigerating plant at its door Chicago prefers to stay at home during
the hot weather and take its vacation in the raw spring. So Milly found
life very full and gay. And she perceived after a time a new spirit in
her old home,--the metropolitan spirit, which was funnily self-conscious
and proud of itself. "We too," every one seemed to be saying, "are
natives of no mean city." Milly heartily approved of this spirit. She
liked to think and to say that after all, in spite of her husband's
errancy, Chicago was also _her_ city.

So she had the best of times the ten weeks she spent in the strong young
metropolis, and saw a great many people new and old, and was more
popular than ever. She was well enough aware of those little plans kind
friends were making for her, matrimonially, but her heart seemed dead to
all men. She looked at them critically, and her heart gave no sign.

"I'm going to be a business woman," she announced to the Kemps one day.

"Milly in business! What do you think of that now?" the banker responded
with a good-natured laugh that covered the jeer. "What next?"

But his wife, with jealous promptitude, added,--

"Milly, you are a wonder!"

"Yes," Milly affirmed stoutly. "Wait, and you will see."

For in spite of all the good times, the flattery, and the social
pleasures, the great New Idea still simmered in her head. She would do
something "unusual," and "in Chicago too," which was the place for
originality and venture,--this big-hearted, hopeful city whose breath of
life was business, always business, and where people believed in one
another and looked favorably at "the new thing."

One day Milly stepped into the shop of the smart man-milliner, where in
her opulent maiden days she had got her hats,--"just to see what Bamberg
has this season." After chatting with the amiable proprietor, who, like
every one who had dealings with Milly, was fond of her (even if she did
not pay him promptly), Bamberg called to one of his young ladies to
bring Mrs. Bragdon a certain hat he wished her to try on. "One of my
last Paris things," he explained, "an absolutely new creation," and he
whispered, "It was ordered for Mrs. Pelham--the young one, you know, but
it didn't suit her." He whispered still more confidentially, "She was
too old!"

After that how could Milly help "just trying it on"?

The girl who brought the hat exclaimed with a charming smile and a
decided French accent, "It cannot be--but it is--it _is_ Madame
Brag-donne!"

"Jeanne--Jeanine!" and they almost embraced, to the scandal of Bamberg.

It was one of the girls Milly had known at Gagé's, the chief
_demoiselle_ of the pastry shop. And how was Madame Catteau, the
_patronne_, and when did Jeanne come to America? The hat was forgotten
while the two chattered half in French and half in English about Gagé's,
Paris, and Chicago....

Of course Milly bought the hat in the end,--it was such a "jewel" and
became her as if "it were made for Madame Brag-donne," who, Jeanne
averred, was really more than half French. (Bamberg generously cut the
price to "nothing,--$35," and Milly promised to "pay when I can, you
know." Which perfectly contented the man-milliner. "We know _you_, Mrs.
Bragdon," he said, conducting her himself to the Kemps' motor in which
she had come.)

The negotiations over the hat, which had to be altered several times,
gave Milly a chance to confide in her old friend Jeanne the New Idea. A
Cake Shop--a real Paris _patisserie_, _chic_, and with French pastry,
here in this Chicago! The idea thrilled the pretty French woman, and
they discussed many of the details. "I must have a real French pastry
cook, and girls, Paris girls like you," Milly said with sudden
inspiration, "and a _madame_, of course, and the little marble-topped
tables and all the rest" as nearly as possible like the adorable Gagé's.
Jeanne thought that it would be "furiously successful." There would be
nothing like it in Chicago or anywhere else in the new world, where
Madame Brag-donne would admit the eating was not all that it might be in
quality. Oh, yes, it was a brilliant idea and Jean remembered a
sister-in-law who would make a remarkable _dame de comptoir_. She was
living in strict retirement at Grenoble, the fault of a wretched man she
had been feeble enough to marry....

Thus by the time the hat was hers Milly's scheme had taken definite
form, and it was also time for her to return to New York. "But I shall
be back soon," she told all her friends confidently, with a mysterious
nod of her pretty head.

She had seen Horatio, of course, had taken Virginia to spend a Sunday
with her unknown grandfather in the little Elm Park cottage. Josephine
received her husband's daughter and granddaughter with a carefully
guarded cordiality, which expanded as soon as she saw that Milly had
nothing to ask for. Horatio was very happy over the brief visit. He was
an old man now, Milly realized, but a chirping and contented old man,
who still went faithfully every working day in the year to his humble
desk in Hoppers' great establishment, on Sundays to the Second
Presbyterian, and in season watered the twenty-six square feet of turf
before his front door. He talked a great deal about Hoppers', which had
been growing with astounding rapidity, like everything in Chicago, and
now covered three entire city blocks. That and the church and Josephine
quite filled all the corners of Horatio's simple being. Milly promised
her father another, longer visit, but with her many engagements could
not "get it in." Horatio wrote her "a beautiful letter" and sent her on
the eve of her departure a box of flowers from his own garden.

Milly carried the flowers back to New York with her. She had much to
think over on that brief journey. Life seemed larger, much larger, than
it had ten weeks before, and her appetite for it had grown wonderfully
keener in the Chicago air. That was the virtue of the West, Milly
decided. It put vigor and hope into one. She also felt more mature and
independent. It had been a good thing for her to get away from New York,
out from under Ernestine's protecting wings, which closed uncomfortably
tight at times. She realized now that "she could do things for herself,"
and need not be so "dependent."

That, it must be observed, was the prevailing desire in Milly's new
ambitions. Like all poor mortals who have not either triumphed
indubitably in the world's eyes or sunk irretrievably into the mire, she
hungered for some definite self-accomplishment, something that would
give meaning and dignity to her own little life. All of her varied
experience,--all the phases and "ideas" through which she had lived from
her eager, unconscious girlhood to the present, were resolved and summed
up in this at last,--the desire to have some meaning to her life, some
dignity of purpose,--no longer to be the jetsam on the stream that so
many women are, buffeted by storms beyond their ken, the sport of men
and fate. She looked at her little daughter, who was absorbed in the
pictures of a magazine, and said to herself that she was doing it all
for her child, more than for herself. Virginia must have a very
different kind of life from hers! Parentlike she yearned to graft upon
the young tree the heavy branch of her own worldly experience. And
perhaps Milly realized, also, that the world into which little Virginia
was rapidly growing would be a very different sort of place--especially
for women--from the one in which Milly Ridge had fluttered about with
untutored instincts and a dominating determination "to have a good
time...."

Tired at last with so much meditation, Milly bought a novel from the
newsboy,--"Clive Reinhard's Latest and Best"--_A Woman's Will_, and
buried herself in its pages.

IV

GOING INTO BUSINESS

"Ernestine," Milly announced gravely that first night after Virginia was
tucked in bed, "I've something important to say to you."

"What is it, dearie?" Ernestine inquired apprehensively.

The Laundryman had taken a half holiday to welcome her family home after
their prolonged vacation. She and the old colored cook--a great admirer
of Milly's--had decorated the dining-room with wild flowers and
contrived a birthday cake with eight candles for Virginia, who had
celebrated her nativity a few days previously. Ernestine had also
indulged in a quart of champagne, a wine of which Milly was very fond.
But like poor Ernestine, in whom thrift usually fought a losing battle
with generosity, she had compromised upon a native brand that the dealer
had said was "just as good as the imported kind," but which Milly had
tasted and left undrunk.... She had also put on her best dress, a much
grander affair of black silk than the rose-pink negligee, which Milly
had compelled her to bestow upon Amelia. And she had lighted the fire in
the living-room and all the wax candles, though it was still warm
outdoors and they had to open the street windows and endure the thunder
of the traffic.

