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"Your father has secured a place in his old business." From the few further details offered by her grandmother Milly inferred that it was a very humble place indeed, and that only dire necessity had forced Horatio to accept it, to sit at the gate in the great establishment where once he had held some authority. "Poor papa!" Milly sighed.
She did not look at Milly as she spoke; or, if she did, she paid no heed to the mute pain and deprecation in the mother's eyes. Folding the baby in the white shawl that had covered it, she took it in her arms, and with slow, almost reluctant steps, went down to meet her brother. Sydney had come upon what he felt to be a painful errand.
Of what it all meant, this huddling together of strange peoples from the four quarters of the globe, Milly never took the time to think. She never had the least conception of what it was, the many miles of bricks and mortar, the tangled railroads, the ceaseless roar of the great city like the din of a huge factory. Here was the mill and the market here was LIFE in its raw material.
Horatio and his mother might feel the waste of all their efforts in behalf of Milly, the costly removal from the West Side home, the disastrous venture in the tea and coffee business, and all the rest, to result in this, her engagement to a "mere newspaper feller who parts his hair in the middle."
"Was you wishin' to find out somethin' about him or Aunt Milly? Because if so I don't know nothin' about him, nor yet her. I never set eyes on neither of 'em." "I am your Aunt Milly's husband," he told her. "And I have come to find out something about you." "It's took you a long time to find your way, ain't it?" Her manner was not cordial. "We will waive that," said he, composedly.
It released Jane's tongue, but she could not lift her eyes. "To kill the man who persuaded Milly Erne to abandon her home and her husband and her God!" With wonderful distinctness Jane Withersteen heard her own clear voice. She heard the water murmur at her feet and flow on to the sea; she heard the rushing of all the waters in the world.
"I must say you treated that Mr. Duncan pretty badly," Horatio continued with unusual severity. "I should say so!" Grandma interposed. Milly might think so too, but she was serenely indifferent to all the defeated prospects, the bleeding hearts over which she must pass to the fulfilment of her being.
Challenged, at any rate, as for the last wise word, Milly showed perhaps, musingly, charmingly, that, though her attention had been mainly soundless, her friend's story produced as a resource unsuspected, a card from up the sleeve half surprised, half beguiled her. Since the matter, such as it was, depended on that, she brought out, before she went to bed, an easy, a light "Risk everything!"
Some of our party went up the Rigi to-day. The view from the top was beautiful; but the place is spoiled by the crowds of people who go up. I so much prefer the quieter excursions. "I must go to bed now, dearest Milly. It will be lovely to see you soon. When one is away from home, one feels more than ever how nice it would be to have one's friends always about one. "Ever your very loving friend,
I really think that Milly was very nearly ashamed of him. I certainly was. I had no apprehension, however, of the scene which was imminent.
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