Altogether, a thoroughly weird apparition it was who stared at us, and giggled, and said, in a very Cockney accent: "Oh, good Gollywog! another man! There's no getting away from them in this place this morning. And there was I thinking I had found a quiet spot to dry my hair in!"
"I am very sorry to intrude," said Mr. Hiram P.Jessop in his most courteous voice. "Could you inform me, Madam, if this is the house they call The Refuge?"
"That's right," said the woman with the hair. And I found myself suddenly wondering if she were the lady that those post-office girls had nicknamed "Autumn Tints."
It was most appropriate, with those reds and golds and bronzes of the hair that must have been sufficiently striking had it not been "treated" with henna, as it had.
So I said eagerly, and without further preamble: "Oh, then, could you tell me if Miss Million is here?"
"I couldn't, dear, really," said the woman, who looked all washed-out excepting her hair. "There is such a lot of them that keep coming and going here! Like a blessed beehive, isn't it? Bothered if I can keep track of all their names!"
She paused a moment before she went on.
"Miss Million—now which would she be?"
I felt a chill of despair creeping over my heart.
What did she mean by saying that "so many of them" kept coming and going in this place?
This, combined with the comments of those post-office girls at Lewes, awoke in my mind one terrifying conclusion. This place with the peaceful garden and the pretty name——! There was something uncanny about it.... This place was a lunatic asylum!
Yes, I did not see what else on earth it could possibly be! And then this woman with the vacuous face and the wild hair, and still wilder kind of attire, she, without doubt, was one of the patients!
What in the world was my poor little Million doing in this galley, provided she was here at all?
And who brought her here? And what was the Honourable Jim's car doing out there? Could he have been so disgraceful as to have got her brought here for the purpose of rescuing her himself, and of earning her undying gratitude as well as the riches of her uncle? Oh, what a horrible trick....
Rather than that I felt that I would gladly see the money all go over to Miss Million's cousin! That big young man stood there looking as puzzled as I did, glancing doubtfully, almost apprehensively, at the woman with the wild attire.
I attacked her again, with more firmness this time.
"I think Miss Million must be here," I said. "She sent me a telegram, and they told me at the post-office place that it was——"
"Oh! her that sent the telegram, was it? That's the young lady you want? I know, I took the telegram myself," said the woman with the autumn-foliage hair. "It was a girl who turned up here with nothing but an evening gown and a light coat the day before yesterday; a dark girl, short."
"That would be the one," I cried with the utmost eagerness. "Is she——Oh, is she still here?"
"She's here, all right," said the woman with the hair. "My word! She wasn't half in a paddy, I can tell you, because she could not get her maid or whoever it was to send down her things from London. Nothing but what she stood up in, and having to borrow, and no one with a thing to fit her! She is here, all right!"Relieved, but not completely relieved until I should have heard more of Million's adventures, I said: "I am her maid. I have brought down her things. Would you be so kind as to tell me where I should find Miss Million?"
"She will be in the house, having her dinner now," said the poor red-haired lunatic quite kindly. "You will excuse me coming in with you myself, dear, won't you? There is a strange gentleman in there come in that other car, and I have not had time to go and get myself dressed yet. I made sure I should have all the morning to myself to get my hair done. Such a time it does take me," she added, shaking it out with an air of vanity, and, indeed, she had something to be vain of. "It isn't everybody I like to see me like this. I am never one to be careless about my appearance when there are gentlemen about. They never think any more of a girl" (poor creature, she was at least forty) "for things of that kind. I am sure I had no more idea that there was another gentleman coming in, and me with my hair like this! Of course, as I always say, well! it's my own hair! Not like some girls that have to have a haystack on their heads before they're fit to look at, as well as a switch all round...."
It really seemed as if she was going on with this "mildly mental" chatter for as long as we chose to listen.
So I gave one glance at Miss Million's cousin, meaning, "Shall we go?" He nodded gravely back at me. Then, leaving the red-haired lunatic on the path, shaking her tresses in the sun, we went on between the lilacbushes with their undergrowth of lilies and stocks and pinks until we came to the house.
The house was a regular Sussex farm sort of looking place that had evidently been turned into a more modern dwelling-house place. There were bright red curtains at all the white-sashed windows, which were wide open. There were window-boxes with lobelia and canary-creeper and geraniums. As I say, all the windows were flung wide open, and from out of them I heard issuing such a babble of mixed noises as I don't think I had ever heard since I was last in the parrot-house at the Zoo. There were shrill voices talking; there was clattering of knives and forks against crockery. These sounds alternated with such bursts of unrestrained laughter that now I was perfectly certain that my suspicion outside in the garden had been a correct one. Yes! This place could be nothing but some institution for the mentally afflicted.
And this—and this was where Million had been spirited off to!
Setting my teeth, and without another glance at the increasingly grave face of my companion, I ran up the two shallow stone steps to the big open front door, and rang the bell. The tinkling of it was quite drowned by the bursts of hysterical merriment that was issuing from the door on the left of us.
"They can't hear us through that Bedlam," was Mr. Jessop's very appropriate comment. "See here, Miss Smith, as it appears to be mostly ladies I shan't be wanted, I guess. Supposing you go easy into the porchand knock on that door while I wait out here on the steps?"
This I did.
I knocked hard in my desperation. No answer but fresh bursts of laughter, fresh volumes of high-pitched talk. Suddenly I seemed to catch through it a deep-voiced masculine murmur with an intonation that I knew—the caressing Irish inflection of Mr. James Burke.
"What divilment is he up to now, I wonder?" I thought exasperatedly, and my annoyance at the very thought of that man nerved me to knock really peremptorily on the sturdy panels of the door.
Then at last I got an answer.
"Don't stand knocking there like an idiot, come in," shrieked the highest-pitched of all the parrot voices. Giving myself a mental shake, in I went.
I found myself in a big brown distempered room, with a long white table running down the centre of it. The place seemed full to overflowing with two elements—one, the overpowering smell of dinner, i. e., pork and greens and boiled potatoes, and stout; two, a crowd of girls and women who looked to me absolutely numberless. They were all more or less pretty, these girlish faces. And they were all turned to me with wide-open eyes and parted lips. Out of this sea of faces there appeared to be just two that I recognised as I gazed round. One was the laughing, devil-may-care face of the Honourable Jim, who sat with a long peg glass in front of him, at the bottom of the table.
Theother——
Ah, yes! At last, at last! After all my anxiety and worry and fretting and search! There she was! I could have kissed the small, animated grey-eyed face of the girl who was sitting next to the Honourable Jim at the table. However she'd come there, I had at least found her.
My long-lost mistress; Miss Million herself!
