rlor. In the front room she had placed the
battered mahogany, and had just rejected the figured parlor carpet when
her grandmother came upon her unawares. The old lady had slipped in
noiselessly through the area door.

"My dear!" she remarked softly, a deceitful smile on her thin lips.
"Why, my dear!" Milly hated this tender appellation, scenting the
hypocrisy in it. "Haven't you made a mistake? I _think_ this is the
parlor."

"Of course it is the parlor," Milly admitted briskly, wheeling to meet
the cold gray eyes that were fixed on her.

"Then why, may I ask, is the parlor furni--"

"Because I am doing this to suit myself," the girl promptly explained.
"In _this_ house, I mean to have things suit _me_, grandma," she added
firmly. It was just as well to settle the matter at once.

"But, my dear," the old lady stammered, helpless before the audacity of
the revolt. "I'm sure nobody wants to cross you--but--but--where's the
carpet?"

"I'm not going to have that ugly green rag staring at me any longer!"

"My dear--"

"Don't 'my dear' me any more, grandma, please!"

Mrs. Ridge gasped, closed her thin lips tightly, then emitted,--

"Mildred, I'm afraid you are not quite yourself to-day," and she
retreated to the rear room, where in the gloom were piled her rejected
idols.

After an interval she returned to the fight, gliding noiselessly forth
from the gloom. She was a very small and a very frail little body, and
as Milly put it she was "always sneaking about the house like a ghost."

"I see that the kitchen things have not been touched, and the
dining-room furniture--"

"And they won't be--until I have this room to suit me.... Sam, please
move that desk a little nearer the window.... There!"

It was characteristic of Milly to begin with the show part of the
premises first and then work backwards to the fundamentals, pushing
confusion slowly before her. The old lady watched the colored man move
the rickety mahogany back and forth under Milly's orders for a few more
minutes, then her thin lips tightened ominously.

"I think your father may have something to say about this, Mildred!"

"He'll be all right if you don't stir him up," the girl replied with
assurance. She walked across the room to her grandmother. "See here,
grandma, I'm 'most seventeen now and big for my age--"

"Please-say 'large,' Mildred."

"Large then--'most a woman. And this is my father's home--and
_mine_--until he gets married again, w