Milly, although she had received all Ernestine's efforts graciously, had
been wearied by the noise,--the fierce song of New York,--and had been
serious and non-communicative since her arrival. Virginia, however, had
been eloquently happy to return to her own home, her own things, her own
bed, and her own Amelia and Ernestine, which had somewhat made up to the
Laundryman for Milly's indifference.

Now Milly stood in the middle of the room, looking straight before her,
but seeing nothing. Ernestine, with hands clasped around her knees, sat
in a low chair and anxiously watched her friend,--

"Well, what is it?" she demanded, as Milly's silence continued after her
first announcement. Milly turned and looked at Ernestine, then said
slowly,--

"I'm going into business--in Chicago."

Ernestine gave a little gasp, of relief.

"What is it this time?" she asked.

Then Milly explained her project at great length, growing more eloquent
as she got deeper into the details of her conception, painting glowingly
the opportunities of providing hungry Chicagoans with toothsome
delicacies, and exhibiting a much more practical notion of the scheme
than she had had of her other ideas.

"Chicago is the place," she asserted with conviction. "I'm known there,
for one thing," she added with a touch of pride. "And it is the natural
home of enterprise. They do things out there, instead of talking about
them. You ought to know Chicago, Ernestine--I'm sure you'd like it."

The Laundryman asked in a dull tone:--

"Where'll you get the money to start your cake shop? For it will take
money, a sight of money, to do all those things you talk about."

Milly hesitated a moment before this question.

"I don't know yet," she said thoughtfully, "but I think I shan't have
much trouble in getting what capital I need. I have friends in Chicago,
who promised to help me."

(It was perfectly true that Walter Kemp had said half jestingly to Milly
when he last saw her,--"When you get ready to go into business, Milly,
you must let me be your banker!")

"But," Milly continued meaningly, "I wanted to talk it over with you
first. That's why I came back now."

Ernestine went over and closed the windows. It was a crisis. She
recognized it, indeed she had felt it coming for a long time. She would
have to choose some day between Milly and her own life--the laundry
business--and the day had come.

"Will you go in with me, Ernestine?" Milly asked directly...

They talked far into the night until the traffic had died to a distant
rumble. Probably in any case Ernestine would have yielded to Milly's
desires. Her heart was too deeply involved with Milly and Virginia--"her
family"--for her to allow them to take themselves out of her life, as
she saw that this time Milly would do should she refuse to share in the
new move. And as it happened the choice came when a crisis in her own
business was on the way. The two young men who owned all but a few
shares of the Twentieth Century Laundry stock had been bitten by the
trustifying germ and had agreed to go into a "laundry combine" with
several other large laundries. It was one thing, Ernestine realized, to
be the practical boss of a small business, and quite another to be a
subordinate in a large stock-gambling venture with an unknown crew of
masters.

This complication had come up in definite form since Milly's departure,
and Ernestine, after much consideration, had already resolved to sell to
the new company the few shares she owned in the Twentieth Century
Laundry, and look about for another opening in the business she knew.
But she hesitated with a woman's timidity before embarking alone in a
small independent business. She did not want the responsibility of being
the head of a business, especially in these days when, as she was well
aware, the little pots usually get smashed by the big kettles in the
stream.

So Milly's scheme happened to come at the right moment. As far as the
move to Chicago was concerned, Ernestine rather welcomed the change:
hers had been a monotonous treadmill in one environment. She was ready
for a venture in a new city, and curious about Chicago, of which Milly
had talked a great deal. But above all, the conclusive reason for her
consent was Milly--her affections. She could not lose her family, cost
what it might to keep them. She had no clear idea of Milly's soaring
ambition to transplant a French _patisserie_ to the alien soil of
Chicago. A cake shop, Ernestine supposed, was some sort of retail food
business like a bakeshop or delicatessen stand, and cake seemed to her
almost as elementally necessary to mankind as washing or liquor. But
even if the venture failed and took with it all her savings from
industrious years of toil, she would do it "like a sport," as Sam Reddon
had called her, and when the time came, face life anew....

"I'll go, Milly!" she said at the end, with a thump of her fist on her
knee. "And I'll put my own money into the thing. With what my stock will
bring and the cash in the bank, I'll have pretty nearly ten thousand
dollars. That ought to be enough to start a cake shop, I should think.
You won't have to go to any of your rich friends for help."

Milly thought so, too, and was surprised at the amount of Ernestine's
savings. She felt relieved not to have to go to the Kemps for money and
genuinely delighted to have Ernestine a partner in her venture.

"Now we must start at once!" she said gayly. "Mustn't lose a day, so
that we can open before the fall season is over."

She went to bed very happy and very confident. Ernestine, if less
confident, had sufficient self-reliance not to worry about the future.
Thanks to her eighteen years of successful self-support, she knew that
she could meet life anywhere any time, and get the best of it.

From the very next day there began for Milly the most active and the
happiest period of her existence. They packed hurriedly, and moved to
Chicago, Milly going on ahead to engage a house where they could live
and also have their cakes baked. With Eleanor's Kemp's advice Milly
wisely selected a large, old-fashioned brick house on the south side,
not far from the business district. Once the handsome residence of a
prosperous merchant, it had been abandoned in the movement outward from
the crowded city and was surrounded by lofty office buildings and
automobile shops. Its large rooms were cool and comfortable, and the
heavy cornices and woodwork gave an air of stately substantiality to the
old house that pleased Milly.

When Ernestine arrived the two partners went hunting for a suitable
shop. Milly wanted a location in the very centre of the fashionable
retail district on the avenue, somewhere between the Institute and the
Auditorium, the two most stable landmarks in the city. But the rents,
even at that time, were prohibitive, and they found they must content
themselves with one of the cross streets. There at last they found a
grimy little old building tucked in, as if forgotten, between two more
modern structures, which could be had entire for a rental that they
might (with a burst of courage) contemplate. It was only a few steps
from the great north and south thoroughfare and within the woman's zone.
Ernestine, indeed, was for going farther away after something more
modest in rental, so that they should not have to sink so much of their
capital at the start. But Milly argued cogently that for the special
clientèle which they wished to attract they must be in the quarter such
people frequented, near the haberdashers and milliners and beauty
parlors, and Ernestine yielded the point because she did not know about
cake shops. When they came to the business of the lease, the good
services of Walter Kemp were enlisted. After he had met Ernestine in the
course of the negotiations with the agent of the property, he reported
more hopefully to his wife of Milly's new undertaking.

"Anyway, she's got a good partner," he declared. "The Geyer woman is not
much on looks, but she's solid--and if I'm not mistaken, she knows her
business."

In this last the banker was mistaken. Ernestine was being carried along
passively in the whirl of Milly's enterprise and hardly knew what she
was about, it was all so unfamiliar; but she kept her mouth shut and her
eyes open and was learning all the time. She had already found out that
their cake shop was not to be a plebeian provision business, but an
affair of fashion and taste--or, as she called it,--for the "swells,"
and had her first instinctive misgivings on that score. And that ten
thousand dollars, which had seemed to her a substantial sum, she saw
would look very small indeed by the time the doors of their shop were
opened to "trade." But Milly's spirits were never higher: she sparkled
with confidence and ideas. On the signing of the lease, which Walter
Kemp guaranteed, they had a very jolly luncheon at the large hotel near
by.

