nt her way in stern oblivion of Milly. The girl was
so happy--and so much away from home--that she hardly felt the cold
domestic atmosphere.

A few short weeks afterwards, however, Mrs. Ridge announced to her that
a tenant having been found for the house they should move the first of
the month.

"Where are you going?" Milly asked, a trifle bewildered.

"Your father and I are going to board on the West Side," her grandmother
replied shortly, implying that Milly could do as she pleased, now that
she was her own mistress.

"Why over there?"

"Your father has secured a place in his old business."

From the few further details offered by her grandmother Milly inferred
that it was a very humble place indeed, and that only dire necessity had
forced Horatio to accept it,--to sit at the gate in the great
establishment where once he had held some authority.

"Poor papa!" Milly sighed.

"It's rather late for you to be sorry, now," the old lady retorted
pitilessly. She was of the puritan temper that loves to scatter
irrefutable moral logic.

It was not until long afterward that Milly learned all the part the
indomitable old lady had played in this crisis of her son's affairs. She
had not only gone to see Mr. Baxter, one of the Hopper partners who
attended the Second Presbyterian Church, and begged him to give her son
employment once more, but she had humbled herself to appeal personally
to their enemy Henry Snowden and entreat him, for old friendship's sake,
to be magnanimous to a broken man. In these painful interviews she had
not spared Milly. She had succeeded.

* * * * *

Sometime during the last hurried weeks of their occupancy of the Acacia
Street house, Milly managed to have her lover come to Sunday supper and
make formal announcement of their intentions to the old people. For long
years afterwards she would remember the final scene of her emotional
career in the little front room when her father had to shake hands with
the young artist on the exact spot where Clarence's glittering diamond
had lain disdained, where the faithful ranchman had received his blow,
standing, full in the face.

Little Horatio looked gray and old; his lips trembled and his hand shook
as he greeted Bragdon.

"Well, sir, so you and Milly have made up your minds to get married?"

"Yes, sir."

"Hope you'll make each other happy."

"We shall!" both chorused.

"And I hope you'll be able to support her.