"Oh, it's her!" cried Miss Million's shrill Cockney voice in a sudden cessation of the parrot-like shrieks of talk and laughter as I ran round the table. "Oh, it's my Miss—it's my Miss Smith!"
She clapped her hands with impatience, jumping up in her chair.
"Have you brought them, Smith?" she demanded eagerly. "Have you got my clothes——"
"Oh, 'ark at her!" shrieked some one on the right of the table. "It's all her clothes! Hasn't thought of anything else since she came down——"
"Better late than never——" The babble went on all around me, while I strove to make myself heard.
"Now we shall see a bit o' style——"
"Don't see anything wrong with the blouse the girl's got on, myself——"
"Fits where it touches, doesn't it——"
Indeed, the garment in which my young mistress'ssmall form was enfolded appeared to be the sort of wrap which a hairdresser's assistant tucks about one when one is going to have a shampoo!
"Looks like a purser's jacket on a marling-spike!" sang out some one else; and then more laughter.
Well, if they were lunatics, they were at least the cheerful variety!
I went up to Miss Million's chair, ignoring the blue glance of the man beside her, and said in my "professional," respectful murmur: "I have brought your dressing-bag and a suit-case, Miss——"
"Why ever didn't you bring them down yesterday?" demanded Million, all eyes and shrill Cockney accent.
"I didn't know, Miss, where I was to bring them," I replied, feeling the amused gaze of the Honourable Jim upon me as I said it.
"But, bless me! I gave the full address," vociferated Miss Million, "in that telegram!"
All the lunatics (or whatever they were) were also listening with manifest enjoyment.
"There was no address, Miss," I said, as I handed her the wire, which I still kept in my hand.
"Yes! But this was the second one I sent!" protested my mistress loudly. "This was when I was at my wit's end and couldn't think why you didn't come! I sent off that first one first thing in the morning; you ought to have got it!"
"I never did, Miss," I began.
Then a robust, rollicking voice that I confusedly remembered broke in on the discussion.
"There you are, you see! What do I always say?Never trust anything except your lookin'-glass, and not that except it's in a cross light," cried the voice gaily. "Certainly don't trust anything with trousers on! Not even if they are ragged ones and tied up with lumps of string! Not even if they do pitch you a tale about having served in the Boer War!"
Still feeling as if I were in a weird dream, I turned towards the direction of the voice that enunciated these puzzling sentiments.
It proceeded from——
Ah! I knew her, too!
I knew the brass-bright hair and the plump white-clad, sulphur-crested, cockatoo-like form across the table.
"London's Love," again! Miss Vi Vassity herself! I'd seen her last where I last saw Million—at that supper-table.... Now what in the world was England's premier comedienne doing in this asylum—if an asylum it were?
She went on in her high swift voice. "You won't catch me giving half-crowns to any more tramps to hand in a wire at the next post-office! No! Not if they can sport a row of medals on their chests from here to East Grinstead! I knew how it would be," declared Miss Vi Vassity. "My kind heart's my downfall, but I'm going to sign the pledge to reform that. And you, my dear——"—to me—
"You sit down and have a bite of something to eat with us. Your mistress don't mind. You don't mind, Nellie, do you?"—this to Miss Million.
"We all mess together in this place. I couldn't beworried with a servant's hall. Make room for her there, Irene, will you? The girl looks scared to death; it's all right, Miss—Smith, aren't you? Sit down, child, sit down——"
Before I could say another word I found that a wooden chair had been pushed squeakingly under me by some one. Knives and forks had been clattered down in front of me by some one else. And there was I, sitting almost in the lap of a very tiny, dark-eyed, gipsy-looking girl, in a blouse without a collar and a pink linen sun hat pulled well down over her small face.
On the other side of me, a big, lazy-looking blonde in a sky-blue sports coat rocked her own chair a little away from mine, and said, in a drowsy, friendly sort of voice: "Drop of ale, dear? Or d'you take a glasser stout?"
Then the flood tide of talk and laughter seemed to flow on over my head so fast that I literally could not make myself heard. I expostulated that I had already had lunch, and that I didn't want anything to drink, thanks, and that a gentleman was waiting outside on the step—but it passed unheeded until my hostess caught my eye.
"What's that, what's that?" ejaculated Miss Vi Vassity, preening her white-linen-bedecked bust across the table, as she saw me trying vainly to say something against the uproar. "What's all that disturbance in the dress circle, Bella?" The honey-blonde whom she called Bella turned to me and said: "Speak up, dear; no one can hear your lines!" Then she made a trumpetof her plump white hands and bellowed across to Miss Vi Vassity:
"Says she's got her best boy with her, and that he is having to wait outside on the steps!"
Here there was another general gale of laughter, in which my crimson-cheeked explanations were quite lost! In the middle of it all I saw the Honourable Jim rise from his seat, and stride into the hall and bring in Mr. Jessop. He appeared to be introducing him to London's Love. Miss Vi Vassity immediately made the new-comer sit down also, close to her at the top of the table.
I have said it was a rather strange lunch that we had had earlier in the morning at the little honeysuckle-covered inn, where we three had taken cider and bread and cheese together. But it was nothing to the extraordinary unexpectedness, yes, the weirdness in every way of this second lunch, at the long table lined with all those strange types.
Already, as I sat down, I had given up the idea that it was a female lunatic asylum and rest cure combined. But what was it, this "Refuge"?
I simply couldn't think! And I did not find out until quite a long time afterwards. After dinner was finished, when Million, I knew, was fuming for her boxes, she beckoned me to follow her away from the noisy crowd of girls, up the shallow, broad, old-fashioned staircase. There was one door on the landing which she tiptoed past, putting her finger on her lips.
More mystery!
I could hardly wait with my questions until the doorwas shut of the little, slanting-ceiling room with the snow-white, dimity-covered bed that represented Miss Million's new quarters.
There were straw mats on the bare boards. On the little chest of drawers there was a Jubilee mug full of the homeliest cottage flowers. This was a far cry from London and the Hotel Cecil!
I turned with eagerness to my mistress. She had flung herself upon the suit-case that had now been brought up to her room. She had forgotten to wait until I should unpack for her, and, having snatched the keys from me, she began fishing out her blouses and other possessions with "Ah's" of delight and recognition.
"What on earth is this place, and what's the meaning of it all?" I began. But Miss Million laughed gleefully, evidently taking no small delight in my mystification. "Lively, isn't it?" she said. "Talk about the old orphanage! Well, us girls used to enjoy life there, but it was a fool to this. I fair revel in it, I can tell you, Smith, and be bothered to the old Cecil. I don't see why we shouldn't stop on here. Middle-day dinner and all. That's just my mark, and we can wire to that other place. Here's plenty good enough for me, for the present——"
"But, look here," I began. "I want to know——" My mistress took me up quickly. I hadn't seen her in such bubbling high spirits since some of the old kitchen-days at Putney. "It's me that 'wants to know,' and I'm just going to begin asking questions about it," she declared, as she jumped up to allowme to fasten her into the skirt of the tobacco-brown taffeta.