As soon as the lease had been signed Milly telegraphed--she never wrote
letters any more, it was so much more businesslike to telegraph--to Sam
Reddon to come on at once and superintend the rehabilitation of the
premises. Ernestine would have intrusted this important detail to a
scrub woman, and the agent's Chicago decorator, but Milly said
promptly,--"That would spoil everything!"

Reddon responded to "Milly's Macedonian cry," as he described her
telegram, with an admirable promptness, arriving the next day "with one
clean shirt and no collars," he confessed. Milly took him at once to the
dingy shop.

"Now, Sam," she said to him in her persuasive way, "I want you to make
this into the nicest little _patisserie_ you ever saw in Paris. _Vrai
chic_, you know!"

"Some stunt," he replied, looking at the grimy squalor of the abandoned
shop, with its ugly plate-glass windows and forbidding walls. "Don't you
want me to get you a frieze for those bare walls--some Chicago nymphs
taking a bath in the Lake with a company of leading citizens observing
them from the steps of the Art Institute, in the manner of the sainted
Puvis?"

"Don't be silly, Sam!" Milly replied in reproof. "This is business."

And Sam put it through for her. They had a good time over the
transformation of the Chicago shop to something "elegant and
spirituelle," as Sam called it. He entered into the spirit of the thing,
as Milly knew he would, and turned out a creditable imitation of a Paris
shop, with stucco marbles, black woodwork, and glass everywhere, even to
red plush sofas along the walls and a row of little tables and chairs in
front. It had a very gay appearance--"distinguished" in its sombre
setting. "No one could help walking in to buy a cake, could they?" Sam
appealed to Ernestine.

"Hope they'll have the price for more than one," the former Laundryman
observed.

"Oh, you'll do a big business," Sam rejoined encouragingly. "Mostly on
tick, if Milly runs the cash drawer."

"She won't!" Ernestine retorted.

The last touch was the sign,--a long, thin black board on which was
traced in a delicate gilt script,--_The Cake Shop--Madame Millernine_.
The firm name was Sam's personal contribution to the business. "You must
have a suitable name, and who ever heard of a Bragdon or a Geyer keeping
a cake shop? There are proprieties in all these things."

But long before the sign was in place, Milly had sailed away from New
York for Paris. It had been discovered that a good French pastry cook
was not to be found in Chicago. A few were said to exist in America,
chiefly in New York hotels, but their handiwork was not up to Milly's
standard and their demands for wages were exorbitant. Also real _chic_
French _dames des comptoirs_ were exceedingly rare. Jeanne's Grenoble
sister-in-law proved to be, in Reddon's words,--"so infernally homely
that she would scare the customers from the door." So it was agreed that
while Ernestine attended to the numerous details of the preparations in
Chicago, Milly should make a hurried trip abroad consult with her
friend, Madame Catteau, and secure among other things a competent
pastry-cook and a few good-looking girls for waitresses.

Milly enjoyed her trip immensely. She had an air of importance about her
that Sam Reddon described as "diplomatic." She was a woman of affairs
now--large affairs and getting larger all the time. She spent two
rapturous weeks, so breathlessly absorbed in consulting with Madame
Catteau (who was ravished by Milly's scheme and deplored almost
tearfully her fate in having a husband and two children to keep her from
returning with Madame Brag-donne) and in interviewing men cooks and
young Frenchwomen, that she had no time for memories or sentimental
griefs of any sort. Once, flitting through the rue Gallilée in a cab,
she saw the hotel-pension where she and Jack had spent their first
winter, and she conjured up a vivid picture of the chilly salon, the
table of elderly English women, and the long, dull hours in her close,
back room. How long ago all that was, and how young and stupid she had
been then! She felt very much more alive now, an altogether new person,
with her business on her hands,--but not old, oh, not that!...

An ideal man pastry-cook was finally engaged, one highly recommended by
Madame Catteau as _vrai Parisien_, skilful in every sort of pastry, and
also three young women were induced, for love of Madame Brag-donne, to
try their fortune in the great city of Chicago. Also, Milly bought
quantities of bonbons, liquors, sirops, and other specialities of the
business, which she knew could not be had "really, truly French" in
America. With a feeling of having accomplished much, Milly gathered her
flock and set sail from Havre on the French steamer. M. Paul--the
pastry-cook--insisted on having a first-class passage, and would
converse with Milly whenever he found her on deck. The girls were sick
in the second cabin. Milly was indulgent with them all by sympathy as
well as by policy, but she was glad to see Sandy Hook. She decided that
the French temperament needed occupation, and she hustled her conscripts
across the city and into the Chicago train without an hour's delay.

Ernestine, Virginia, and Sam Reddon met the party at the Chicago station
and escorted the exclamatory laborers to their new home on the upper
floor of the old mansion. Then Milly and Sam went to see the Cake Shop,
which was now ready for its sweet merchandise. Milly, though she was
fresh from Paris, was much pleased with Sam's results, and praised him
warmly.

"It's cost an awful sight of money," Ernestine observed lugubriously.

Milly waved one hand negligently. Ernestine was almost as bad as Grandma
had been. Would she never rise to the conception of modern business? It
was not the outgo that counted, but the receipts. Milly knew that
already.

"I'll do you a better one next time," Sam promised, "when you open your
first _succursale_, Milly."

"That will be next autumn--in New York," Milly announced.

"My stars!" said Ernestine.

V

MILLY'S SECOND TRIUMPH

They opened the Cake Shop just before the holidays, with a great party.
Milly was positive that was the right procedure, though Ernestine could
see no point to giving away so much "trade." Nearly a thousand finely
engraved cards were sent out to Milly's friends, the friends of Milly's
friends, and their friends and acquaintances, to meet "Mrs. John Bragdon
and Miss Ernestine Geyer at the Cake Shop on Saturday, December the
fifteenth, from two until eight o'clock." (Ernestine, to be sure, could
not be "met," because she was in the cellar most of the time attending
to many essential details of the occasion. But Milly was there in the
shop above, prettily gowned in a costume she had managed to capture,
incidentally, on her flying visit to the French capital.)

It was a tremendous, resounding, thrilling success! Nearly everybody out
of the thousand must have come, they reckoned afterwards, and several
more besides who knew they had not been intentionally omitted from the
list of the invited. The guests began coming shortly after the doors
were thrown open (by a small colored boy, habited in Turkish costume),
and no sooner did any tear themselves away from the shop than twice as
many squeezed their way in somehow. At first the pretty French girls in
silk aprons and coquettish caps tried to execute the orders, but soon
their trays were seized by enthusiastic young men and the waitresses
took refuge behind the marble table beside the Madame and helped to hand
out the tempting cakes and bonbons and sorbets and sirops and liqueurs.
Even Milly pulled off her long white gloves, got in line with her
employees, and tried to appease her hungry guests. As a final touch a
dainty, gold-printed souvenir menu, with the list of delicacies to be
had at the Cake Shop, was handed to every comer, as long as they lasted.

There was one long glad chorus of praise for the Cake Shop and
everything it contained, from the mirrors, the fetching decoration, the
tables, the cakes (such as never had been dreamed of) to the pretty
girls, who were surrounded always by a cluster of men, trying with their
Chicago French to get attention.... And Milly, of course, was the
heroine of the occasion. Her health was drunk, and she had to get on a
chair to make a little speech of thanks and invitation to the Cake Shop
as a new Chicago Institution.

