young men who owned all but a few
shares of the Twentieth Century Laundry stock had been bitten by the
trustifying germ and had agreed to go into a "laundry combine" with
several other large laundries. It was one thing, Ernestine realized, to
be the practical boss of a small business, and quite another to be a
subordinate in a large stock-gambling venture with an unknown crew of
masters.

This complication had come up in definite form since Milly's departure,
and Ernestine, after much consideration, had already resolved to sell to
the new company the few shares she owned in the Twentieth Century
Laundry, and look about for another opening in the business she knew.
But she hesitated with a woman's timidity before embarking alone in a
small independent business. She did not want the responsibility of being
the head of a business, especially in these days when, as she was well
aware, the little pots usually get smashed by the big kettles in the
stream.

So Milly's scheme happened to come at the right moment. As far as the
move to Chicago was concerned, Ernestine rather welcomed the change:
hers had been a monotonous treadmill in one environment. She was ready
for a venture in a new city, and curious about Chicago, of which Milly
had talked a great deal. But above all, the conclusive reason for her
consent was Milly--her affections. She could not lose her family, cost
what it might to keep them. She had no clear idea of Milly's soaring
ambition to transplant a French _patisserie_ to the alien soil of
Chicago. A cake shop, Ernestine supposed, was some sort of retail food
business like a bakeshop or delicatessen stand, and cake seemed to her
almost as elementally necessary to mankind as washing or liquor. But
even if the venture failed and took with it all her savings from
industrious years of toil, she would do it "like a sport," as Sam Reddon
had called her, and when the time came, face life anew....

"I'll go, Milly!" she said at the end, with a thump of her fist on her
knee. "And I'll put my own money into the thing. With what my stock will
bring and the cash in the bank, I'll have pretty nearly ten thousand
dollars. That ought to be enough to start a cake shop, I should think.
You won't have to go to any of your rich friends for help."

Milly thought so, too, and was surprised at the amount of Ernestine's
savings. She felt relieved not to have to go to the Kemps for money and
genuinely delighted to have Ernestine a p