ter.
They were not making much money this second winter, and Ernestine was
becoming anxious.

"You're always worrying about something," Milly said, when Ernestine
pointed out this fact to her. "If the Cake Shop fails, I'll think up
something else that will put us right," she added lightly, in the role
of the fertile creator, and tripped off to the theatre.

But that wasn't Ernestine's idea of business. She got out the books and
went through them again.

The play proved to be entertaining, and Milly returned home in good
spirits. From the hall she heard the sounds of voices in altercation in
the rear room where Ernestine had her desk. M. Paul's excited accent
could be distinguished playing arpeggios all over Ernestine's grumbling
bass. "Oh, dear!" thought Milly, "Paul's off the hooks again and I'll
have to straighten him out...."

"See here, my man--" Ernestine growled, but what she was going to say
was cut off by a flood of Gallic impertinence.

"Your man! Ah, non, non, non! Indeed not the man of such a woman as you!
I call you 'my voman'? Not by--"

Here Milly intervened to prevent a more explicit illustration of M.
Paul's contempt for Ernestine's femininity.

"She call me her 'man'!" the pastry-cook flamed, pointing disdainfully
at Ernestine.

"The fellow's been thieving from us for months," Ernestine said angrily,
and pointing to the door she said,--"Get out!"

"Oh, Ernestine!" Milly protested.

But M. Paul had "got out" with a few further remarks uncomplimentary to
American women, and the damage was done. Ernestine could not be made to
see that with the departure of the pastry-cook, the last substantial
prop to Milly's fairy structure was gone.

"The beast has been selling our sugar and supplies," Ernestine
explained.

"It makes no difference what he has done!" Milly replied with
justifiable asperity.

The next morning she set forth to track the fugitive pastry-cook and
wile him back to their service. She found him after a time at one of the
new hotels, where he had already been engaged as pastry-cook. To Milly's
plea that he return to his old allegiance, he orated dramatically upon
Ernestine and _la femme_ in general.

"You, Madame Brag-donne, are _du vrai monde_," he testified tearfully.
"But that thing--bah! 'Her man'--_canaille du peuple_,"--etc.

Milly, touched by the compliment, tried to make him understand the
meaning of her partner's remark. But he shook his head wrathfully, and
she was