"Look here, for a start! Who's that nice-lookin' young fellow you came down with? I never! Motorin' all over the country with strange young gentlemen. My word! there's behaviour!" giggled Million, evidently with the delightful consciousness that her own behaviour was far more reprehensible than mine could ever be. "Bringin' him in, as bold as brass; whatever do you think your Auntie'd say to that, Miss—there! I nearly called you Miss Beatrice again. After all this time! Thinkin' of your Aunt Nasturtium, I suppose? But straight ... Smith! Where did you pick up that young man?"
"Pick him up? I didn't," I began, feeling that a long explanation was ahead of me. "As a matter of fact, he picked me up——"
"Oh, shockin'," said Million, giggling more than before. "Whoever said I was going to allow you to have followers?"
This annoyed me.
"Followers!" I exclaimed quite violently.
It really was exasperating. First the Honourable Jim! Then the girl called "Bella"! Then my mistress! They were all taking it for granted! They were all foisting him upon me, this young American with the sleek, mouse-coloured hair and the upholstered shoulders! Upon me!
"His name is Mr. Hiram P. Jessop——"
"'Tain't pretty, but what's in a name?" said Million, as she held out her wrist for me to insert the microscopicpearl buttons into the fairy-silk loops that fastened her cuffs. "Who is he?"
"He's your cousin," I told her.
And, of course, as I expected, it was some time before I was able to get my young mistress to believe this.
"You're sure," she said at last, "that he's not having us on?"
"I don't think so," I said rather sadly, for I thought again of what that cousinship might mean—the loss of all Miss Million's fortune! However, I'd leave that aspect of it for the present. Let him explain that. They hadn't been introduced yet.
I said: "He's extremely anxious to meet you, let me tell you. He thought of nothing else all the time that he was talking to me. Be as nice to him as you can, won't you?"
"Well, I don't see why I should go out of my way," demurred Million exasperatingly. I had hoped that she might appeal to the chivalrous side of the young American's nature; appeal to it so that he might give up his idea of fighting for his rights—if they are his rights! But if Million is going to put her back up and become independent—well, they'll fight. And there'll be a catastrophe, and the downfall of Million's prosperity, and general wretchedness for Miss Million and her maid—oh, dear, what a prospect!
I began to coax her.
"Oh, yes, be nice. He's rather a dear, this cousin of yours. And he was so absurdly pleased, do you know, to hear that you had black hair. He admires brunettes."
"Very kind of him," said Million quite flippantly. "You told him, I suppose, about me bein' dark."
"He asked so many questions!" I said. "He really takes such an interest. You ought to be flattered, Miss Million."
"I don't know that having interest taken in me by young gentlemen is any such a rarity, just now!"
Here she reddened rather prettily.
I fastened the other cuff. Million went on, in a gush of artless confidence: "To tell you the truth, Smith, I haven't half been getting off lately. The other night, at the Thousand and One Club, who d'you suppose was making a fuss of me? A lord, my girl!"
This she said, little dreaming that her maid had watched the whole of this scene.
"And then, there's something else that's getting a bit more serious," said Million, bridling. "Turning up to-day, just because he'd guessed where I'd got to, and all!"
"He? Which he?" I asked, with a quick feeling of dismay.
"It's what I call pointed," said Million, "the way he's been going on ever since he's met me. Even if he is uncle's old friend, it's not all on account of uncle that he makes hisself so agreeable. Oh, no! Marked, that's what I call it. You know who I mean."
She nodded her dark head. She smiled as she spoke the name with a shyness that suited her rather well.
"The Honourable Mr. Burke!"
"Million!" I said anxiously, as I folded the borrowedblouse I'd taken off her, "Miss Million, do you like him?"
Miss Million's grey eyes sparkled. She said: "Who wouldn't like him?"
A pang seized me. A pang of the old apprehension that my little heiress of a mistress might lose her heart to a graceless fortune-hunter!
I said, with real anxiety in my tone: "Oh, my dear, you don't think you are going to fall in love with this Mr. Burke, do you?"
Atlast I have been allowed to get to the bottom of what this extraordinary place, the "Refuge," really is!
It is no more a lunatic asylum, of course, than it is a nunnery.
It started life by being a big Sussex farmhouse.
Then some truly enterprising person took it on as a lodging-house for summer visitors, also for a tea-garden for motorists.
Then it happened that England's premier comedienne, Miss Vi Vassity, who was motoring through on her way from a week-end at Brighton, saw the place. She fell in love with it as the fulfilment of one of her dreams.
It appeared that she has always wanted to set up a lodging-house for hard-up theatrical girls who are what they call "resting," that is, out of a job for the moment.
I have picked up from Million and from the others that London's Love has the kindest heart in all London for those members of her profession who have been less successful than she has. She has a hundred pensioners; she is simply besieged with begging-letters. It is a wonder that there is any of her own salary left for this bright-haired, sharp-tongued artiste to live on!
Well, to cut a long story short, she bought the place.Here it is, crammed full of stage girls and women of one sort and another, mostly from the music-halls. The woman with the hair is Miss Alethea Ashton, the "serio." The honey-blonde in the dressing-jacket, who sat at one side of me at dinner, is "Marmora, the Twentieth Century Hebe," who renders classic poses or "breathing marbles."
The tiny, gipsy-looking one on my other side is Miss Verry Verry, the boy impersonator, who appears in man-o'-war suits and sailor hats. There is a snake-charmer lady and a ventriloquist's assistant, and I have not yet been able to discover who all the others were.
Miss Vi Vassity lets those pay her who can. The others owe "until their ship comes in"; but the mistress of the place keeps a shrewd though kindly eye on all their doings, and she comes down at least once a week herself to make sure that all is well with "Refuge" and "Refugettes."
The secret of her sudden pilgrimage into Sussex the other night was that she had received a telephone message at the club of The Thousand and One Nights to inform her of still another arrival at the "Refuge." This was the infant daughter of the ventriloquist's assistant, who is also the ventriloquist's wife. This event seems to have come off some weeks before it was expected. And at the time the "Refuge" was short of domestic service; there was no one to wait on the nurse who had been hastily summoned. The house was at sixes and sevens....
In a fever of hurry Miss Vi Vassity went down, takingwith her a volunteer who said she loved little babies and would do anything to "be a bit of a help" in the house.
This volunteer was the little heiress, who still kept, under all her new and silken splendour, the heart of the good-natured, helpful "little Million" from the Soldiers' Orphanage and the Putney kitchen.