Many of the women who came knew their Paris better than New York, and
"adored" "this _chic_ little place." It recalled to them all most
delightful moments. And even in Paris they had never eaten anything so
delicious as M. Paul's cakes. Henceforth they should buy all their
desserts of "Madame Millernine," and there was a spatter of French
phrases all over the place.

"It was a wonder!" they declared, "this idea of creating a little of
Paris here in old Chicago. A touch of genius really--just like that
astonishing Milly Ridge to have thought of the one thing--and the cakes
were so good," etc., etc.

Milly's ears burned with the winged words, and she smiled all the time.
If Ernestine only could hear this, it would cure her of doubting. She
should hear! Milly felt that at last she had demonstrated herself. It
was like that other occasion so many, many years ago, when she had
surmounted all the difficulties and entertained her friends at "tea."
Then her triumph had been indubitable. But this time it was more
significant, for the affair was less childish: it meant money, Milly was
sure,--much money. So every one said.

At eight Milly was rescued by a party of friends and borne to a hotel in
triumph for a dinner which lasted long after midnight. Her health was
drunk again in real champagne; speeches were made to impromptu toasts of
"The New Woman in Business--God Bless Her." "The Poetry of the Palate,"
"The Creative Cake," etc.... At ten Ernestine and her aides, having
succeeded in gathering the débris and straightening out the place for
the public opening the next morning, went wearily home to bed. She was
told that it had been a great success; she hoped that the enthusiasm
would last; but all these people had eaten "a mighty sight of expensive
stuff" without paying for it, which seemed to the prosaic Ernestine "bad
business."

But Milly knew. She was right. Those cakes cast upon the waters of
fashionable Chicago brought in a hundredfold return. The indulgent
newspapers, always patriotically loud over local enterprise, noted the
opening of the Cake Shop as a minor social event and so in the
succeeding days all those who hadn't been invited and couldn't talk
French with the waitresses crowded into the store. It was a
Novelty,--the New Thing,--and became overnight a popular fad. M. Paul
was hard pressed to turn off enough of his delectable tid-bits--they had
to employ assistants for him almost at once, and one may suspect that
the fairylike melt-in-the-mouth quality of his best work began to
deteriorate from the second day. He had never baked cakes on this
wholesale scale. Did these gluttonous barbarians devour them by the
platterful?... Telephone orders were numerous, and Ernestine must
organize an efficient delivery system, in which she was at home. Milly
spent her days at the shop, where it became the fashion for men as well
as women to drop in late in the afternoon, to eat a cake or six and chat
with one's friends, to sip an anisette or grenadine, and maybe carry
away a bagful of cakes for the little ones at home or to eke out Mary's
thick-crusted New England pie.

So it was a Success! Milly and Ernestine worked like willing
galley-slaves, getting things to run smoothly, fitting into all the
corners that their excitable French assistants created daily. Milly was
one broad beam these days, and went happily to bed so tired that she was
asleep before she touched her pillow. Even Ernestine's heavy brows
relaxed their tension, for the "queer" business seemed to be making good
beyond her expectations. Milly had been right. They charged outrageous
prices for their delicacies, which scandalized Ernestine, who could not
believe that people would be foolish enough to pay twice and three times
what things were worth. But Milly insisted. "The people we are after,"
she said, "like it all the better the more they have to pay." And to
Ernestine's astonishment she seemed to be right again, for the present.
That, Ernestine concluded, must be another freak of this "rich trade";
the "swells" expected to be done and would be disdainful if they
weren't. Ernestine had a good deal of contempt for their patrons. But
the glowing proof of their business success lay in the cash drawer,
which literally overflowed with money, and they had accounts with half
the families in Chicago who pretended to be "in society."

Business men began to compliment Milly upon her shrewdness and predicted
a marvellous growth for the business. One broker seriously suggested
incorporating the Cake Shop, as certain candy manufacturers had
incorporated, and offered to boom the stock on the local exchange, Milly
talked of opening a summer branch in Newport or Bar Harbor, she could
not decide which. But she was a little timid about the east. She felt
that she had been right in starting in Chicago. The west was less
accustomed to Paris and had a lustier appetite for cake than New York,
and the charm of their Gallic interior was more of a novelty beside Lake
Michigan than it would be on Fifth Avenue. A branch in St. Louis or
Omaha might pay: her mind was nimble with schemes.... She was also going
out more or less all the time, to dinners and theatre parties, which
with her long day's work took every ounce of her strength and more.
Virginia had to get along these days the best she could. But was her
mother not building up a fortune for her future?

Of course they had their troubles from the very start. M. Paul's
Parisian morals, it was quickly found, could not be domesticated in a
Chicago home, and quarters had to be found for him outside the house.
Then the prettiest of the girls suddenly disappeared, much to Milly's
grief and anxiety. The men had been specially attentive to Lulu, and it
was found that she had taken a trip to the Pacific Coast with a young
broker. Then in the midst of their harvest the receipts began to fall
mysteriously, and Ernestine discovered an unauthorized trail from the
cash drawer to the large pocket of their _dame de comptoir_. Ernestine
resolutely handed her over to the police, which proved to be a very bad
move indeed, for no good French substitute could be found immediately
and her Nebraska successor spoke no French and twanged her English in
the good Omaha way. She gave the Cake Shop the air of a Childs'
Restaurant. Milly cabled her ally in Paris, Madame Catteau, for a new
Queen of the Counter, but she did not arrive until their first season
was drawing to a close.

There were other difficulties, new ones almost every day, but the two
partners met them all pluckily,--Ernestine with a determined look and a
heavy hand; Milly, with smiles and tactful suggestions. Ernestine
admired the wonderful way in which Milly managed "the French help,"
talking to them in their own language, flattering them, finding
companions and ways of forgetting their loneliness. And through their
troubles both were buoyed up by the stimulating sense of success and
prosperity. They were making money,--how much they did not know because
the business was complex and they hadn't time to figure it all out,--but
a good, deal they were sure. As the winter season came to a close there
was a lull naturally because many of their patrons left the city for
California and the south. It was a convenient breathing time in which
they could straighten out their affairs and plan the future campaign.
Trade revived at the end of May and held pretty well into July, then
dropped as the country season got into swing. Ernestine was for turning
the Cake Shop into a glorified ice-cream stand for the summer, but Milly
would not hear of this desecration of her Vision; they were both tired
and had earned a vacation. So while Ernestine took Virginia to one of
the lake resorts, Milly rested in the big, cool, empty house and played
around Chicago with her numerous friends.

She felt that she deserved a reward, and she took it.

VI

COMING DOWN

The Cake Shop started the autumn season rather dully. Some of its éclat
had evaporated by the second year, and M. Paul was decidedly getting
spoiled in the New World. His cakes were inferior in both quality and
variety, and he demanded a sixty per cent rise in wages, which they felt
obliged to give him. Another girl had drifted away during the summer, so
that one lone Parisian maiden--and the homeliest of the trio--remained
to "give an air" to the Cake Shop, and she, already corrupted by the
free air of the west, gave it sullenly and with a Chicago heaviness. The
shop itself was, of course, less fresh and dainty, having suffered from
ten months of smoke, although they had spent a good deal in having it
largely redecorated. Just as the cakes became heavier, tougher, more
ordinary, as the months passed, so the whole enterprise suffered
gradually from that coarsening and griming which seems an inevitable
result of Chicago use. Much of the fine artistic flavor of Milly's
conception had already been lost. It was becoming commercialized.
Ernestine did not perceive these changes, to be sure, though Milly did
in her less buoyant moments. What troubled Ernestine was the fact that
the receipts were falling off, and the accounts were hard to collect.

