There was a city editor, of course, and a ruthless blue pencil, but as Milly was recognized on the paper as "the old man's" present hobby, she was given a pretty free rein. She sailed into the dingy Star offices dressed quite smartly, dropped her sprawling manuscript on the Sunday editor's table, and ambled into Mr. Becker's sanctum for a little social chat. In the office she was known as "the Real Thing," and liked as she was almost everywhere, though the youthful reporters laughed at her pompous diction.
The Star paid her the handsome sum of fifteen dollars a week.
VIII
MILLY RENEWS HER PROSPECTS
It did not take Milly long to realize that the sort of newspaper writing she was doing was as parasitic in its nature as her first job, and even less permanent. Of course it quickly leaked out who the Débutante was who wrote with such finality of "our social leaders," and though friends were kind and even helpful, assuring Milly "it made no difference," and they thought it "a good thing for her to do," she knew that in the end her work would kill whatever social position she had retained through her vicissitudes. The more "exclusive" women with social aspirations liked secretly to have their presences and their doings publicly chronicled, but they were fearful lest they should seem to encourage such publicity. Although they said, "We'd rather have one of us do it if it has to be done, you know," yet they preferred to have it thought that the information came from the butler and the housemaid. Milly soon perceived that a woman must cheapen herself at the job, and by cheapening herself lose her qualification. Nevertheless, she had to keep at it for the money.
That was the terrible fact about earning one's living, Milly learned: the jobs—at least those she was fitted for—were all parasitic and involved personal humiliations. From this arose Milly's growing conviction of the social injustice in the world to women, of which view later she became quite voluble....
Fortunately the summer came on, when "Society" moved away from the city altogether. Becker, who had been somewhat disappointed in Milly's indifferent success, now suggested that she do a series of articles on inland summer resorts. "Show 'em," said the newspaper man, "that we've got a society of our own out here in the middle west, as classy as any in America,—Newport, Bar Harbor, or Lenox." He advised Lake Como for a start, but Milly, for reasons of her own, preferred Mackinac, then a popular resort on the cold water of Lake Superior.
By mid-July she was established in the most fashionable of the barny, wooden hotels at the resort and prepared to put herself in touch with the summer society. One of the first persons she met was a Mrs. Thornton from St. Louis, a pleasant, ladylike young married woman, who had a cottage near by and took her meals at the hotel. She was a summer widow with three children,—a thoroughly well-bred woman of the sort Milly instinctively took to and attracted. They became friends rapidly through the children, whom Milly petted. She learned all about the Thorntons in a few days. They were very nice people. He was an architect, and she had been a Miss Duncan of Philadelphia,—also a very nice family of the Quaker order, Milly gathered. Mrs. Thornton talked a great deal of an older brother, who had gone to California for his health and had bought a fruit ranch there in the Ventura mountains somewhere south of Santa Barbara. This brother, Edgar Duncan, was expected to visit Mrs. Thornton during the summer, and in the course of time he arrived at Mackinac.
Milly found him on the piazza of the Thornton cottage playing with the children. As he got up awkwardly from the floor and raised his straw hat, Milly remarked that his sandy hair was thin. He was slight, about middle-aged, and seemed quite timid. Not at all the large westerner with bronzed face and flapping cowboy hat she had vaguely pictured to herself. Nevertheless, she smiled at him cordially,—