I might have spared myself all my nervous anxiety about Lord Fourcastles! It seems a bad dream now.
She had motored off then and there with the head of the "Refuge," without even waiting to wire from town. Only when they neared their destination had she thought of sending off a message to me, with the address where I was to follow her. That message had probably been tossed into the hedgerow by the tramp to whom it had been hastily entrusted.
Hence my anxiety and suspense, which Miss Million declared had been nothing compared to her own!
Of course, people who have given terrible frights to their friends always insist upon it that it is they who have been the frightened ones!
But all this, of course, was what I picked up by degrees, and in incoherent patches, later on.
Many things had happened before I really got to the rights of the story. One scene after another has been flicked on to the screen of my experiences ... but to take things in order.
Perhaps I had better go back to where I was unpacking Million's things in the transformed farmhouse bedroom, and where I was confronted with a fresh anxiety.
Namely, that the wealthy and ingenuous and inexperienced Million really had fallen in love with that handsome ne'er-do-weel, Mr. James Burke.
"Have you?" I persisted. "Have you?"
Million gave a little admitting sigh. She sat there on the edge of the dimity bed, and watched me shake out that detested evening frock in which she had motored down.
She has got it so crumpled that I shall make it the excuse never to let her wear it again.
"The Honourable Mr. Burke," said Million, with a far-away look in her eyes, "is about the handsomest gentleman that I have ever seen."
"I daresay," I said quite severely. "Certainly there is no denying the Honourable Jim's good looks. Part of his stock-in-trade! But you know, Miss Million"—here I brought out the eternal copy-book maxim—"Handsome is as handsome does!"
Hereupon Million voiced the sentiment that I had always cherished myself concerning that old proverb.
"It may be true. But then, it always seems to me, somehow, as if it was neither here nor there!"
I didn't know what to say. It seemed so very evident that Million had set her innocent and affectionate heart on a young man who was good-looking enough in his Celtic, sooty-haired, corn-cockle, blue-eyed way, but who really had nothing else to recommend him. Everything to be said against him, in fact. Insincere, unscrupulous, cynical, unreliable; everything that's bad, bad,BAD!
"You can't say he isn't a gentleman, now," put inMillion again, with a defiant shake of her little dark head. "That you can't say."
"Well, I don't know. It depends," I said, in a very sermonising voice. "It all depends upon what you call 'a gentleman.'"
"No, it doesn't," contradicted Miss Million unexpectedly. "You know yourself it doesn't depend upon 'what you call' anything. Either he is, or he isn't. That Auntie of yours would ha' told you that. And stuck-up and stand-offish and a perfect terror as she was, she'd have been the first to admit that the Honourable Mr. Burke was one of her own sort!"
I couldn't help smiling a little. Million had hit it. This would have been exactly Aunt Anastasia's attitude!
"And don't you remember what my great wish always was? Whenever there was a new moon, or anything," Million reminded me, "you used to want money and nice clothes. But there was something I wanted—quite different. I wanted to marry a gentleman. I—I still want it!"
Her underlip quivered as she gazed out of the lattice-window at the peaceful bare Sussex landscape. Her grey eyes were full of tears and of dreams. As for me, I felt half-sorrowful for her, half-furious with the Hon. Jim; the person whom nobody but a perfect innocent, like Million, would dream of liking or taking seriously!... Reprobate! He ought to be horsewhipped!
I remembered his whimsical horror in that tea-shop when he had exclaimed to me: "Marry her? Marry a girl with hands like that, or a voice like that?" Yet he had made "a girl with a voice like that" dreamily inlove with him. Really my heart swelled quite passionately with resentment against him.
I wondered how far he had been trifling with her honest heart, both yesterday night at the Thousand and One Club, and this morning at lunch at the "Refuge." He was quite capable of doing one of two despicable things. Either of flirting desperately and then riding away; or, of marrying her in spite of what he had said, and then neglecting everything about her but her income! Which was he going to do, I wondered.
"Million! Miss Million," I said hastily. "Do you mind telling me if Mr. Burke has proposed to you?"
Million looked down, showing the dark half-moons of her eyelashes on her cheeks in a way that I knew she had copied from one of the "Cellandine Novelettes" which used to be her favourite reading in Putney. She heaved a deep sigh. And then she said: "Well! Between you and I, he hasn't spoken yet."
"Yet? Do you mean—do you think he is going to?" I said sharply.
A smile grew over Million's small and bonny face. I must say I think she grows better-looking every day. Why should the Honourable Jim have made that unkind remark about her hands? Her face is prettier, probably, than those of half the wealthy girls he meets. Especially when she dimples like that.
She said demurely: "Do you know, I don't think any one can expect any one not to notice when any one is getting really fond of any one!"
This involved sentence meant, I knew, the worst.
It meant that she thought the Honourable Jim wasgoing to ask her to marry him! And she must have some good reason for thinking so! Or he's an incorrigible flirt, one of the two!
"If he does ask you to marry him," I pursued, feeling as if I were a mixture of a schoolmistress and Million's own mother combined, "do you think you are going to say yes you will?"
"Do I think?" echoed Million ardently. "I don't 'think' anything about it. I just know I will!"
Oh, dear! Ever since I have been Miss Million's maid I have seemed to get from one difficulty into another. It is worse than ever now that I know for certain that the poor little thing imagines she is going to marry Mr. Burke. She won't ever be happy, even if he does marry her for her money.
But, stop! There is another thing. Her money?
Supposing her money does go? Well, then, the handsome Irishman will jilt her quite mercilessly. I know enough about him to know that! And I have a horrible presentiment that this is exactly what is going to happen. That shrewd-eyed young American downstairs, Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, will bring an action to recover for himself all Miss Million's dollars. He will walk off with the fortune. And my mistress, poor little creature, will be left without either money or love!
As for me, I shall lose my place. I, too, shan't know what to do—unless——
Oh, yes. There is always one thing I can do. I shall marry. There is the proposal of Mr. Reginald Brace, who begged me to say yes to him when he gets back from Paris.
Thinking over it, I am pretty sure that that is what I shall say.
Really it will be a rest to turn to something as simple and straightforward as Mr. Reginald Brace after all the complications with which my life has been beset up till now. So that disposes of me, Beatrice Lovelace. But what about Nellie Million?
All these reflections passed through my mind in Million's bedroom at the "Refuge," all the time I was putting the finishing touches to her before she went down to meet her cousin (and incidentally the man who was going to rob her of her fortune), Mr. Hiram P. Jessop.
Well, she looked bonny enough to make him feel some compunction about it, that I would say! The brown taffeta skirt and the new blouse, the leaf-brown suède shoes and the silk stockings that I had brought down with me, all suited her admirably.
