hat. (Alas, that plebeian paw of
Milly's!)

Then he had left and sent her a five-pound box of candy from the
metropolis, with a correct little note, assuring her that he could never
forget those days he had spent with her by the lake of Como. Years
afterward on an Atlantic steamer she met a sandy-haired, stoutish
American, who introduced himself with the apology,--

"You're so like a girl I knew once out West--at some lake in
Wisconsin--"

"And you are Harrison Plummer," she said promptly. "I shouldn't have
known _you_," she added maliciously, surveying the work of time. She
felt that her plebeian hands were revenged: he was quite ordinary. His
wife was with him and four uninteresting children, and he seemed
bored.... That had been her Alpine height at eighteen. The heights seem
lower at thirty-five.

Even if this affair didn't prove to be "the real, right thing," Milly
gained a good deal from her Como visit. Her social perspective was
greatly enlarged by the acquaintances she made there. It was long before
the day of the motor, the launch, the formal house party, but the
families who sought rural relief from the city along the shores of the
Wisconsin lake lived in a liberal, easy manner. They had horses and
carriages a plenty and entertained hospitably. They did not use red
cotton table-cloths (which Grandma Ridge insisted upon to save washing),
and if there were few men-servants, there was an abundance of tidy
maids. It gave Milly unconsciously a conception of how people lived in
circles remote from West Laurence Avenue, and behind her pretty eyes
there formed a blind purpose of pushing on into this unknown territory.
"I had my own way to make socially," she said afterwards, half in
apology, half in pride. "I had no mother to bring me out in society--I
had to make my own friends!"

It was easy, to be sure, in those days for a pretty, vivacious girl with
pleasant manners to go where she would. Society was democratic, in a
flux, without pretence. Like went with like as they always will, but the
social game was very simple, not a definite career, even for a woman.
Many of these good people said "folks" and "ain't" and "doos," and
nobody thought the worse of them for that. And they were kind,--quick to
help a young and attractive girl, who "would make a good wife for some
man."

So after her month with Mrs. Kemp, Milly was urged to spend a week at
the Gilberts, which easily stretched to two. The Gilberts were youn