She suspected that Milly had lost something of her enthusiasm for the
Cake Shop. Milly certainly devoted less ardor to the enterprise. She
continued to go out a good deal, more than Ernestine felt was good for
her health or good for the business, and she often required the use of
the house and the servants for elaborate luncheons or dinner-parties.
This invariably put the machine out of order, although Milly always feed
the employees liberally for their extra service. Ernestine did not like
to complain, because it seemed selfish to deprive Milly of the social
relaxation she craved. So she took her supper with Virgie in the
latter's nursery. When she did demur finally, Milly, without a word,
transferred her party to an expensive new hotel, which was not good for
Milly's all-too-open purse.

Business picked up at the holiday season, but fell off again thereafter.
They were not making much money this second winter, and Ernestine was
becoming anxious.

"You're always worrying about something," Milly said, when Ernestine
pointed out this fact to her. "If the Cake Shop fails, I'll think up
something else that will put us right," she added lightly, in the rôle
of the fertile creator, and tripped off to the theatre.

But that wasn't Ernestine's idea of business. She got out the books and
went through them again.

The play proved to be entertaining, and Milly returned home in good
spirits. From the hall she heard the sounds of voices in altercation in
the rear room where Ernestine had her desk. M. Paul's excited accent
could be distinguished playing arpeggios all over Ernestine's grumbling
bass. "Oh, dear!" thought Milly, "Paul's off the hooks again and I'll
have to straighten him out...."

"See here, my man--" Ernestine growled, but what she was going to say
was cut off by a flood of Gallic impertinence.

"Your man! Ah, non, non, non! Indeed not the man of such a woman as you!
I call you 'my voman'? Not by--"

Here Milly intervened to prevent a more explicit illustration of M.
Paul's contempt for Ernestine's femininity.

"She call me her 'man'!" the pastry-cook flamed, pointing disdainfully
at Ernestine.

"The fellow's been thieving from us for months," Ernestine said angrily,
and pointing to the door she said,--"Get out!"

"Oh, Ernestine!" Milly protested.

But M. Paul had "got out" with a few further remarks uncomplimentary to
American women, and the damage was done. Ernestine could not be made to
see that with the departure of the pastry-cook, the last substantial
prop to Milly's fairy structure was gone.

"The beast has been selling our sugar and supplies," Ernestine
explained.

"It makes no difference what he has done!" Milly replied with
justifiable asperity.

The next morning she set forth to track the fugitive pastry-cook and
wile him back to their service. She found him after a time at one of the
new hotels, where he had already been engaged as pastry-cook. To Milly's
plea that he return to his old allegiance, he orated dramatically upon
Ernestine and _la femme_ in general.

"You, Madame Brag-donne, are _du vrai monde_," he testified tearfully.
"But that thing--bah! 'Her man'--_canaille du peuple_,"--etc.

Milly, touched by the compliment, tried to make him understand the
meaning of her partner's remark. But he shook his head wrathfully, and
she was forced to depart, defeated. It was some consolation to reflect
that this time it had been Ernestine's fault. Milly thought there might
be something in the Frenchman's criticism of Ernestine. Her good partner
lacked tact, and she was indisputably "of the people." Milly
philosophized,--"Servants always feel those things."

She walked across the city from the hotel in a depressed frame of
mind,--not so much crushed by approaching disaster as numbed. She had
something of the famous "artistic temperament," which is fervid and
buoyant in creation, but apt to lose interest and become cold when the
gauzy fabric of fancy's weaving fails to work out as it should. She
passed the Cake Shop, where through the long front windows she could see
the girls idling over the marble counter, and instead of turning in, as
she had meant to do, she kept on towards the Avenue. The place gave her
a chill these days. All the dazzling gilt was dropping from the creature
of her imagination, and it was becoming smudged, like the sign, by
reality. Ernestine had seriously suggested converting the Cake Shop into
a lunch-counter for the employees of the neighboring office buildings!
Milly saw a horrible vision of coarse sandwiches, machine-made pies, and
Bismarcks (a succulent western variety of doughnut) on the marble tables
instead of Paul's dainty confections; coffee and "soft drinks" in place
of the rainbow-hued "sirops." Her soul shuddered. No, they would take
down the pretty sign and close the doors of the Cake Shop before
admitting such desecration into the temple of her dreams....

People seemed to be hurrying towards the Avenue, their heads tilted
upwards, and a crowd had gathered on the steps of the Art Institute.
Milly, whose mind fortunately was easily distracted from her troubles,
joined the pushing, good-natured throng of men and women, who were
staring open-mouthed into the heavens. It was the opening day of
Chicago's first "Air Meet," which Milly had forgotten in the anxiety
caused by M. Paul. Far above the smoky haze of the city, in the dim,
distant depths of the blue sky there was a tiny object floating,
circling waywardly, as free apparently as a lark in the high heavens, on
which the eyes of the multitude were fastened in fascination. Milly
uttered a little, unconscious sigh of satisfaction. Ah, that would be to
live,--to soar above the murk and the roar of the city, free as a bird
in the vast, wind-swept spaces of the sky! It filled her, as it did the
eager crowd, with delight and yearning aspiration. She sighed again....

"It's a pretty sight, isn't it?" a familiar voice observed close behind
her. With a start Milly turned and perceived, on the step below,--Edgar
Duncan. His long face had an eager, wistful expression, also, caused
perhaps by the aerial phenomenon above, as much as by the sight of his
lost love; but the expression took Milly back immediately to the little
front room on Acacia Street, when Duncan had stood before her to receive
his blow.

"There!" Duncan exclaimed quickly, before Milly could collect an
appropriate remark. "He's coming down!" Speechless they both craned
their heads backwards to follow the aeroplane. The airman, tired of his
lofty wandering, or having done the day's stunt required of him, had
begun to descend and shot rapidly towards the spectators out of the sky.
As he came nearer the earth, he executed the reckless corkscrew
man[oe]uvre: the great winged machine seemed to be rushing, tumbling in
a perpendicular line just above the heads of the gazing crowd. There was
an agonized murmur, a prolonged,--"Ah!" It gave Milly delicious thrills
up and down her body. When the airman took another leap towards earth,
her heart stopped beating altogether. With only a few hundred feet
between him and the earth the airman turned his planes and began
circling in slow curves over the adjacent strip of park, as if he were
judiciously selecting the best spot for alighting.

"It doesn't take 'em long to come down!" Duncan remarked, and Milly,
with a swift mental comparison of the aeroplane flight and her own
little fate, replied,--

"It never takes long to come down, does it?"

She looked more closely now at her former lover. Apparently his blow had
not seriously damaged him. His figure was fuller and his face tanned to
a healthier color than she remembered. He seemed to be in good spirits,
and not perceptibly older than he was ten years before. They descended
the steps with the moving throng and strolled slowly up the crowded
boulevard, watching the distant flights and talking.