And besides being becomingly dressed, there was something still more potently attractive about Million's appearance.
It was that flush and glow and sparkle, that aura that seems to cling about a woman in love. I had heard before that there is no beauty culture in the world that can give a woman just that look and that it is absolutely the most unfailing beautifier. Now I saw with my own dismayed eyes that it was but too true.
Nellie Million, ex-maid-of-all-work, had fallen in love with Lord Ballyneck's graceless younger son. The result, so far, was to improve her looks as much as myhairdressing and the Bond Street shopping for her had done already.
She was impatient to go down. This, I knew, was not on the new cousin's account. Poor child, she wanted to rejoin the Honourable Jim!
"But you've got to come with me, Smith, you know," she said, as she reached the door. "Yes, you have. You have got to introduce me, and be bothered to your only being my lady's-maid! There isn't much of that sort of thing at the 'Refuge,' as I can tell you. See how nice and homely Vi Vassity was about having you sit down with all of us at dinner?"
I suppressed a smile at the idea of this condescension.
"Besides, he seems to know you pretty well, does my cousin," said little Miss Million. "And I tell you, Smith, you may be very useful. Talking to him and keeping him out of the way when Mr. Burke might want to be having a few words with me, do you see?"
I saw, and my heart sank with dismay. There were fearful complications ahead. I saw myself later on with Miss Million sobbing over a world that had crashed into disillusionment just as one of my Aunt Anastasia's priceless Nankin bowls had once come to pieces in her hand!
Still, I thought, I had better go down and see with my own eyes as much of the tragedy as it was possible. I thought that the first act of it might be even rather humorous. Both these young men trying to talk to Million at once, and Million herself giving all her attention to the young man who was the least good to her!
We came down into the sitting-room of the "Refuge." It seemed furnished chiefly with wicker chairs, and brilliant houseboat cushions and very stagey-looking photographs with huge autographs, put at right angles to everything else. When we came down to this retreat we found that it was occupied only by Miss Vi Vassity, leaning back very comfortably in a deck-chair, and blowing smoke rings from the cigarette that was fastened into a tiny silver holder, while opposite to her there was seated, looking very conscientious and gravely interested, my mistress's American cousin, Mr. Hiram P. Jessop himself.
"Why, where is Mr. Burke got to?" said Million, with a note of unmistakable disappointment in her voice.
I knew that the poor little thing had been overwhelmingly anxious to show herself off once more befittingly dressed before the blue, black-lashed eyes that had last beheld her in somebody else's far too voluminous garments. "I thought he was still with you, Vi?"
Miss Vi Vassity gave a shrewd, amused laugh.
"Not here, not here, my child!" she quoted lazily. "Our friend Jim said he had got to push on up to London. He left plenty of messages and kind loves and so forth for you. And you needn't go bursting yourself with anxiety that he won't be turning up here again before we are any of us much older or younger (seeing the jobs some of us have got to keep off the enemy). He'll be down again presently all right. However, one off, another on. Here is a new boy for you to play with, Nellie. Says he's a cousin of yours,"with a wave of her cigarette towards Mr. Jessop, who had now risen to his very Americanly booted feet. "I believe it's true, too," rattled on Miss Vassity. "He looks to me altogether too wide awake to work off an old wheeze like 'cousins' if it were not a true one. Well, cheery-oh, children. I am just off to see if poor Maudie upstairs has had her gruel. I will leave you to fall into each other's arms. Come along, Miss Smith. I daresay I can get that nurse to let you have a look at the new little nipper if you are keen."
I had been standing all this time, of course, examining the photographs inscribed "Yours to a cinder, Archie," and "To darling Vi, from her faithful old pal, Gertie."
Now I moved quickly towards the door which Miss Vi Vassity had swung open.
But my mistress, with a quick little movement, stopped me. "Smith, don't you go. Vi, I don't want her to go," she protested. "She can pop up and see that baby afterwards, when it is being bathed. I want her now to stop and talk to this Mr. Jessop with me. I shan't feel so nervous then," she added, with her little giggle.
"Please yourselves," said "London's Love," with a laugh and a little nod for her exit. We three were left alone in the sitting-room.
I really think it is wonderful the way Americans will burst at once into a flood of friendliness that it will take the average young Englishman at least three or four years of intimate acquaintance to achieve.
And even then I doubt whether the average youngEnglishman (take, for example, my prospective fiancé, Mr. Reginald Brace) would ever be able to "let himself go" like they do! Never had I heard such a stream of earnestly spoken compliments, accompanied by glances of such unmistakable admiration, as young Mr. Jessop immediately proceeded to lavish on Miss Million.
He told her, if I can remember correctly the sequence of his remarks: "That he was real delighted to make her acquaintance; that he had somehow fixed it up in his mind already that she would be a real, sweet little girl when he got to know her, and that even he hadn't calculated what a little Beaut she was going to turn out——"
"Oh, listen to him! If it isn't another of them!" exclaimed the artless Million, all blushes and smiles as she turned to me; I felt as if I were a referee in some game of which I wasn't quite certain about the rules.
Mr. Jessop went on to inform his cousin that she had the real, English, peach-bloom complexion that was so much admired in the States; only that she did her hair so much better than the way most English girls seemed to fix theirs.
Here I nearly dropped a little curtsey. The arrangement of Million's dark, glossy hair stands to my credit!
"There's a style about your dressing that I like, too. So real simple and girlish," approved Mr. Jessop, with his eyes on the faultlessly cut, tobacco-brown taffeta that had cost at least four times as much as the elaborately thought-out crime in cerise which should havebeen on Million's conscience. "I must say you take my breath away with your pretty looks, Cousin Nellie; you do, indeed. If I may say so, you appear to be the sort of little girl that any one might be thankful to have to cherish as the regular little queen of the home."
Hereupon Million glowed as pink as any of the roses that were spreading their sweetness abroad on the warm afternoon air outside the gaily curtained window.
"Doesn't that sound lovely!" she exclaimed.
There was a wistfulness in her voice. I was afraid I knew only too well what that wistfulness portended if I could read Million at all (and I really think I ought to be able to now). That wistfulness meant "How much lovelier it would be if the Honourable Jim Burke had been the one to pay me that compliment about being the queen of the home!"
Then she added to the young American, whose boyish eyes were fixed unflinchingly upon her: "Do you know, I am afraid you are an awful flatterer and deceiver. You are just trying to see how much I am going to take in about you thinking me nice-looking and all that!"
