ounced gravely her
judgment,--

"Your daughter, Mr. Ridge, must have a remarkable social talent."

"They all say it--must be so. Guess she got it from her mother's
folks--not from _me_." He laughed confidentially. "Well, I tell her
grandmother we must give her some rope--she'll marry one of these days."

"Of course."

"Young folks will be young."

(Afterwards Horatio puffed considerably when he told of his encounter
with the great Mrs. Bowman. "I wasn't the least might 'fraid of
her,--talked to her like anybody else. Who was she, anyway, when old Joe
Bowman married her? Saleslady in a State Street store. I've seen her
myself sliding the change across the counter and handing out socks." In
this the little man must have exaggerated, for it was long before the
Ridge advent in Chicago that the lady destined to become its social
leader had withdrawn from the retail trade, if indeed there were any
truth in the tale. "And she married a butcher," Horatio added. "Oh,
papa!" from Milly. "Yes, he _was_ a butcher, too--wholesale, maybe, but
he had the West Side Market out beyond Division Street--I've seen the
sign." That might well have been. But long before this the honorable
Joseph Bernhard Bowman had died,--God rest his soul in the granite
mausoleum in Oakwoods,--and left a pleasant number of millions to
finance his widow's aspirations. In Chicago, in those days, one never
laid the start up against any assured achievement.)

At any rate Mrs. Bowman's presence at Milly's party was the last touch
of success. Milly, though she had met the great lady, had not dared to
send her a card. But Mrs. Gilbert, who realized what it would mean to
Milly, had fetched her in her carriage, coaxingly,--"It will please the
girl so, you know, to have you there for a few minutes!" And when the
leader towered above Milly, whose flushed face was upturned with
glistening, childlike eyes, and said in her ear, "My dear, it's all
delightful, your party, and you are charming, really charming!" Milly
felt that she had received the red ribbon.

"She has a very magnetic personality, your young friend," the great lady
confided afterwards to Mrs. Gilbert, and repeated impressively several
times, "A magnetic personality--it's all in that."

The phrase had not become meaningless then, and it aptly described
Milly's peculiar power. Somehow she reached out unconsciously in every
direction and drew to her all these perspiring, pushing, eating, talking
peopl