when he had transferred his fortunes from Virginia
to the prairie city. They were altogether the most considerable people
Milly had ever encountered. And so when Eleanor Kemp called at the
little West Laurence Avenue house, Milly was breathless. Not that Milly
was a snob. She was as kind to the colored choreman as to the minister's
wife, smiling and good-humored with every one. But she had a keen sense
of differences. Unerringly she reached out her hands to the "best" as
she understood the best,--the men and women who were "nice," who were
pleasant to know. And Mrs. Kemp, then a young married woman of
twenty-seven or eight, seemed to the enthusiastic girl quite adorable.
She was tall and slender, with fine oval features and clear brown skin
and dark hair. Her manner was rather distant at first and awed Milly.

"Oh, you're so beautiful,--you don't mind my saying it!" she exclaimed
the first time they were alone in the Kemp house.

"You funny child!" the older woman laughed, quite won. And that was the
phrase she used invariably of Milly Ridge,--"That funny child!" varied
occasionally by "That astonishing child!" even when the child had become
a woman of thirty. There would always be something of the breathless,
impulsive child in Milly Ridge.

After that first visit Milly went home to arrange a tea-table like
Eleanor Kemp's. She found among the discarded remnants of the family
furniture a small round table without a leg. She had it repaired and set
up her tea-table near the black marble fireplace. The next time the
banker's wife came to call she was able to offer her a cup of tea, with
sliced lemon, quite as a matter of course, after the manner that Mrs.
Kemp had handed it to her the week before. Milly was not crudely
imitative: she was selectively imitative, and for the present she had
chosen Mrs. Kemp for her model.

For the most part they met at the Kemp house. The young married woman
liked her new role of guide and experienced friend to Milly; she also
liked the admiration that Milly sincerely, copiously poured forth on all
occasions. When Milly praised the ugly house and its furniture, she
might smile in a superior way, for she was "travelled," had visited "the
chief capitals of Europe,"--as well as Washington and New York,--and
knew perfectly well that the solid decoration of her library and
drawing-room was far from good style. The Kemps had already secured
their lot on the south side of the city near the Lake