If she could only have had these misgivings about Mr. Burke himself, instead of their being about the cousin who, I think, says very little that he does not really mean! Always the wrong people get credit for insincerity! "I am not a flatterer, believe me," said Mr. Hiram P. Jessop. "If you think that I don't mean anything I say nice to you, why! I am going to be very sad. I would like to have only nice things to say toyou," he added regretfully, "and I tell you it is coming real hard on me—harder than I thought it would be, to have to say the difficult things I have gotten to say now, Cousin Nellie."
So now he was coming to the business end of the interview! The part where he meant to tell Million that her appreciative and gallant cousin was possibly going to walk off with that fortune of hers!
I rose from my chair. I said respectfully: "Shall I go, Miss, if Mr. Jessop is going to talk family affairs?"
"I guessit's not any different 'business' from what I have told you, coming along in the car, Miss Smith," said the young American simply. "Don't quit on my account."
"No, nor on mine neither," said Miss Million, turning quite anxiously to me. "You stop on and hear the end of this, so that me and you can talk it over like, later.
"Now, then," turning to her cousin again, "what's it all about?"
"To cut a long story short," said the young American, in that earnest way of his that is really rather lovable. "You see before you, Cousin Nellie, a man who is"—he paused impressively before he brought out half a dozen pregnant words—"very badly in want of money!"
"Gracious! I must say I should not have thought it," ejaculated Million, with a note of the native shrewdness which I had suspected her of having left behind in our Putney kitchen. "If you are poor"—here her bright grey eyes travelled up her cousin's appearance from his quite new-looking American shoes to his well-kept thick and glossy hair—"if you are poor, all I can say is your looks don't pity you!"
"I need not point out to you that looks are a verypoor proposition to go by when you are starting in on summing up a person's status," said the young American easily. "I may not look it, but money is a thing that I am desperate for."
A sequence of emotions passed each other over Million's little face. As I watched there were disbelief, impatience, helplessness, and the first symptoms of yielding. She said: "Well, I don't know how it is that since I have come into uncle's money I have been meeting people one after the other who keep offering to show me what to do with it. You know, Smith," turning to me. "Haven't I had a fair bushel of begging letters from one person and another who is in need of cash? Some of them was real enough to draw tears from the eyes of a stone! Do you remember that one, Smith, about the poor woman with the two babies, and the operation, and I don't know what all? Well! She dried up quick since I suggested calling round to see the babies! A fine take-in that was, I expect"—this to me, with her eye on the well-set-up young man sitting before her. "Still"—this was where the yielding began to come in—"you are my cousin, when all is said. And so, I suppose, I have got to remember that blood is thicker than water, and——"
She turned to me.
"Did you bring my cheque-book down, Smith, in my dressing-bag?"
"Yes, Miss, I did," I said gravely enough, though I was laughing ruefully within myself.
"Well, just pop upstairs and get it for me," said Miss Million. Then, again turning to her cousin, shesaid: "I can't say that I myself would have cared particularly to start borrowing money off some one the first time I set eyes on them, cousin or no cousin! Unusual sort of begging I call it! Still, I daresay I could spare you" (here I saw her making a rapid mental calculation) "five pounds, if that is of any good to you."
Here, at the very door, I stopped. I had been checked by the hearty laugh of real boyish amusement that broke from Mr. Hiram P. Jessop at her last words.
"Five pounds!" he echoed in his crisp, un-English accent. "Five? Any good to me? My dear cousin Nellie, that's no more good to me than a tissue-paper sunshade would be under a waterspout. No, five pounds would be most emphatically not any good to me. Nor ten pounds. Nor twenty pounds. I am not asking for a day's carfare and luncheon ticket. I tell you, my dear little girl, it ismoneyI want!"
Miss Million stared at him rather indignantly this time. I didn't dream of leaving her at this juncture.
I waited and I watched, without troubling to conceal my interest from these two young people. I felt I had to listen to what would happen next.
"Money?" repeated Miss Million, the heiress. "However much do you want, then?"
"Thousands of dollars," announced the young American in his grave, sober voice.
There came into the bright grey eyes of Miss Nellie Million an angry look that I had once seen there when an unwise milk-boy had tried to convince our thrifty little maid-of-all-work that he had given her sixpennyworthinstead of the bare threepennyworth that filled the little cardboard vessel which she held in her hand! For I believe that at the bottom of her heart "little Million" is still as thrifty, still as careful, still as determined that she won't be "done"!
In the matter of clothes she has, of course, allowed herself for once to loose her firmly screwed-on little dark head.
But now that the trousseau of new clothes is bought the brief madness had left her. She is again the same Million who once said to me at home: "Extravagant! That is a thing I could never be!"
In a voice of the old Million she demanded sharply of the quite prosperous-looking, well-dressed and well-fed young man in front of her: "Whatever in the wide world would you do with all that money, supposing you had it?"
"Well, I should not waste it, I guess," retorted the young man. "In fact, it would be put to a considerably bigger purpose than what it would if you had kept it, to buy yourself candies and hair-ribbon and whatever you girls do with money when it gets into your little hands. I want that money," here his voice grew more serious than before, "for an Object!"
"I want that money for an object," repeated Miss Million's American cousin. And then he went on, at last, to tell us what "the object" was.
It took a long time. It was very complicated. It was full of technical terms that were absolute Greek to me, as well as to Million. There she sat in the big basket-chair, with the coloured cushions behind herdark head; her grey eyes wide open, and fixed, defensively, upon the face of this young man with a story to tell.
To cut it short, it was this. About a year ago Mr. Hiram P. Jessop had left off being manager of the pork factory belonging to the late Samuel Million because of his other work. He was, he said, "no factory boss by nature." He was an inventor. He had invented a machine—yes! This was where the technical terms began raining thick and fast upon our bewildered ears—a machine for dropping bombs from aeroplanes——
"Bombs? Good heavens alive!" interrupted Miss Million, with a look of real horror on her little face. "D'you mean them things that go off?"
"Why, I guess I hope they'd go off," returned the young man with the shrewd and courteous smile. "Certainly that would be the idea of them—to go off! Why, yes!"
"Then—are you," said Million, gazing reproachfully upon him, "one of these here anarchists?"
He shook his mouse-coloured head.
"Do I look like one, Cousin Nellie? Nothing further from my thoughts than anarchy. The last thing I'd stand for."
"Then whatever in the wide world d'you want to go dropping bombs for?" retorted my young mistress. "Dropping 'em on who, I should like to know?"
"On the enemy, I guess."
"Enemy?"
"Sure thing. I wouldn't want to be dropping them on our own folks now, would I?" said the young Americanin his pleasant, reasonable voice; while I, too, gazed at him in wonder at the unexpected things that came from his firm, clean-shaven lips.
He began again to explain.
"Now you see, Cousin Nellie and Miss Smith, I am taking the aeroplane as it will be. Absolutely one of the most important factors in modern warfare——"
"But who's talking about war?" asked the bewildered Million.
