United States or New Caledonia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then she received a brief letter that contained the astonishing news of his having left the magazine. "There have been changes in the new management," he wrote, "and it seemed best to get out." But neither Billman nor Fredericks had felt obliged to leave the magazine, she learned from Hazel. She could not understand.
The English bowman, or billman, who carried a large axe or bill, was a strong, healthy, well-fed man; and though he had not perfect freedom, according to our modern acceptation of the term, he had an existence worth struggling for, and not entirely at the command of an imperious lord. Hence he was sometimes not much inferior, as a combatant, to the mail-clad man-at-arms.
Billman, invited her to her best dinners and to her opera box, because she was striking in looks and had made a place for herself in "interesting circles" in the great city and was more or less talked about. "Hazel is jealous of her," Milly averred. Nevertheless the junior editor's wife accepted Mrs. Billman's patronage and invitations to Mrs.
Ernestine grinned and chuckled over Sam's sallies. As Reddon said, "You can say anything to her! She has a man's sense of humor, the only woman I ever saw except Marion who has." With the exception of Marion, Milly's women friends were much more dubious than the men about the new household. Mrs. Bunker and Mrs. Billman, of course, had long since lost sight of Milly in the course of her migrations.
A good many cards were scattered about in literary and artistic and moneyed circles; tea was poured by the ladies interested; Milly appeared in her widow's black, young and charming. A number of people came and a few bought. Mrs. Billman contented herself with the sketch of a magazine cover representing a handsome woman and a young boy, which was said to resemble herself and her son.
The magazine, having to maintain its reputation, had become more and more radical, while the proprietor, under the influence of prosperity and increasing years, had become more conservative. "You see," Hazel Fredericks explained, "the Bunkers find reform isn't fashionable the farther up they get, and the magazine is committed to reform and so is Billman. There must be a break some day."
"I'd scrub floors first," Milly said stoutly, and straightway despatched a ladylike refusal of the proffered job. Bunker telephoned Mrs. Billman in an injured tone of voice. "She is!" "Well, you wouldn't think so," the Bunkeress flashed back. "It's so hard to help that sort. You know, the kind that have been ladies!"
She was rather proud of the fact that she had never deliberately "gone in" for anything in her life except Love. Nevertheless, she found the flutter of women's ambitions exciting and liked to observe the indirect working of their wills even in the man's game.... "Mrs. Billman is too obvious, don't you think Jack?" she said to her husband. But Jack had gone sound asleep.
Billman, perhaps because she went out of her way to be nice to the artist's wife. The dark little Hazel Fredericks, with her muddy eyes and rather thick lips, was a more subtle woman than Mrs. Billman and took the pains to cultivate "possibilities." She had Milly at lunch one day and listened attentively to all her dubitations about her husband's career. Then she pronounced:
It was more than she had ever dreamed an "artist" could make as an assured income. "Aren't you glad all that!" she exclaimed. "That's not much. Billman gets twelve thousand and Fredericks eight. But I shall be able to make something 'on the side." "I think it's wonderful!" Milly said. But Jack exhibited slight enthusiasm.
Word Of The Day