e, for you!"
and kissed her.

VIII

THE SUNSHINE SPECIAL

A few weeks later a little party gathered in the murky railroad station
from which the California trains depart from Chicago. As they approached
the waiting train, which bore on its observation platform the brass
sign, "Sunshine Special," the negro porters showed their gleaming teeth
and the conductor muttered with an appropriate smile,--"Another of them
bridal parties!" At the head of the little procession the Ranchman
walked, conversing with Walter Kemp. Duncan had an air of apparent
detachment, but one eye usually rested on Milly, who was walking with
her father and was followed by a laughing group. Eleanor Kemp was not
among them. Somehow since the last evolution of Milly's affairs there
had been a coolness between these two old friends, and Mrs. Kemp had not
taken the trouble to leave her summer home "to see Milly off" again. She
had sent her instead a very pretty dressing-case with real
gold-stoppered bottles, which the new husband now handed over to the
porter.

Milly's arm was caressingly placed on her father's. Horatio was older,
more wizened, than when we first met him, but he was genial and happy,
with a boyish light in his eyes.

"You'll be sure to come, papa!" Milly said, squeezing his arm.

"I won't miss it this time, daughter," Horatio replied slyly,--"my
long-delayed trip to California." He chuckled reminiscently.

"You must bring Josephine with you, of course," Milly added hastily.

Mrs. Horatio, still stern behind her spectacles, even in the midst of a
merry bridal party, relented sufficiently to say,--

"I ain't much on travelling about in cars myself."

Milly, with the amiability of one who has at last "made good," remarked
patronizingly,--

"You'll get used to the cars in three days, my dear."

Horatio meanwhile was playing with little Virginia, teasing her about
her "new Papa." The little girl smiled rather dubiously. She had the
animal-like loyalty of childhood, and glanced suspiciously at the "New
Papa." However, she had already learned from the constant mutations of
her brief life to accept the New and the Unexpected without complaint.
At last perceiving Ernestine, who was hurrying breathlessly down the
long platform in search of the party, a huge bunch of long-stemmed roses
hugged close in her arms, Virginia ran to meet her old friend and clung
tight to the Laundryman.

"Take 'em!" Ernestine said, breathing hard