g very
earnestly with them, and a sudden timidity came over her in the midst of
this distinguished gathering.

"We'd better get something to eat," her unknown acquaintance suggested.
He had waited for her, and she felt relieved to have some one to speak
to. "It makes one fearfully hungry to listen to a lot of talk, don't you
think?"

So Milly went out to supper with the agreeable stranger.

"No," he resumed, after presenting her with a comforting beaker of
champagne, "I've every sympathy with the woman with a job or with the
woman who wants a job. All this silly talk about the sexes makes me
tired. Man or woman, the job's the thing."

"Yes!" Milly assented with heartfelt emphasis.

"What every one needs is something to do, and women must be trained like
men for their jobs."

He began to talk more seriously and entertainingly on the economic
changes in modern society that had produced the present state of unrest
and readjustment. He sketched quite feelingly what he called the
old-fashioned woman, with her heavy duties and responsibilities in the
pioneer days. "The real pillar of Society--and often a domestic slave,
God bless her!" he said. "But her granddaughter has become either a
parasite, or another kind of slave,--an industrial slave. And the vote
isn't going to help her in either case."

Milly wondered in which class she fell. She didn't like the word
"parasite,"--it sounded like a disease,--and yet she was afraid that was
what she was.

"I think that I must be going," Milly said at last. She noticed that the
rooms were fast emptying after the food had been devoured, and she could
see Hazel nowhere. She would call her up in the morning and congratulate
her on her speech. And so with a nod to the stranger she went for her
wraps. But she found him again in the vestibule, and wondered if he had
waited for her to come down.

"What's the name?" he asked, as the servant came forward to call her
carriage.

"I haven't any cab," Milly replied bravely. It was her custom these days
Cinderella-like to dispense with a return cab.

"But it's raining," the man protested. "You must let me set you down at
your home."

A private hansom had drawn up to the curb before the awning. "Where?" he
insisted.

"It's an awful way out," Milly faltered; "just take me to the nearest
subway station."

Embarrassed by the gaze of the servant and by the waiting people behind,
she got into the hansom. The man gave some sort of orde