alking things over," with much discursive chatter on matters in
general, and all sorts of consulting back and forth about the job to be
done. There were letters to be carefully written, then rewritten after
delicately guarded criticisms had been made; shopping to be done where
it took hours to decide whether this "matched" or not and whether
Danner's or Dround's was a better place for purchasing this or that.
Milly still tried to keep up some social life, and so she usually came
in at the Kemps rather late in the morning, and after lunching with her
friend went back to the city on errands. She was a miracle of un-system,
and frequently forgot. But she was so genuinely penitent and abased when
her omissions were discovered that her friend had not the heart to be
severe. Milly, on the other hand, began to think that the work took a
great deal of time and that fifty dollars a month was small pay for her
services, yet did not like even to hint that she wanted more.

Walter Kemp summed the matter up in the brutal fashion of man-financier,
"Better give Milly her money and let me send you a trained woman from
the bank to do your work, Nell."

But Eleanor Kemp was shocked at this evidence of male tactlessness.

"Milly would never take a gift like that!"

That was the trouble: Milly belonged to the class too proud to take
charity and too incompetent to earn money. So Mrs. Kemp continued to do
as much as she had done before and to pay Milly fifty dollars a month
out of her private purse.

"Pity she didn't marry Parker," Kemp said brusquely. "He'll be a very
rich man one of these days."

"You see she couldn't, Walter," his wife explained eagerly. "She didn't
love him enough."

"Well," this raw male rejoined, "she'd better hurry up and find some one
she does love who can support her."

"Yes," Mrs. Kemp admitted, "she _ought_ to marry."

For in those days there didn't seem to be any other way of providing for
the Milly Ridges.

* * * * *

Milly realized her inadequacy, but naturally did not ascribe it wholly
to incompetency. She wanted to give up her irregular job: it could not
be concealed from her friends, and it marked her as a dependent. But the
stern fact remained that she needed the money, even the paltry fifty
dollars a month, as she had never needed anything in life. If she
refrained from spending a dollar for several years, she could hardly
clear herself of the accumulated bills f