"I'll go, Milly!" she said at the end, with a thump of her fist on her knee. "And I'll put my own money into the thing. With what my stock will bring and the cash in the bank, I'll have pretty nearly ten thousand dollars. That ought to be enough to start a cake shop, I should think. You won't have to go to any of your rich friends for help." Milly thought so, too, and was surprised at the amount of Ernestine's savings. She felt relieved not to have to go to the Kemps for money and genuinely delighted to have Ernestine a partner in her venture. "Now we must start at once!" she said gayly. "Mustn't lose a day, so that we can open before the fall season is over." She went to bed very happy and very confident. Ernestine, if less confident, had sufficient self-reliance not to worry about the future. Thanks to her eighteen years of successful self-support, she knew that she could meet life anywhere any time, and get the best of it. From the very next day there began for Milly the most active and the happiest period of her existence. They packed hurriedly, and moved to Chicago, Milly going on ahead to engage a house where they could live and also have their cakes baked. With Eleanor's Kemp's advice Milly wisely selected a large, old-fashioned brick house on the south side, not far from the business district. Once the handsome residence of a prosperous merchant, it had been abandoned in the movement outward from the crowded city and was surrounded by lofty office buildings and automobile shops. Its large rooms were cool and comfortable, and the heavy cornices and woodwork gave an air of stately substantiality to the old house that pleased Milly.