One Woman's Life

ad taken advantage of Horatio's new fervor for being settled, as well as his ignorance of the

and there pieces of many different styles and shades of modern inelegance. One layer of the conglomerate was specially distasteful to Milly. That was the black-walnut "parlor set," covered with a faded green velvet, the contribution of Grandma Ridge from her Pennsylvania home. It still seemed to the little old lady of the first water as it had been when it adorned Judge Ridge's brick house in Euston, Pa. Milly naturally had other views of this treasure. Somewhere sh

to unpack the household goods to put the green velvet horrors in the obscure rear parlor. In the front room she had placed the battered mahogany, and

Why, my dear!" Milly hated this tender appellation, scenting the hypo

dmitted briskly, wheeling to meet the

I ask, is the

ined. "In this house, I mean to have things suit me, grandma," sh

before the audacity of the revolt. "I'm sure nobo

that ugly green rag sta

de

' me any more,

osed her thin lips ti

to-day," and she retreated to the rear room, w

from the gloom. She was a very small and a very frail little body, and

gs have not been touched, an

m to suit me.... Sam, please move that d

the fundamentals, pushing confusion slowly before her. The old lady watched the colored man move the rickety

ay have something to s

with assurance. She walked across the room to her grandmother.

y 'large,'

e gets married again, which of course he won't do as long as I am here t

lady d

only too plainly the resu

he girl flas

not want

straight back to the boarding-house and read your Chr

ll be some days before your fath

least I s

board another wee

ve somewhere, mustn't we

nt door, stealthily betook herself down the long flight of steps and, without a backward g

. "Always snooping about like a cat,-prying and

e of her stealthy ways and her petty bullying, also because of the close watch she kept over the family purse when Milly wished to thrust her prodigal hand therein. She made the excuse to herself when

for getting work out of lazy and emotional help, who respond to the personal touch. By dusk, when her father came, she had the two front rooms arranged to her liking. Sam was hanging a bulky steel engraving-"Windsor Castle with a View of Eton"-raising and lowering it pat

lled out cheerily from the ope

course of her wanderings Milly

tle man and hugged

've worked every min

chuckled admiringly, "

ou like i

ed breathlessly for his approbation. It was her first

ewilderment. He was a creature of habits, even if they were peripatetic habits: he missed the parlor furniture and the green rug. They meant home to him.

d it," Mil

business, and wise male that he was

d, Milly? I'm getting d

You don't know what time it ta

k we had so

trouble. We must get some new things righ

there a

carpets any more. A nice, soft r

's Ideal of the New Home had been plotted. The rug was settled. Milly was to meet her father in the city at noon on

such friends!" one of the boarding-h

ese demonstrations cost in cash from her son's leaky pockets. If she h

ion,-to have "some place for herself." What she meant by having a place for herself in the world she did not yet understand of course. Nor what she could do with it, having achieved it. It was an in

her with good grace, and smiled and chatted with a