s, who might do their washing
bare-legged in the running brook. (She described to Ernestine the
picturesque, if primitive, laundry customs of the south of Europe.)
"They do such nice work over there: their linen is as soft and white as
snow," she said.

"And whose goin' to pay for all that gilt?" Ernestine demanded in
conclusion. For Milly had expatiated on the fortune they might
confidently expect from the new laundry. Milly was sure that all nice,
well-to-do families would be only too thankful to pay large prices for
their laundry work, if they could be assured that it would be done in
such sanitary, picturesque fashion by expert laundresses. And she had
thought of another plan which combined philanthropy with aestheticism and
business. They might employ "fallen women" as laundresses and teach them
also expert mending of linen. To all of which Ernestine smiled as one
would at the fancies of an engaging child. She said at the end in her
heavy-voiced way:--

"I don't know how it is in Europe, but in this country you don't make
money that way. You've got to do things cheap and do 'em for a whole lot
of people to get big money in anything. It's the little people with
their nickels and tens and quarters as pile up the fortunes."

Milly felt that Ernestine betrayed in this the limitations of her
plebeian origin.

"S'pose now you c'd get all the capital you need for your Ideal
Laundry--who'd patronize it? The swells, the families with easy money to
spend? There ain't so many of them, take the whole bunch, and I can tell
you, so far as I know, the rich want to get somethin' for nothin' as bad
as the little fellers--I don't know but worse! I guess that's why they
get rich."

Thus Ernestine would have nothing of any business that catered solely to
the rich and exclusive classes. A sure democratic and business instinct
made her rely for steady profits upon the multitude, who "must all get
washed sometime," in her favorite axiom, and as cheaply as possible.

"You never take any of my ideas seriously," Milly complained after this
rebuff.

* * * * *

It happened to be a stormy winter's evening when the Ideal Laundry had
been up for discussion. They could hear occasional spats of snow against
the window-panes behind the long red curtains, which had been drawn. A
wood fire was crumbling into glowing coals on the hearth. Virginia had
long since gone to bed, and Sam Reddon, who had dropped in fo