Edgar Duncan, she learned, had not spent the ten years nursing a wounded
heart. He had doubled the acreage of his ranch, he told her, and thanks
to the fatherly government at Washington, which had trebled the duty on
foreign lemons, he was doing very well indeed. The big yellow balls
among the glossy leaves were fast becoming golden balls. He was now on
his way east to see his people and also to look after the interests of a
fruit-growers' association in the matter of a railroad rate on lemons.
He seemed very much alive. The blow had probably done him good, Milly
concluded,--had waked him up.

There were a few hours between his trains, he explained to Milly, and so
he had wandered over to the park to watch the aeroplanes, which were the
first of the bird machines he had ever seen. It was almost time now for
him to leave. But he lost that Washington train. For he walked home with
Milly to see her little girl, stayed to luncheon, and was still at the
house telling Virginia about real oranges on real orange trees when
Ernestine came in. She was hot and tired, evidently much disturbed, and
more than usually short with Milly's guest. Duncan left soon afterwards,
and then Milly asked,--

"What's the matter, Ernestine?"

"I'd think you'd know!... If we can't get a cook, we might as well shut
up the shop to-morrow."

Milly had forgotten all about the loss of the pastry-cook and the
business in her surprise at meeting Edgar Duncan again and all the
memories he had revived.

"All right!" she said promptly. "Do it."

"Give up the business?" Ernestine asked in amazement. She could not
believe Milly meant to take her testy remark seriously. What had come
over Milly!

"We might try it in Pasadena," Milly remarked after a time. "There are a
lot of rich people out there."

This went beyond the bounds of Ernestine's patience.

"Pasadena!... Last time it was Palm Beach, and before that it was
Newport. What's the matter with staying right here and making good?"

Milly did not reply. Ernestine's pent-up irritation overflowed still
more.

"You ain't any business woman, Milly!"

"I never said I was."

"You always want to get in some society work--social pull! Rich folks!"
Ernestine groaned with disgust. "That kind of furor don't last. They're
too flighty in their notions."

"Like me," Milly interposed bitterly.

"Well, it ain't business to quit."

"Oh, business!" Milly exclaimed disgustedly. She felt like an artist
whose great work has been scorned by the philistines.

"Yes, business!" Ernestine asserted hotly. "If you're going into
business, you've got to play the game and play it _hard_ all the time,
too. Or you'd better marry and do the other thing."

"Perhaps I'll marry," Milly retorted with an enigmatical smile.

Ernestine stared at her agape. Was that what was the trouble with Milly?
She had not meant to go so far.

VII

CAPITULATIONS

They found another pastry-cook,--a French-Canadian woman. But if her
ancestors had ever seen the Isle de France, it must have been centuries
ago, and the family had become fatally corrupted since by British
gastronomic ideals. Her pastry was thicker and heavier than Paul's
worst, and she had "no more imagination than a cow" according to Milly.
How could one make fine cakes without imagination? "They make better
ones at the Auditorium Hotel even," Milly observed disgustedly. The Cake
Shop had gone down another peg. Now it served afternoon tea with English
wafers instead of the exotic "sirops" and "liqueurs," and advertised
"Dainty Luncheons for Suburban Shoppers." (That was Ernestine's
phrasing.) Milly almost never went near the place, and acted as if she
wanted to forget it altogether.

In her efforts to revive her partner's waning interest Ernestine even
suggested Milly's going again to Paris to engage a fresh crew, but Milly
only shrugged her shoulders. "What's the use? You know we haven't the
money."

"Borrow it!" Ernestine said desperately.

"When a thing is dead, it's dead," Milly pronounced, and added
oracularly, "Better to let the dead past bury its dead," and murmured
the lines from a celebrated new play, "Smashed to hell is smashed to
hell!" If she were willing to see her creation die, Ernestine ought to
be. But that was not Ernestine's nature: she was not artistic nor
temperamental, as Milly often proved to her. In her dumb, heavy fashion
she still tried to prop up the ill-fated Cake Shop and make it pay
expenses at least, in one way or another.

The time came, as it must come, when even this was more than Ernestine
could compass. She had tried every device she could think of, but, as
she reflected sadly, she had not been brought up to the "food business."
It was a peculiar business, like all businesses, especially the
delicatessen end, and needed an expert to diagnose its cure. So the
doors were closed, and a "To Rent" sign plastered on the front panes.
Ernestine acknowledged defeat.

Milly was outwardly unmoved. She had divined the outcome so much sooner
than her partner that she had already passed through the agonies of
failure and come to that other side where one looks about for the next
engagement with life. Possibly she had already in view what this was to
be. She assented indifferently to Ernestine's proposal that they should
meet Mr. Kemp and the agent at the Shop and decide what was to be done
about the lease, which had more than a year to run.

"They'll be there shortly after noon," Ernestine reminded Milly, as the
latter was about to leave the house that day.

"All right," she said evasively. "I'll try to be there, but it won't
make any difference if I'm not--you know about everything."

She was not there. Ernestine knew well enough that Milly would not come
to the funeral of their enterprise at the Cake Shop, and though she felt
hurt she said nothing to the men and went through with the last
formalities in the dusty, dismantled temple of cakes. At the end the
banker asked Ernestine kindly what she meant to do. He knew that the
Laundryman's capital had gone--all her savings--and that "the firm" was
in debt to his bank for a loan of several hundred dollars, which he
expected to pay himself and also to take care of the lease.

"I don't know yet," Ernestine replied. "I'll find some place.... And it
won't be in any fancy kind of business like this, you can bet," and she
cast a malevolent glance over the tarnished glories of the Cake Shop. "I
got my experience and I paid for it--with every cent I had in the world.
I ain't goin' to buy any more of that!"

The banker laughed sympathetically.

"What's Mrs. Bragdon going to do?" he inquired.

"I don't know--she hasn't told me yet."

Her answer was evasive because Ernestine suspected very well what Milly
was likely to do.... She turned the key in the lock, handed it over to
the agent, and with a curt nod to the two men strode away from the Cake
Shop for the last time. (That evening the banker, reporting the
occurrence to his wife, said,--"I feel sorry for that woman! She's lost
every cent she had--our Milly has milked her clean." "Walter, how can
you say that?" his wife replied indignantly. "It wasn't Milly's fault if
the business failed, any more than hers." "Well, I'd like to bet it's a
good big part the fault of our pretty friend." "Miss Geyer ought not to
have gone into something she knew nothing about." "Milly bewitched her,
I expect. The best thing she can do is to shake her and go back to the
laundry business.")

It was not Ernestine, however, who was to "shake" Milly. That lady
herself was busily evading their partnership, as Ernestine suspected.
While the short obsequies were being transacted at the Cake Shop, Milly
was lunching in the one good new hotel Chicago boasts with Edgar Duncan,
who had returned from Washington sooner than expected and had asked
Milly by telegraph to lunch with him. Seated in the spacious, cool room
overlooking the Boulevard and the Lake, at a little table cosily placed
beside the open window, Milly might easily have looked through the
fragrant plants in the flower-box and descried Ernestine doggedly
tramping homeward from her final task at the Cake Shop. Milly preferred
to study the menu through her little gold lorgnette, and when that
important matter had been settled to her satisfaction, she sat back
contentedly and smiled upon the man opposite her, who, after a
successful hearing before the Commerce Commission, had more than ever
the alert air of a man who knows his own business. Outside in the summer
sunlight, above the blue water of the Lake and over the dingy sward of
the Park, the airmen were man[oe]uvring their winged ships, casting
great shadows as they dipped and soared above the admiring throngs.