"I am," said the young American.
"War?" repeated his cousin. "But gracious alive! Where is there any, nowadays?"
The glimpse of English landscape outside the window seemed to echo her question.
There seemed to be no memory of such a terrible and strenuous thing as war among those gently sloping Sussex Downs, where the white chalk showed in patches through the close turf, and where the summer haze, dancing above that chalk, made all the distances deceptive.
From the top of those downs the country, I knew, must look flat as coloured maps. They lay spread out, those squares and oblongs of pearl-grey chalk, of green corn, of golden hay, with "the King's peace over all, dear boys, the King's peace over all," as Kipling said.
The whole country seemed as if the events that had come and gone since the reign, say, of King John had left no more impression upon it than the cloud shadows that had rolled and passed, rolled and passed. As it was in the beginning, so it was in the late June of NineteenFourteen. And so it looked as if it must ever remain.
Yet——Here was an extraordinarily unexpected young man bringing into the midst of all this sun-lit peace the talk of war! War as it had never yet been waged; war not only on the land and under the waves, but war that dropped death from the very clouds themselves!
"I think you're talking silly," said Miss Million severely. "No doubt there's always a certain amount of warring and fighting going on in India, where poor dad was. Out-of-the-way places like that, where there aren't any only black people to fight with, anyhow.... But any other sort of fighting came to an end with the Bo'r War, where dad was outed.
"And I don't see what it's got to do with you, or why you should think it so fearfully important to go inventing your bomb-droppers and what-nots for things what—what aren't going to happen!"
The young American smiled in a distant sort of way.
"So you're one of the people that think war isn't going to happen again? Well! I guess you aren't lonely. Plenty think as you do," he told his cousin. "Others think as I do. They calculate that sooner or later it's bound to come. And that if it comes fortune will favour those that have prepared for the idea of it. Aren't you a soldier's daughter, Cousin Nellie?"
The little dark head of Sergeant Million's orphan went up proudly.
"Rather!"
"Well, then, you'll take a real live interest," said her cousin, "in something that might make all the difference in the world to your country, supposing she did come to grips with another country. That's the difference that would be made by machines like mine. Not that there is another machine just like my own, I guess. Let me tell you about her——"
Again he went on talking about his new bomb-dropper in words that I don't pretend to understand.
I understood the tone, though.
That was unmistakable. It was the rapt and utterly serious tone which a person speaks in of something that fills his whole heart. I suppose a painter would speak thus of his beloved art, or a violinist of his music, or a mother of her adored and only baby boy. I saw the young American's face light up until it was even as something inspired.
This machine of his, for dropping bombs from the clouds upon the heads of some enemy that existed if only in his imagination was "his subject." This was his all. This he lived for. Yes, that was plain to both of us. I saw Miss Million give an understanding nod of her little dark head as she said: "Yes, you haven't half set your mind on this thing, have you?"
"I guess you've hit it," said the American. Then Miss Million asked: "And where does the money part of it come in?"
Then he explained to us that, having invented the thing (it was all a pure joy apparently), now began the hard work. He had to sell the machine! He had to get it "taken up," to have it experimented with.All this would run him into more money than he had got.
He concluded simply: "That's where the Million dollars would come in so useful! And, Cousin Nellie, I am simply bound to try and get them!"
I watched my mistress's face as he made this announcement. Miss Million, I saw, was so interested that for the moment she had forgotten her own obsession, her infatuation for the Honourable Jim Burke. As well as the interest, though, there was "fight" in the grey eyes of the soldier's orphan who used to wear a blue-print uniform frock and a black straw hat with a scarlet ribbon about it.
She said: "I see what you mean. Me give you my money to play with! And what if I don't hold with investing any of uncle's money in this harum-scarum idea of yours? I am none so sure that I do hold——"
"Maybe I might have to do a little of the holding myself, Cousin Nellie," broke in the quiet, firm voice of her American cousin. "See here! What if I were to put up a tussle to get all that money away from you, whether you wanted to give it up to me to play with it or not?"
And then he began quickly to explain to her what he had explained to me coming down in the car. He went over the possibilities of his contesting Mr. Samuel Million's will.
I don't think I shall ever forget that funny little scene in the bungalow-furnished room with all those theatrical photographs papering the walls, and with the windows opening on to the Sussex garden wherethe bees boomed in the roses, and the lazy sound mingled with the chirping of the starlings, and with the shriller chatter of two of the "Refuge" girls lying in deck-chairs in the shadow of the lilacs.
Inside, these two cousins, young American and young Englishwoman, who might be going to fight for a fortune, stared at each other with a measuring glance that was not at all unfriendly. In the eyes of both I read the same question.
"Now, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it?"
After a pause Miss Million said: "Well, this'll mean a lot of worry and noosance, I suppose. Going to Lawr! Never thought I should come to that sort of thing. Courts, and lawyers, an' all that——"
She looked straight at the young American, who nodded.
"Yes, I guess that's what fighting this thing out will mean," he agreed.
Miss Million knit her brows.
"Lawr," she said reflectively, voicing the sentiment of our whole sex on this vexed subject. "Lawr always seems to be sersilly! It lets a whole lot o' things go on that you'd think ought to 'a' been stopped hundreds of years ago by Ack of Parliament. Then again, it drops on you like one o' them bombs of yours for something that doesn't make twopennyworth of difference to anybody, and there you are with forty shillings fine, at least. An' as for getting anything done with going to Lawr about it, well, it's like I used to say to the butcher's boy at Putney when he used to ask me togive him time to get that joint brought round: 'Time! It isn't time you want, it's Eternity!'
"Going to Lawr! What does it mean? Paying away pots o' money to a lot o' good-for-nothing people for talking to you till you're silly, and writing letters to you that you can't make head nor tail of, and then nothing settled until you're old and grey. If then!"
"That's quite an accurate description of my own feelings towards the business," said the other candidate for Miss Million's fortune. "I'm not breaking my neck or straining myself any to hand over to the lawyers any of the precious dollars that I want for the wedding-portion of my machine."
"Go to law——No, that's not a thing I want to do," repeated the present owner of the precious dollars. "Same time, I'm not going to lose any of the money that's mine by right if I can possibly keep hold on it—that's only sense, that is!"
And she turned to me, while again I felt as if I were a referee. "What do you say, Smith?"
I was deadly puzzled.
I ventured: "But if you've both made up your minds you must have the money, there doesn't seem anything for it but to go to law, does there?"
"Wait awhile," said the young American slowly. "There does appear to me to be an alternative. Now, see here——"
He leant towards Miss Million. He held out his hand, as if to point out the alternative. He said: "There is another way of fixing it, I guess. We needn'tfight. I'd feel real mean, fighting a dear little girl like you——"
"You won't get round me," said Miss Million, quite as defensively as if she were addressing a tradesman's boy on a doorstep. "No getting round me with soft soap, young man!"
