* * *

She had seen Horatio, of course, had taken Virginia to spend a Sunday
with her unknown grandfather in the little Elm Park cottage. Josephine
received her husband's daughter and granddaughter with a carefully
guarded cordiality, which expanded as soon as she saw that Milly had
nothing to ask for. Horatio was very happy over the brief visit. He was
an old man now, Milly realized, but a chirping and contented old man,
who still went faithfully every working day in the year to his humble
desk in Hoppers' great establishment, on Sundays to the Second
Presbyterian, and in season watered the twenty-six square feet of turf
before his front door. He talked a great deal about Hoppers', which had
been growing with astounding rapidity, like everything in Chicago, and
now covered three entire city blocks. That and the church and Josephine
quite filled all the corners of Horatio's simple being. Milly promised
her father another, longer visit, but with her many engagements could
not "get it in." Horatio wrote her "a beautiful letter" and sent her on
the eve of her departure a box of flowers from his own garden.

Milly carried the flowers back to New York with her. She had much to
think over on that brief journey. Life seemed larger, much larger, than
it had ten weeks before, and her appetite for it had grown wonderfully
keener in the Chicago air. That was the virtue of the West, Milly
decided. It put vigor and hope into one. She also felt more mature and
independent. It had been a good thing for her to get away from New York,
out from under Ernestine's protecting wings, which closed uncomfortably
tight at times. She realized now that "she could do things for herself,"
and need not be so "dependent."

That, it must be observed, was the prevailing desire in Milly's new
ambitions. Like all poor mortals who have not either triumphed
indubitably in the world's eyes or sunk irretrievably into the mire, she
hungered for some definite self-accomplishment, something that would
give meaning and dignity to her own little life. All of her varied
experience,--all the phases and "ideas" through which she had lived from
her eager, unconscious girlhood to the present, were resolved and summed
up in this at last,--the desire to have some meaning to her life, some
dignity of purpose,--no longer to be the jetsam on the stream that so
many women are, buffeted by storms beyond their ken, the sport of men
and fate. She looked at h