oo trusting with men. He trusted you!"

At this thrust Snowden laughed loudly.

"And you want me to trust him with my money some more? No, thank you."

His tone changed insensibly. No one could be rough with Milly for long.
Snowden volunteered some explanations of the tea and coffee business not
related by Mrs. Ridge. It seemed that Horatio had made rather a mess of
things all around.

"So you see I must try and save what I can before it's _all_
gone.... I've got a family of my own, you know."

Milly knew that, and wished she had been nicer to Mrs. Snowden and the
uninteresting daughter when she had had the chance. She had never had
them to the Acacia Street house in all these years.

"Can't you wait a few months?... Please!..."

Entreaty was all the argument life had given Milly. There was a leap of
something in the man's flushed face that caused the girl to retreat a
step or two. She had not meant to rouse his graceless passion, but that
was what she had almost succeeded in doing by her coaxing. As she drew
back Snowden laughed.

"You see, Milly, people _pay_ in this world for what they want--men and
women too. They have to _pay_ somehow!"

And, this enigmatic taunt ringing in her ears, Milly departed with all
the dignity that remained to her. She was conscious of the bookkeeping
woman's hostile sneer upon her back as she disappeared. Her face burned
with the man's coarse words: "In this world people have to _pay_ for
what they want."

That was too true! She had not been willing to pay, except with smiles
and pretty speeches, the small change, and it seemed that was not
enough. She had not been willing to pay the price of a good position in
her world which she wanted, nor Snowden's price for mercy to her father.
Of course not that! But now she must pay somehow for what she got: for
her food and her clothes and her shelter first of all. It had come to
that. Thus Milly had her first lesson in the manifold realities of life.

Soberly but bravely she faced the winter wind and made her way home to
her father's house.

VII

MILLY TRIES TO PAY

The next months were in some respects the dreariest that Milly was ever
to know. It was not long before the illusion about her work for Eleanor
Kemp wore thin. It was, in a word, one of those polite, parasitic
occupations for women, provided by the rich for helpless friends, and it
was satisfying to neither party. A good deal of time for both was wasted
in "t