to be "loose talk" and "wicked nonsense." And Milly
knew one young man who would never be asked again to the Granger Avenue
house.

After the verdict came all sorts of legal delays, and Milly largely lost
interest in the anarchists. The drama had evaporated, and though she
continued to read what the papers printed about the prisoners, more
personal affairs crowded in to blot out from her mind that sense of a
large, suffering humanity which she had had for a few moments. When the
governor was finally induced to intervene and commute some of the
sentences, she had a muddled notion that he had deprived Society of its
just vengeance, that the well-to-do, well-meaning people had failed to
get full punishment for the shocking deeds of the anarchists.

And that was all.

About a year later the young blue-eyed anarchist, in whom Milly had been
interested, blew off the top of his head with a bomb. But Milly was very
busy just at that time with other matters.

II

MILLY ENTERTAINS

Of much more importance to Milly than the fatal bomb was her first real
party. She had long desired to entertain.

What magic the word has for women of Milly's disposition! It conjures
the scene of their real triumphs, for woman displays herself when she
"entertains" as man does when he fights. She patronizes her friends,
worsts her enemies,--then, when she "entertains"....

Milly's party came off that first spring after the Ridges had moved into
the Acacia Street house,--in 1890 to be exact. Milly had had it in mind,
of course, even before the family moved. She had long been conscious of
her social indebtedness, which of late years had accumulated rapidly.
Her party should be also an announcement, as well as a review of
progress. She had consulted with the Nortons and Eleanor Kemp, who
advised giving a "tea,"--a cheap form of wholesale entertainment then in
more repute than now. Milly would have preferred to "entertain at
dinner," as the papers put it. But that was obviously out of the
question. The Ridge household with its shabby appointments and one
colored maid was not yet on a dinner-giving basis. Moreover, it would
have cost far too much to feed suitably the host that Milly aspired to
gather together. The moving and necessary replenishment of the household
goods had quite exhausted Horatio's purse, and the increase in the
monthly bills more than consumed all the present profits of the tea and
coffee business. Grandma Ridge was m