"See," Milly pointed excitedly through the open window. "He's going up
now!" And she twisted her neck to get the last glimpse of the mounting
machine.

"Yes," Duncan remarked indifferently, "they're doing a lot of stunts."
But he hadn't come back from Washington by the first train that left
after the hearing to talk aeroplanes. And Milly let him do the talking,
as she always had, listening with a childlike interest to what he had to
say.

By this time the reader must know Milly well enough to be able to divine
for himself what was passing in her mind as she daintily excavated the
lobster shell on her plate and listened to the plea of her rejected
lover. Probably this was no more able to stir her pulses to a mad rhythm
to-day than it had been ten years before. Edgar Duncan was somewhat
nearer being her Ideal,--not much. But Milly was ten years older and
"had had her throbs," as she once expressed it. She knew their meaning
now, their relative value, and she knew other values.

The value of a home and a stable position among her fellows, for
instance, no matter how small, and so she listens demurely while the man
talks hungrily of the Joy of Home and the Beauty of Woman in the Home,
"where they belong, not in business." (How Ernestine would give it to
him for that, and Hazel, too, Milly thought!)

"You are such a woman, Milly!" he exclaims.--"Just a woman!" and in his
voice the expression has a tender, reverential sound that falls
pleasantly on Milly's ears. But she says nothing: she does not mean to
be "soft" this time. Yet in reply to another compliment, she admits,
smiling delphically,--"Yes, I _am_ a woman!"

The man takes up another verse of his song, for he has planned this
attack carefully while the swift wheels were turning off the miles
between Washington and Chicago.

"You want your little girl to have a home, too, don't you? A real home,
_your_ home, where she can get the right sort of start in life?"

"Yes," Milly assents quickly. "The proper kind of home means so much
more to a girl than to a boy. If I myself had had--" But she stops
before this baseness to poor old Horatio. "I want Virgie's life to be
different from mine--so utterly different!"

A wave of self-pity for her loneliness after all her struggle sweeps
over her and casts a cloud on her face.

"You can't be a business woman and make that kind of home for your
daughter," Duncan persists, pushing forward his point.

Milly shakes her head.

"I'm afraid a woman can't!" she sighs.

(She doesn't feel it necessary to tell him that for almost one hour by
the clock she has not been a "business woman," even in the legal sense
of the term.)

"Oh," she murmurs, as if convinced by his logic, "I'm good for
nothing--I can't even be a good mother!"

"You are good for everything--for me!"

But Milly is not ready yet. In this sort of transaction she has grown to
be a more expert trader than she was once.

"It must be the right man," she observes impersonally.

And the Ranchman takes another start. He paints glowingly the freedom
and the beauty of that outdoors life on the Pacific Coast,--the fragrant
lemon orchard with its golden harvest of yellow balls, the velvety
heavens spangled with stars each night, the blooming roses, etc., etc.
But he cannot keep long off the personal note.

"I've sat there nights on my veranda, and thought and thought of you,
Milly, until it seemed as though you were really there by my side and I
could almost touch you."

"Really!" Milly is becoming moved in spite of herself. Somehow Duncan's
words have a genuine ring to them. "I believe," she muses, "that you
_are_ the sort of man who could care always for a woman."

"I always have cared for one woman!"

"You are good, Edgar."

"I don't know about that. Good hasn't much to do between men and women
when they love.... It's always love that counts, isn't it?"

(Milly is not as sure of that doctrine as she was once, but she is
content that the man should feel that way. She does not argue the
point.)

"Can't you sit there with me, Milly, and watch the stars for the rest of
our lives?"

Milly evades. She must have the terms set forth more explicitly.

"It wouldn't be right to keep Virgie out there away from people all the
time, would it?"

He sees the point and yields.

"We'll come here every year for the fall and see your friends."

"That would be nice," she accepts graciously. But Chicago doesn't appeal
to Milly as strongly as it had on her first return to its breezy, hearty
life.

"I should like to have Virgie study music," she suggests, "and
travel--have advantages."

"Of course!" he assents eagerly, and bids again, more daringly,--"We'll
take her to Europe."

"That would be pleasant."

"In a year or two," he explains, "the ranch will almost run itself and
be making big money--with the right rate on lemons and the tariff as it
is. Then we can do almost anything we please--live any place you like."

A pause here. So far it is wholly satisfactory, Milly is thinking, and
she wonders what more she wants. Then,--

"Milly?"

She looks at him with kind eyes.

"You won't make me wait--much longer?"

Milly slowly shakes her head, acceptingly.

"God, how I have longed for you!"

"Silly man!"

But she is pleased. She is thinking,--

"I'm doing it for Virginia. It's her only chance--I must do it."

Which was not altogether a falsehood, and she repeats this self-defence
to herself again when later on Duncan kisses her for the first
time,--"It's for _her_ sake--I would do anything for her." And with a
sigh of unconquerable sentimentalism she seals her bargain on the man's
lips. She has found a new sentimental faith,--a mother's sacrifice for
her child.... But she is really very glad, and quite tender with him.

In this mood she bade her lover good-by at the door and went back into
the house to meet her partner. Ernestine, who was not too obtuse to
recognize what had happened without the need of many words, listened to
Milly's announcement dumbly. At the end she put her hand on Milly's
shoulder and looked steadily at her for several moments. She was well
enough aware how false Milly had been to her, how careless of her stupid
heart, how she had betrayed her in the final hour of their tribulations.
Nevertheless, she said quite honestly,--"I'm so glad, dearie, for you!"
and kissed her.

VIII

THE SUNSHINE SPECIAL

A few weeks later a little party gathered in the murky railroad station
from which the California trains depart from Chicago. As they approached
the waiting train, which bore on its observation platform the brass
sign, "Sunshine Special," the negro porters showed their gleaming teeth
and the conductor muttered with an appropriate smile,--"Another of them
bridal parties!" At the head of the little procession the Ranchman
walked, conversing with Walter Kemp. Duncan had an air of apparent
detachment, but one eye usually rested on Milly, who was walking with
her father and was followed by a laughing group. Eleanor Kemp was not
among them. Somehow since the last evolution of Milly's affairs there
had been a coolness between these two old friends, and Mrs. Kemp had not
taken the trouble to leave her summer home "to see Milly off" again. She
had sent her instead a very pretty dressing-case with real
gold-stoppered bottles, which the new husband now handed over to the
porter.

Milly's arm was caressingly placed on her father's. Horatio was older,
more wizened, than when we first met him, but he was genial and happy,
with a boyish light in his eyes.

"You'll be sure to come, papa!" Milly said, squeezing his arm.

"I won't miss it this time, daughter," Horatio replied slyly,--"my
long-delayed trip to California." He chuckled reminiscently.

"You must bring Josephine with you, of course," Milly added hastily.

Mrs. Horatio, still stern behind her spectacles, even in the midst of a
merry bridal party, relented sufficiently to say,--

"I ain't much on travelling about in cars myself."

Milly, with the amiability of one who has at last "made good," remarked
patronizingly,--

"You'll get used to the cars in three days, my dear."

Horatio meanwhile was playing with little Virginia, teasing her about
her "new Papa." The little girl smiled rather dubiously. She had the
animal-like loyalty of childhood, and glanced suspiciously at the "New
Papa." However, she had already learned from the constant mutations of
her brief life to accept the New and the Unexpected without complaint.
At last perceiving Ernestine, who was hurrying breathlessly down the
long platform in search of the party, a huge bunch of long-stemmed roses
hugged close in her arms, Virginia ran to meet her old friend and clung
tight to the Laundryman.

