arely. It was a day's journey, as she expressed it,
to the West Side, and her father was never free until after six, except
on Sundays, which Milly consecrated to husband, of course. Really,
father and daughter were not congenial, and they discovered it, now that
fate had separated them. At long intervals Horatio would come to them
for Sunday dinner, when Milly had not some other festivity on foot. On
these occasions the little man seemed subdued, as if he had turned down
the hill and drearily contemplated the end, at the bottom. He liked best
to sit on the rear porch, read the Sunday _Star_, and watch the gleaming
lake. Perhaps it reminded him of that vision he had indulged himself
with for a few short weeks of the broad Pacific beneath the Ventura
hills. Milly felt sorry for her father and did her best to cheer him by
giving him a bountiful dinner of the sort of food he liked. She had a
faint sense of guilt towards him, as if she might have done more to make
life toothsome for him in his old age. And yet how could she have been
false to her heart, which she felt had been amply vindicated by her
marriage? Pity that her heart could not have chimed to another note, but
that was the way of hearts. She was relieved when she had put her father
aboard the car on his return. As for Jack, he was always kind and
polite, but frankly bored; the two men had nothing in common--how could
they? It was the two generations over again--that was all.

Old Mrs. Ridge never made the journey to the Bragdon flat, and Milly saw
her only once or twice after her marriage. She was not sorry. Years of
living with "Grandma" had eaten into even Milly's amiable soul. The
little old lady grimly pursued her narrow path between the
boarding-house and the church, reading her _Christian Vindicator_ for
all mental relaxation, until one autumn morning she was found placidly
asleep in her bed, forever.

That was the next event of importance in Milly's life.

II

A FUNERAL AND A SURPRISE

When Horatio telephoned the news, Milly hurried over to the West Side,
and was taken to her grandmother's room. The little old lady seemed
extraordinarily lifelike in her death--perhaps because there had been so
little outward animation to her life. Her thin, veined hands were folded
neatly over her decent black dress, as she had sat so many hours,
perfectly still. The neat bands of white hair curved around the
well-shaped ears, and the same grim smile of petty