Right Scheme

III. Chicago Again

IV. Going into Business

V. Milly's Second Triumph

VI. Coming Down

VII. Capitulations

VIII. The Sunshine Special

PART ONE

THE WEST SIDE

I

THE NEW HOME

"Is _that_ the house!" Milly Ridge exclaimed disapprovingly.

Her father, a little man, with one knee bent against the unyielding,
newly varnished front door, glanced up apprehensively at the figures
painted on the glass transom above. In that block of little houses, all
exactly alike, he might easily have made a mistake. Reassured he
murmured over his shoulder,--"Yes--212--that's right!" and he turned the
key again.

Milly frowning petulantly continued her examination of the dirty yellow
brick face of her new home. She could not yet acquiesce sufficiently in
the fact to mount the long flight of steps that led from the walk to the
front door. She looked on up the street, which ran straight as a
bowling-alley between two rows of shabby brick houses,--all low, small,
mean, unmistakably cheap,--thrown together for little people to live in.
West Laurence Avenue was drab and commonplace,--the heart, the crown,
the apex of the commonplace. And the girl knew it.... The April breeze,
fluttering carelessly through the tubelike street, caught her large hat
and tipped it awry. Milly clutched her hat savagely, and something like
tears started to her eyes.

"What did you expect, my dear?" Grandmother Ridge demanded with a subtle
undercut of reproof. The little old lady, all in black, with a neat
bonnet edged with white, stood on the steps midway between her son and
her granddaughter, and smiled icily at the girl. Milly recognized that
smile. It was more deadly to her than a curse--symbol of mocking age.
She tossed her head, the sole retort that youth was permitted to give
age.

Indeed, she could not have described her disappointment intelligibly.
All she knew was that ever since their hasty breakfast in the dirty
railroad station beside the great lake her spirits had begun to go down,
and had kept on dropping as the family progressed slowly in the stuffy
street-car, mile after mile, through this vast prairie wilderness of
brick buildings. She knew instinctively that they were getting farther
and farther from the region where "nice people" lived. She had never
before been in this great city, yet something told her that they were
journeying block by block towards the outs