"Jeanne—Jeanine!" and they almost embraced, to the scandal of Bamberg.
It was one of the girls Milly had known at Gagé's, the chief demoiselle of the pastry shop. And how was Madame Catteau, the patronne, and when did Jeanne come to America? The hat was forgotten while the two chattered half in French and half in English about Gagé's, Paris, and Chicago....
Of course Milly bought the hat in the end,—it was such a "jewel" and became her as if "it were made for Madame Brag-donne," who, Jeanne averred, was really more than half French. (Bamberg generously cut the price to "nothing,—$35," and Milly promised to "pay when I can, you know." Which perfectly contented the man-milliner. "We know you, Mrs. Bragdon," he said, conducting her himself to the Kemps' motor in which she had come.)
The negotiations over the hat, which had to be altered several times, gave Milly a chance to confide in her old friend Jeanne the New Idea. A Cake Shop—a real Paris patisserie, chic, and with French pastry, here in this Chicago! The idea thrilled the pretty French woman, and they discussed many of the details. "I must have a real French pastry cook, and girls, Paris girls like you," Milly said with sudden inspiration, "and a madame, of course, and the little marble-topped tables and all the rest" as nearly as possible like the adorable Gagé's. Jeanne thought that it would be "furiously successful." There would be nothing like it in Chicago or anywhere else in the new world, where Madame Brag-donne would admit the eating was not all that it might be in quality. Oh, yes, it was a brilliant idea and Jean remembered a sister-in-law who would make a remarkable dame de comptoir. She was living in strict retirement at Grenoble, the fault of a wretched man she had been feeble enough to marry....
Thus by the time the hat was hers Milly's scheme had taken definite form, and it was also time for her to return to New York. "But I shall be back soon," she told all her friends confidently, with a mysterious nod of her pretty head.
She had seen Horatio, of course, had taken Virginia to spend a Sunday with her unknown grandfather in the little Elm Park cottage. Josephine received her husband's daughter and granddaughter with a carefully guarded cordiality, which expanded as soon as she saw that Milly had nothing to ask for. Horatio was very happy over the brief visit. He was an old man now, Milly realized, but a chirping and contented old man, who still went faithfully every working day in the year to his humble desk in Hoppers' great establishment, on Sundays to the Second Presbyterian, and in season watered the twenty-six square feet of turf before his front door. He talked a great deal about Hoppers', which had been growing with astounding rapidity, like everything in Chicago, and now covered three entire city blocks. That and the church and Josephine quite filled all the corners of Horatio's simple being. Milly promised her father another, longer visit, but with her many engagements could not "get it in." Horatio wrote her "a beautiful letter" and sent her on the eve of her departure a box of flowers from his own garden.
Milly carried the flowers back to New York with her. She had much to think over on that brief journey. Life seemed larger, much larger, than it had ten weeks before, and her appetite for it had grown wonderfully keener in the Chicago air. That was the virtue of the West, Milly decided. It put vigor and hope into one. She also felt more mature and independent. It had been a good thing for her to get away from New York, out from under Ernestine's protecting wings, which closed uncomfortably tight at times. She realized now that "she could do things for herself," and need not be so "dependent."
That, it must be observed, was the prevailing desire in Milly's new ambitions. Like all poor mortals who have not either triumphed indubitably in the world's eyes or sunk irretrievably into the mire, she hungered for some definite self-accomplishment, something that would give meaning and dignity to her own little life. All of her varied experience,—all the phases and "ideas" through which she had lived from her eager, unconscious girlhood to the present, were resolved and summed up in this at last,—the desire to have some meaning to her life, some dignity of purpose,—no longer to be the jetsam on the stream that so many women are, buffeted by storms beyond their ken, the sport of men and fate. She looked at her little daughter, who was absorbed in the pictures of a magazine, and said to herself that she was doing it all for her child, more than for herself. Virginia must have a very different kind of life from hers! Parentlike she yearned to graft upon the young tree the heavy branch of her own worldly experience. And perhaps Milly realized, also, that the world into which little Virginia was rapidly growing would be a very different sort of place—especially for women—from the one in which Milly Ridge had fluttered about with untutored instincts and a dominating determination "to have a good time...."
Tired at last with so much meditation, Milly bought a novel from the newsboy,—"Clive Reinhard's Latest and Best"—A Woman's Will, and buried herself in its pages.