Milly was content. At least she felt that she ought to be, and she really was--for a time. Thanks to Ernestine's "Carter Blanch," she had made a comfortable, homelike interior out of the little old house, in which she installed her own furniture and almost nothing of Ernestine's. Sam Reddon helped her make the alterations and decorate afresh "number 236," as the new home came to be known among Milly's friends. Reddon was explosively enthusiastic over the Laundryman, whom he described as a "regular old sport," "one of the finest," "the right sort," and the climax of praise--"one first-class man." He took a mischievous delight in drawing her out, especially on the æsthetic side, where she was wildest, and he revelled in her idiom, which reminded him of the dear _argot_ of his beloved city, and which he declared was "the language of the future." Clive Reinhard, also, who came to dinner at the new house very soon, approved warmly of Ernestine. In his more conventional vocabulary she was "a character," "a true type," and "a trump." He liked her all the better, perhaps, because he did not feel obliged to study her professionally, and relaxed in her company.
Indeed, all the men Milly knew liked Ernestine Geyer and quickly got the habit of dropping in at "number 236" at all hours,--it was so conveniently near their offices and clubs, they said. They came for breakfast and luncheon and tea, and even for whiskey and cigarettes after the theatre. With the blunted sense of fine proprieties characteristic of their sex, they approved unreservedly of Milly's new marriage. In Reddon's frank phrase it was "an extraordinary fit." "You two are complements--which is more than one can say of most regular marriages."
(It was more than Milly could say of her union with Jack, alas!)
"I wonder more women don't do the same thing," the architect continued in a vein of philosophical speculation; "get married to other women. Now Ernestine has every good quality of a man, and she can't deceive you with a chorus girl! It cuts out all the sex business, which is a horrid nuisance--see the newspapers."
"Sam!" Milly warned, and then ventured,--"How about the children--where would they come in?"
"That _is_ a difficulty," Reddon admitted, stretching his feet to the fire.