II
A FUNERAL AND A SURPRISE
When Horatio telephoned the news, Milly hurried over to the West Side, and was taken to her grandmother's room. The little old lady seemed extraordinarily lifelike in her death—perhaps because there had been so little outward animation to her life. Her thin, veined hands were folded neatly over her decent black dress, as she had sat so many hours, perfectly still. The neat bands of white hair curved around the well-shaped ears, and the same grim smile of petty irony that Milly knew so well and hated was graven on the thin lips.... She was taken to that cemetery on the Western Boulevard which Milly as a girl had prevented her from visiting on her daily walk. There were several old ladies from the boarding-house at the funeral, and one other thin-faced woman, whom Milly vaguely remembered to have seen somewhere.
Milly returned from the funeral with her husband, and they were both silent and thoughtful, occupied not so much with the dead as with the future her going must disturb. They had not dared voice to each other the idea that had been troubling them both since the first news of Mrs. Ridge's death had reached them. At last, when they had left the car and were approaching their own home, Bragdon said,—"I suppose, Milly, we ought to have your father live with us."
"I suppose so," Milly sighed. "Poor papa—he feels it dreadfully.... He's done so much for me always, Jack."
Her husband might rejoin that Horatio had done little for him, but he said instead,—
"We shall have to find a larger apartment."
Milly sighed. It was difficult enough to get on in the little one.
"You'll go over to-morrow to see him about it?" Bragdon continued courageously.
"Father can't come 'way out here to live—it's too far from his business."