"Take 'em!" Ernestine said, breathing hard and thrusting the prickly
flowers into Milly's arms. "My! I thought I'd miss the train."

"Oh, Ernestine! why did you do that, dear?" Milly exclaimed in a pleased
voice.

"It's the last of the Cake Shop!" Ernestine replied with a grim smile.
And the roses were almost literally the sole remains of that defunct
enterprise, having taken the last of Ernestine's dollars.

"They're perfectly gorgeous--it was lovely of you to think of bringing
them for me. I'll cut the stems and put them in water and they will keep
all the way to the Coast--and remind me of you," Milly said, who had
formed the habit of receiving floral offerings.

She handed the awkward bunch over to "Husband," who hastened dutifully
to place them in their compartment.

"He's on his job," Ernestine grinned. The banker laughed.

"That's what we men are made for, isn't it, Milly?"

"Of course!"

She was in her right element once more, the centre of the
picture,--becomingly dressed in a gray travelling suit, "younger than
ever," about to start on a wonderful three days' journey to a strange
new land, with her faithful and adoring knight. What more was there in
life?

"All aboard!" the conductor droned.

Exclamations and final embraces. Milly came to Ernestine Geyer last.

"Good-by, dear! You've been awfully good to me--I can never forget it!"

"Yes, you will--that's all right," Ernestine replied gruffly, not
knowing exactly what she was saying.

"I hope you'll make a fortune in your new business--"

"Him and me," Ernestine interrupted, nodding jocularly towards the
banker, "are going into the laundry business together."

"You must write me all about it!"

"I will."

In a last confidential whisper Milly said,--"And some day marry a good
man, dear!"

"Marry!!" Ernestine hooted, so that all could hear. "Me, marry! Not
much--I'll leave the matrimony business to you."

Then they kissed.

There were tears in Ernestine's eyes as she stood waving a
pocket-handkerchief after the receding train. Milly was at the rail of
the observation platform, leaning on the brass sign and waving both
hands to her old friends, Chicago, her past. Little Virginia at her side
waved an inch or two of white also, while the smiling ranchman stood
over them benignantly, protectingly, one hand on his wife's shoulder to
keep her from falling over the rail.

When the train had swept out into the yards, the little party broke up.
Horatio, who was choky, turned to his wife. Mrs. Horatio was already
studying through her spectacles a suburban time-card to ascertain the
next "local" for Elm Park. Ernestine and Walter Kemp slowly strolled up
the train-shed together. The banker was the first to break the
silence:--

"Guess they'll have a comfortable journey, not too dusty.... He seems to
be a good fellow, and he must have a fine place out there."

Ernestine said nothing.

"Well," the banker remarked, "Milly is settled now anyway--hope she'll
be happy! She wasn't much of a business woman, eh?" He looked at
Ernestine, who smiled grimly, but made no reply. "She's better off
married, I expect--most women are," he philosophized, "whether they like
it or not.... That's what a woman like Milly is meant for.... She's the
kind that men have run after from the beginning of the world, I
guess--the woman with beauty and charm, you know."

Ernestine nodded. She knew better than the banker.

"She'll never do much anywhere, but she'll always find some man crazy to
do for her," and he added something in German about the eternal
feminine, which Ernestine failed to get.

There was a steady drizzle from a lowering, greasy sky outside of the
train-shed, and the two paused at the door. With a long sigh Ernestine
emitted,--

"I only hope she'll be happy now!"

As if he had not heard this heartfelt prayer, the banker mused aloud,--

"She's Woman,--the old-fashioned kind,--just Woman!"

Ernestine looked steadily into the drizzle. Neither commented on what
both understood to be the banker's meaning,--that Milly was the type of
what men through the ages, in their paramount desire for exclusive sex
possession, had made of women, what civilization had made of her, and
society still encouraged her to become when she could,--an
adventuress,--in the banker's more sophisticated phrase,--a fortuitous,
somewhat parasitic creature. In Ernestine's more vulgar idiom, if she
had permitted herself to express her conviction, "Milly was a little
grafter." But Ernestine would not have let hot iron force the words
through her lips....

"And I suppose," the banker concluded, "that's the kind of women men
will always desire and want to work for."

"I guess so," Ernestine mumbled.

Had she not worked for Milly? She would have slaved for her cheerfully
all her life and felt it a privilege. Milly had stripped her to the
bone, and wounded her heart in addition,--but Ernestine loved her still.

"Can I put you down anywhere?" Kemp asked, as his car came up to the
curb.

"No, thanks--I'll walk."

"Remember when you want some money for your new business to come and see
me!"

"I owe you too much now."

"Oh," he said good-naturedly, "that account is wiped off. The
partnership's been dissolved."

"That ain't the way I do business."

"I wish more of my men customers felt like _you_," the banker laughed as
the car drove away.

Ernestine plunged into the drizzle, and while the Sunshine Special was
hurrying the old-fashioned woman westward to the golden slopes of
California, with her pretty

    "face that burned the topless towers of Ilium,"

the new woman plodded sturdily through the mucky Chicago streets on her
way to the eternal Job.

Milly was settled at last, and, let us assume, "lived happily ever
after."

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE HEALER

"Distinctly unusual--and distinctly interesting."--_Chicago
Inter-Ocean._

"Mr. Herrick's finest."--_Omaha Herald._

"Had Ibsen been a novelist, and had he chosen Mr. Herrick's theme in
'The Healer,' he might have written much the same sort of a
novel."--_The Dial._

"Of extraordinary vividness--a book of power."--_Chicago Tribune._

"Mr. Herrick has written a novel in which every page has sustained
interest, though we think he does not intend the reader to grasp the
full moral purport of his story until he reveals it himself in the last
paragraph. We credit the writer not only with possessing a high ideal,
but also with having carried out his object with great artistic
success--two things which are unhappily not often found between the same
covers."--_London Athenæum._

"...exceedingly well done."--_Bookman._

"...bears directly upon great evils in society to-day."--_N.Y. Times._

TOGETHER

"Scarce a page but is tense and strong."--_Record-Herald._

"A masterpiece of keen vision and vivid depiction."--_Mail._

"An absorbing story ... likely to make a sensation."--_New York Evening
Post._

"A book of the first magnitude, that handles a momentous theme boldly,
wisely, sympathetically, and with insight."--_The Forum._

A LIFE FOR A LIFE

"A serious attempt to treat a big living question in a new
way."--_Record-Herald._

THE GOSPEL OF FREEDOM

"A novel that may be truly called the greatest study of social life that
has ever been contributed to American fiction."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._

THE WEB OF LIFE

"It is strong in that it faithfully depicts many phases of American
life, and uses them to strengthen a web of fiction, which is most
artistically wrought out."--_Buffalo Express._

THE COMMON LOT

Is a strong, virile picture of modern business life, with all its
temptations to "graft" and its fight for privilege.

"A novel which it would be difficult to overpraise."--_Philadelphia
Ledger._

"It is by long odds the greatest novel of the autumn."--_The New York
American._

THE REAL WORLD

"Unusually satisfying.... The hero steadily approaches the dividing line
between safety and ruin and you are kept in agitated suspense until the
dramatic climax. A number of powerful scenes add color and forcefulness
to a story in the main eminently satisfactory."--_Record-Herald_,
Chicago.