ed cards were sent out to Milly's friends, the friends of Milly's
friends, and their friends and acquaintances, to meet "Mrs. John Bragdon
and Miss Ernestine Geyer at the Cake Shop on Saturday, December the
fifteenth, from two until eight o'clock." (Ernestine, to be sure, could
not be "met," because she was in the cellar most of the time attending
to many essential details of the occasion. But Milly was there in the
shop above, prettily gowned in a costume she had managed to capture,
incidentally, on her flying visit to the French capital.)

* * * * *

It was a tremendous, resounding, thrilling success! Nearly everybody out
of the thousand must have come, they reckoned afterwards, and several
more besides who knew they had not been intentionally omitted from the
list of the invited. The guests began coming shortly after the doors
were thrown open (by a small colored boy, habited in Turkish costume),
and no sooner did any tear themselves away from the shop than twice as
many squeezed their way in somehow. At first the pretty French girls in
silk aprons and coquettish caps tried to execute the orders, but soon
their trays were seized by enthusiastic young men and the waitresses
took refuge behind the marble table beside the Madame and helped to hand
out the tempting cakes and bonbons and sorbets and sirops and liqueurs.
Even Milly pulled off her long white gloves, got in line with her
employees, and tried to appease her hungry guests. As a final touch a
dainty, gold-printed souvenir menu, with the list of delicacies to be
had at the Cake Shop, was handed to every comer, as long as they lasted.

There was one long glad chorus of praise for the Cake Shop and
everything it contained, from the mirrors, the fetching decoration, the
tables, the cakes (such as never had been dreamed of) to the pretty
girls, who were surrounded always by a cluster of men, trying with their
Chicago French to get attention.... And Milly, of course, was the
heroine of the occasion. Her health was drunk, and she had to get on a
chair to make a little speech of thanks and invitation to the Cake Shop
as a new Chicago Institution.

Many of the women who came knew their Paris better than New York, and
"adored" "this _chic_ little place." It recalled to them all most
delightful moments. And even in Paris they had never eaten anything so
delicious as M. Paul's cakes. Henceforth they should buy all their
desserts of "Madame