"You're not--now! The best thing for you to do is to go straight back to the boarding-house and read your _Christian Vindicator_ until I'm ready for you to move in." "At the rate you are going it will be some days before your father can have the use of his home." "A week at least I should say." "And he must pay board another week for all of us!" "I suppose so--we must live somewhere, mustn't we?" Milly remarked sweetly. So with a final shrug of her tiny shoulders the little old lady let herself out of the front door, stealthily betook herself down the long flight of steps and, without a backward glance, headed for the boarding-house. Milly watched her out of sight from the front window. "Thank heaven, she's really gone!" she muttered. "Always snooping about like a cat,--prying and fussing. She's such a nuisance, poor grandma." It was neither said nor felt ill-naturedly. Milly was generous with all the world, liked everybody, including her grandmother, who was a perpetual thorn,--liked her least of anybody in the world because of her stealthy ways and her petty bullying, also because of the close watch she kept over the family purse when Milly wished to thrust her prodigal hand therein. She made the excuse to herself when she was harsh with the old lady,--"And she was so mean to poor mama,--" that gentle, soft, weak southern mother, whom Milly had abused while living and now adored--as is the habit of imperfect mortals.... So with a lighter heart, having routed the old lady, at least for this afternoon, Milly continued to set up the broken and shabby household goods to suit herself. She coaxed the colored boys into considerable activity with her persuasive ways, having an inherited capacity for getting work out of lazy and emotional help, who respond to the personal touch. By dusk, when her father came, she had the two front rooms arranged to her liking. Sam was hanging a bulky steel engraving--"Windsor Castle with a View of Eton"--raising and lowering it patiently at Milly's orders. It was the most ambitious work of art that the family possessed, yet she felt it was not really suited, and accepted it provisionally, consigning it mentally to the large scrap-heap of Ridge belongings which she had already begun in the back yard. "Well, daughter," Mr. Ridge called out cheerily from the open door, "how you're getting on?" "Oh, papa!" (Somewhere in the course of her wanderings Milly had learned not to say "paw.") She flew to the little man and hugged him enthusiastically. "I'm so dead tired--I've worked every minute, haven't I, Sam?" "She sure has," the boy chuckled admiringly, "kep us all agoin' too!" "How do you like it, papa?" Milly led the little man into the front room and waited breathlessly for his approbation. It was her first attempt in the delicate art of household arrangement.