She read some books which her husband got for her,--those breakfast-food culture books provided for just such people, about cities and monuments and history. She was supposed to "read up" about Rome and Florence, where they hoped to go in the spring. But books tired Milly very soon: the unfamiliar names and places meant nothing at all to her. She decided that, as in most cases, one had to have money and plenty of it to enjoy Europe,--to travel and live at the gay hotels, to buy things and get experiences "first hand." Evidently it was not for her, at present. What she liked best in her life this first winter were the Sunday excursions they made to Fontainebleau, St. Germain, Versailles, and St. Cloud, and other smaller places where the people went. She liked the mixed crowds of chattering French on the river boats and the third-class trains,--loved to talk with the women and children in her careless French, and watch their foreign domesticities.... Best of all, perhaps, were the walks in the Bois with her husband, where she could see the animation of the richer world. On their way back they would often stop at Gagé's for cakes and mild drinks. All the pastry-shops fascinated Milly, they were so bright and clean and _chic_. The efficiency of French civilization was summed up to her in the _patisserie_. She liked sweet things and almost made herself ill with the delectable concoctions at Gagé's. That more than anything else this first year came to typify to her Paris,--the people, men as well as women, who came in for their cakes or syrop, the eagle-eyed _Madame_ perched high at the _comptoir_, holding the entire business in her competent hand, and all the deft girls in their black dresses, nimbly serving, _"Oui, Madame! Voici, Monsieur! Que desirez-vous?"_ etc. She admired the neat glass trays of tempting sweets, the round jars of bonbons, the colored _liqueurs_, the neat little marble-topped tables. Apparently the _patisserie_ was a popular institution, for people of all sorts and conditions flocked there like flies. "If you ever die and I have to earn my living," she would say jokingly to her husband, "I know what I should do. I'd run a cake-shop!" "You'd eat all the cakes yourself," Bragdon rejoined, tearing her away after the eighth or tenth. She went there by herself sometimes, and became good friends with the reigning _Madame_, from whom she learned the routine of the manufacture and the sales, as well as the trials and tribulations with _les desmoiselles_ that the manager of a popular pastry shop must have. This _Madame_ liked the pretty, sociable _Americaine_, always smiled when she entered the shop with her husband, counselled her as to the choicest dainties of the day, asked her opinion deferentially as that of a connoisseur, and made her little gifts. Through the cake-shop Milly came to realize the French, as her husband never did. * * * * *