laughed at the crude phrasing. But her heart warmed with the word of
sympathy. Gradually she unburdened herself of all her troubles, and at
the conclusion the kindly newspaper man said wisely:--

"Never you mind how folks behave, Miss Ridge. Keep a stiff upper
lip--hold up your head--and you'll have all of 'em running after you
like hens after corn 'fore you know it. That's what happened to me when
I went broke that time."

"But I'm not fit to do anything," Milly confessed truthfully, "and I
must support myself somehow."

"Why don't you try newspaper work? You are a clever girl and you know
the world.... Come to my office to-morrow noon--no, I've got a
Washington nob on my hands for lunch--" (Becker was vain of his
political influence, which consisted for the most part of entertaining
visiting politicians at luncheon.) "Come in 'bout four, and we'll see
what we can do to help you out."

With a fatherly nod he hurried off down a side street, and Milly went
home with a new fillip to her lively imagination.

As a matter of fact the proprietor of the _Star_ was not entirely
disinterested in his kindness. He had been looking for some woman to
take "Madame Alpha's" place and furnish the paper with that column of
intimate social tittle-tattle about people the readers knew only by
name, which every enterprising American newspaper considers a necessary
ingredient of the "news." The estimable lady, who signed herself "Madame
Alpha," had grown stale in the business, as such social chroniclers
usually do. The widow of an esteemed citizen, with wide connections in
the older society of the city, she had done very well at first. But she
had "fallen down" lamentably, to use Becker's phrase, during the recent
period of Chicago's social expansion. She neither knew the new gods and
goddesses, nor did she know how to invent stories about their doings.

Becker, who had seen Milly, not merely at the Bowmans, but at many of
the more brilliant functions of the Fair season, regarded her as
"up-to-date," and further, thought her a nice, lively young woman, who
would know the difference between Mrs. Patziki's card party on Garfield
Boulevard and a dinner to the French ambassador at the Danner's. It made
little difference whether she could write or not, so long as she had the
"entry" as he called it. At any rate he would try her.

So Milly began her new career as journalist with much enthusiasm and a
sense of self-importance that had been