Milly was "good." She tried to have a helpful influence upon her companions, especially upon young men who seemed to need an influence more than others: she wanted to induce them not to swear, to smoke, to drink--or be "bad,"--a vague state of unrealized vice. She encouraged them to go to church by letting them escort her. It was the proper way of displaying right intentions to lead good lives. When one young man who had been a member of the Bible class was found to have taken money from Mr. Kemp's bank, where he was employed, and indulged in riotous living with it, Milly felt depressed for several days,--accused herself of not having done her utmost to bring this lost soul to the Saviour. Yet Milly was no prig,--at least not much of a one. For almost all her waking hours her mind was occupied with totally mundane affairs, and she was never much concerned about her own salvation. It seemed so far off--in the hazy distances of stupid middle age or beyond. So, like thousands upon thousands of other young women of her day, she appeared at the Second Presbyterian every Sunday morning, looking her freshest and her best, and with engaging zest, if with a somewhat wandering mind, sang,-- "How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord!" It was a wholly meaningless social function, this, and useful to the girl. Later charity might take its place. Horatio Ridge, who had never qualified as a church member while his wife lived, knowing his own unregenerate habits and having a healthy-minded male's aversion to hypocrisy, now went to church with his daughter quite regularly. He felt that it was a good thing,--the right thing for the girl, in some way insuring her woman's safety in this wicked world, if not her salvation in the next. They made a pretty picture together, father and daughter,--the girl with the wide blue eyes and open mouth, standing shoulder to shoulder with the little man, each with one gloved hand grasping an edge of the hymn-book and singing, Milly in a high soprano,-- "Nearer, my God, to Thee!" and Horatio, rumbling behind a little uncertainly,-- "Nearer to Thee--to THEE!" IV MILLY COMPLETES HER EDUCATION "Milly," Mrs. Kemp remarked thoughtfully, "aren't you going to complete your education?" Milly translated this formidable phrase in a flash,-- "You mean go to school any more? Why should I?" It was a warm June day. Milly had been reading to Mrs. Kemp, who was sewing. The book was "Romola." Milly had found quite dull its solid pages of description of old Florence sparsely relieved by conversation, and after a futile attempt to discover more thrilling matter farther on had abandoned the book altogether in favor of talk, which always interested her more than anything else in the world. "Why should I go to school?" she repeated. "You are only sixteen." "Seventeen--in September," Milly promptly corrected. Mrs. Kemp laughed. "I didn't finish school until I was eighteen."