irony that Milly knew
so well and hated was graven on the thin lips.... She was taken to that
cemetery on the Western Boulevard which Milly as a girl had prevented
her from visiting on her daily walk. There were several old ladies from
the boarding-house at the funeral, and one other thin-faced woman, whom
Milly vaguely remembered to have seen somewhere.

Milly returned from the funeral with her husband, and they were both
silent and thoughtful, occupied not so much with the dead as with the
future her going must disturb. They had not dared voice to each other
the idea that had been troubling them both since the first news of Mrs.
Ridge's death had reached them. At last, when they had left the car and
were approaching their own home, Bragdon said,--"I suppose, Milly, we
ought to have your father live with us."

"I suppose so," Milly sighed. "Poor papa--he feels it
dreadfully.... He's done so much for me always, Jack."

Her husband might rejoin that Horatio had done little for him, but he
said instead,--

"We shall have to find a larger apartment."

Milly sighed. It was difficult enough to get on in the little one.

"You'll go over to-morrow to see him about it?" Bragdon continued
courageously.

"Father can't come 'way out here to live--it's too far from his
business."

"We'll have to move nearer the business then."

"Not to the West Side!" Milly exclaimed in horror.

"What difference does it make?" her husband asked, as he wearily took up
his drawing-board.

"You don't know the West Side," Milly muttered.

"Well, we can't leave him alone in that boarding-house, can we?"

That was exactly what Milly would have liked to do, but she had not the
courage to say so in the face of her husband's ready acceptance of the
burden. The next day, as she revolved the unpleasant situation on her
way to see her father, she said to herself again and again,--"Not the
West Side. I won't have that--anything but that!" For to return to the
West Side seemed like beginning life all over again at the very bottom
of the hill.

* * * * *

When Milly announced her invitation to her father, Horatio exhibited a
strange diffidence.

"We'll find some nice little apartment nearer the city where you'll have
no trouble in getting to your business," Milly said in kindly fashion.

"I guess not," Horatio replied. "Not but that it's real kind of you and
John."

"Why not?"

"Well, you see, daughter, yo