She was not there. Ernestine knew well enough that Milly would not come to the funeral of their enterprise at the Cake Shop, and though she felt hurt she said nothing to the men and went through with the last formalities in the dusty, dismantled temple of cakes. At the end the banker asked Ernestine kindly what she meant to do. He knew that the Laundryman's capital had gone—all her savings—and that "the firm" was in debt to his bank for a loan of several hundred dollars, which he expected to pay himself and also to take care of the lease.
"I don't know yet," Ernestine replied. "I'll find some place.... And it won't be in any fancy kind of business like this, you can bet," and she cast a malevolent glance over the tarnished glories of the Cake Shop. "I got my experience and I paid for it—with every cent I had in the world. I ain't goin' to buy any more of that!"
The banker laughed sympathetically.
"What's Mrs. Bragdon going to do?" he inquired.
"I don't know—she hasn't told me yet."
Her answer was evasive because Ernestine suspected very well what Milly was likely to do.... She turned the key in the lock, handed it over to the agent, and with a curt nod to the two men strode away from the Cake Shop for the last time. (That evening the banker, reporting the occurrence to his wife, said,—"I feel sorry for that woman! She's lost every cent she had—our Milly has milked her clean." "Walter, how can you say that?" his wife replied indignantly. "It wasn't Milly's fault if the business failed, any more than hers." "Well, I'd like to bet it's a good big part the fault of our pretty friend." "Miss Geyer ought not to have gone into something she knew nothing about." "Milly bewitched her, I expect. The best thing she can do is to shake her and go back to the laundry business.")
It was not Ernestine, however, who was to "shake" Milly. That lady herself was busily evading their partnership, as Ernestine suspected. While the short obsequies were being transacted at the Cake Shop, Milly was lunching in the one good new hotel Chicago boasts with Edgar Duncan, who had returned from Washington sooner than expected and had asked Milly by telegraph to lunch with him. Seated in the spacious, cool room overlooking the Boulevard and the Lake, at a little table cosily placed beside the open window, Milly might easily have looked through the fragrant plants in the flower-box and descried Ernestine doggedly tramping homeward from her final task at the Cake Shop. Milly preferred to study the menu through her little gold lorgnette, and when that important matter had been settled to her satisfaction, she sat back contentedly and smiled upon the man opposite her, who, after a successful hearing before the Commerce Commission, had more than ever the alert air of a man who knows his own business. Outside in the summer sunlight, above the blue water of the Lake and over the dingy sward of the Park, the airmen were man[oe]uvring their winged ships, casting great shadows as they dipped and soared above the admiring throngs.
"See," Milly pointed excitedly through the open window. "He's going up now!" And she twisted her neck to get the last glimpse of the mounting machine.
"Yes," Duncan remarked indifferently, "they're doing a lot of stunts." But he hadn't come back from Washington by the first train that left after the hearing to talk aeroplanes. And Milly let him do the talking, as she always had, listening with a childlike interest to what he had to say.
By this time the reader must know Milly well enough to be able to divine for himself what was passing in her mind as she daintily excavated the lobster shell on her plate and listened to the plea of her rejected lover. Probably this was no more able to stir her pulses to a mad rhythm to-day than it had been ten years before. Edgar Duncan was somewhat nearer being her Ideal,—not much. But Milly was ten years older and "had had her throbs," as she once expressed it. She knew their meaning now, their relative value, and she knew other values.