artner in her venture.

"Now we must start at once!" she said gayly. "Mustn't lose a day, so
that we can open before the fall season is over."

She went to bed very happy and very confident. Ernestine, if less
confident, had sufficient self-reliance not to worry about the future.
Thanks to her eighteen years of successful self-support, she knew that
she could meet life anywhere any time, and get the best of it.

From the very next day there began for Milly the most active and the
happiest period of her existence. They packed hurriedly, and moved to
Chicago, Milly going on ahead to engage a house where they could live
and also have their cakes baked. With Eleanor's Kemp's advice Milly
wisely selected a large, old-fashioned brick house on the south side,
not far from the business district. Once the handsome residence of a
prosperous merchant, it had been abandoned in the movement outward from
the crowded city and was surrounded by lofty office buildings and
automobile shops. Its large rooms were cool and comfortable, and the
heavy cornices and woodwork gave an air of stately substantiality to the
old house that pleased Milly.

When Ernestine arrived the two partners went hunting for a suitable
shop. Milly wanted a location in the very centre of the fashionable
retail district on the avenue, somewhere between the Institute and the
Auditorium, the two most stable landmarks in the city. But the rents,
even at that time, were prohibitive, and they found they must content
themselves with one of the cross streets. There at last they found a
grimy little old building tucked in, as if forgotten, between two more
modern structures, which could be had entire for a rental that they
might (with a burst of courage) contemplate. It was only a few steps
from the great north and south thoroughfare and within the woman's zone.
Ernestine, indeed, was for going farther away after something more
modest in rental, so that they should not have to sink so much of their
capital at the start. But Milly argued cogently that for the special
clientele which they wished to attract they must be in the quarter such
people frequented, near the haberdashers and milliners and beauty
parlors, and Ernestine yielded the point because she did not know about
cake shops. When they came to the business of the lease, the good
services of Walter Kemp were enlisted. After he had met Ernestine in the
course of the negotiations with the agent of the property, he r