"I wasn't meaning it that way," he said, "The way I meant would let us share the money and yet let's both have the dollars and the glory of the invention and everything else!"
"I don't know how you mean," declared Miss Million.
I, sitting there in my corner, had seen what was coming.
But I really believe Miss Million herself received the surprise of her life when her cousin gave his quiet reply.
"Supposing," he said, "supposing we two were to get married?"
"Marry?" cried Miss Million in her shrillest Putney-kitchen voice. "Me? You?"
She flung up her little, dark head and let loose a shriek of laughter—half-indignant laughter at that.
Then, recovering herself, she turned upon the young man who had proposed to her in this quite unconventional fashion and began to—well! there's no expression for it but one of her own. She began to "go for him."
"I don't call it very funny," she declared sharply, "to go making a joke of a subject like that to a young lady you haven't known above a half an hour hardly."
"I wasn't thinking about the humourousness of the proposition, Cousin Nellie!" protested Mr. Hiram P. Jessop steadily. "I meant it perfectly seriously."
Miss Million gazed at him from the chair opposite.
Her cousin met that challenging, distrustful gaze unflinchingly. And in his own grey eyes I noticed a mixture of obstinacy and of quite respectful admiration. Certainly the little thing was looking very pretty and spirited.
Every woman has her "day." It's too bad that this generally happens at a time when nobody calls and there's not a soul about to admire her at her best. The next evening, when she's got to wear a low-cut frock and go out somewhere, the chances are a hundred to one that it will be her "day off," and that she will appear a perfect fright, all "salt-cellars" and rebellious wisps of hair.
But to proceed with Miss Million, who was walking off with one man's admiration by means of the added good looks she had acquired by being in love with another man. Such is life.
"You mean it seriously?" she repeated.
"I do," he said, nodding emphatically. "I certainly do."
Miss Million said: "You must be barmy!"
"Barmy?" echoed her American cousin. "You mean——"
"Off your onion. Up the pole. Wrong in your 'ead—head," explained Miss Million. "That's what you must be. Why, good gracious alive! The idea! Proposingto marry a girl the first time you ever set eyes on her. Smith, did you ever——"
"I never had to sit in the room before while another girl was being proposed to," I put in uncomfortably. "If you don't mind, Miss, I think I had better go now, and allow you and Mr. Jessop to talk this over between yourselves."
"Nothing of the kind, Miss Smith, nothing of the kind," put in the suitor, turning to me as I stood ready to flee to scenes less embarrassing. "You're a nice, well-balanced, intell'gent sort of a young lady yourself. I'd just like to have your point of view about this affair of my cousin arranging to marry me——"
"I'm not arranging no such thing," cried Miss Million, "and don't mean to!"
"See here; you'd far better," said Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, in his kindly, reasonable, shrewd, young voice. "Look at the worry and discomfort and argument and inconvenience about the money that she'd avoid"—again turning to Miss Million's maid—"if she agreed to do so."
"Then, again," he went on, "what a much more comfortable situation for a young lady of her age and appearance if she could go travelling around with a husky-looking sort of husband, with a head on his shoulders, rather than be trapesing about alone, with nothing but a young lady of a lady's-maid no older or fitter to cope with the battles of life than she is herself. A husband to keep away the sordid and disagreeable aspects of life——"
Here I remembered suddenly the visit of that detectivewho wanted to search Miss Million's boxes at the Cecil. I thought to myself: "Yes! if we only had a husband. I mean if she had! It would be a handy sort of thing to be able to call in next time we were suspected of having taken anybody's rubies!"
And then I remembered with a shock that I hadn't yet had time to break it to my mistress that we had been suspected—were probably still suspected—by that awful Rattenheimer person!
Meanwhile Miss Million's cousin and would-be husband was going on expatiating on the many advantages, to a young lady in her position, of having a real man to look after her interests——
"All very true. But I don't know as I'm exactly hard up for a husband," retorted Miss Million, with a little simper and a blush that I knew was called up by the memory of the blue, black-lashed eyes of a certain Irish scamp and scaramouch who ought to be put in the stocks at Charing Cross as an example to all nice girls of the kind of young man whom it is desirable to avoid and to snub. Miss Million added: "I don't know that I couldn't get married any time I wanted to."
"Sure thing," agreed her cousin gravely. "But the question is, how are you going to know which man's just hunting you for the sake of Uncle Sam's dollars? Making love to the girl, with his eyes on the pork factory?"
"Well, I must say I think that comes well from you!" exclaimed Miss Million. "You to talk about people wanting to marry me for my money, when you'vejust said yourself that you've set your heart on those dollars of Uncle Sam's for your old aeroplane machine! You're a nice one!"
"I'm sincere," said the young American, in a voice that no one could doubt. "I want the dollars. But I wouldn't have suggested marrying them—if I hadn't liked the little girl that went with them. I told you right away when I came into this room, Cousin Nellie, that I think you're a little peach. As I said, I like your pretty little frank face and the cunning way you fix yourself up. I like your honesty. No beating about the bush."
He paused a second or so, and then went on.
"'You must be barmy,' says you. It appeared that way to you, and you said it. That's my own point of view. If you mean a thing, say it out. You do. I like that. I revere that. And in a charming little girl it's rare," said the American simply. "I like your voice——"
Here I suppressed a gasp, just in time. He liked Million's voice! He liked that appalling Cockney accent that has sounded so much more ear-piercing and nerve-rasping since it has been associated with the clothes that—well, ought to have such a very much prettier sort of tone coming out of them!
He liked it. Oh, he must be in love at first sight—at first sound!
"Plenty of these young English girls talk as if it sprained them over each syllable. You're brisk and peart and alive," he told her earnestly. "I think you've a lovely way of talking."
Miss Million was taking it all in, as a girl does take in compliments, whether they are from the right man or from the wrong one. That is, she looked as if every word were cream to her. Only another woman could have seen which remark she tossed aside in her own mind as "just what he said," and which tribute she treasured.
I saw that what appealed to Miss Million was "the lovely way of talking" and "the cunning way she'd fixed herself up." In fact, the two compliments she deserved least.
Oh, how I wished she'd say "Yes, thank you," at once to a young man who would certainly be the solution of all my doubts and difficulties as far as my young mistress was concerned! He'd look after her. He'd spoil her, as these Americans do spoil their adored womenkind!
All her little ways would be so "noo," as he calls it, to him, that he wouldn't realise which of them were—were—were the kind of thing that would set the teeth on edge of, say, the Honourable Jim Burke.