* * * * *

Matters at home had scarcely improved during the languid summer. Horatio
sat on the stoop in his shirt-sleeves, unchided, or went for long hours
to a beer-garden he had found near by. He made no pretence of looking
for work. "What's the use--in the summer?" Milly stirred the stagnant
domestic atmosphere with her recovered cheerfulness. She told them of
her various adventures, especially of the Thorntons and of the new young
man. Duncan had given her some kodaks of the fruit ranch in the Ventura
mountains, which she displayed. _HE_ was coming to see her soon, and she
laughed prettily. Grandma maintained her sour indifference to Milly's
doings, but Horatio took a lively interest. He had always wanted to go
"back to a farm" since he was a young man, he said. It was the only
place for a poor man to live these days, and they said those California
ranches were wonderful money-makers. A man at Hoppers' had gone out
there, etc.

Father and daughter talked ranch far into the hot night.

The next afternoon Milly went to the newspaper office to report and to
discuss with the editor her last inspiration for an article. It was the
vacation season and a number of the desks in the editorial room were
vacant. Mr. Becker's door was closed and shrouded with an "Out of Town"
card. At the Sunday editor's table in the partitioned box reserved for
this official was an unfamiliar figure. Milly stopped at the threshold
and stared. A young man, fair-haired, in a fresh and fetching summer
suit with a flowing gauzy tie, looked up from the table and smiled at
Milly. He was distinctly not of the _Star_ type.

"Come right in," he called out genially. "Anything I can do for
you? No, I'm not the new Sunday editor--he's away cooling himself
somewheres.... I just came in here to finish this sketch."

Milly noticed the drawing-paper and the India-ink bottle on the table.

"You're not Kim?" Milly stammered.

"The same."

("Kim" was the name signed to some clever cartoons that had been
appearing all that winter in a rival paper, about which there had been
more or less talk in the circles where Milly moved.)

"So you've come over to the _Star_?" she said with immediate interest.

"The silver-tongued Becker got me--for a price--a small one," he added
with a laugh, as if nothing about him was of sufficient consequence to
hide.

"I'm _so_ glad. I like your pictures awfully well."

"Thanks!... And you, I