ne's living, Milly learned:
the jobs--at least those she was fitted for--were all parasitic and
involved personal humiliations. From this arose Milly's growing
conviction of the social injustice in the world to women, of which view
later she became quite voluble....

Fortunately the summer came on, when "Society" moved away from the city
altogether. Becker, who had been somewhat disappointed in Milly's
indifferent success, now suggested that she do a series of articles on
inland summer resorts. "Show 'em," said the newspaper man, "that we've
got a society of our own out here in the middle west, as classy as any
in America,--Newport, Bar Harbor, or Lenox." He advised Lake Como for a
start, but Milly, for reasons of her own, preferred Mackinac, then a
popular resort on the cold water of Lake Superior.

By mid-July she was established in the most fashionable of the barny,
wooden hotels at the resort and prepared to put herself in touch with
the summer society. One of the first persons she met was a Mrs. Thornton
from St. Louis, a pleasant, ladylike young married woman, who had a
cottage near by and took her meals at the hotel. She was a summer widow
with three children,--a thoroughly well-bred woman of the sort Milly
instinctively took to and attracted. They became friends rapidly through
the children, whom Milly petted. She learned all about the Thorntons in
a few days. They were very nice people. He was an architect, and she had
been a Miss Duncan of Philadelphia,--also a very nice family of the
Quaker order, Milly gathered. Mrs. Thornton talked a great deal of an
older brother, who had gone to California for his health and had bought
a fruit ranch there in the Ventura mountains somewhere south of Santa
Barbara. This brother, Edgar Duncan, was expected to visit Mrs. Thornton
during the summer, and in the course of time he arrived at Mackinac.

Milly found him on the piazza of the Thornton cottage playing with the
children. As he got up awkwardly from the floor and raised his straw
hat, Milly remarked that his sandy hair was thin. He was slight, about
middle-aged, and seemed quite timid. Not at all the large westerner with
bronzed face and flapping cowboy hat she had vaguely pictured to
herself. Nevertheless, she smiled at him cordially,--

"You are the brother I've heard so much about?" she said, proffering a
hand.

"And you must be that new Aunt Milly the children are full of," he
replied, coloring bashfully.

So