pounds, Miss Million."

"Lor'!" breathed the owner of this wealth. "And me that's been getting five pounds a quarter. That other's mine?"

"After a few necessary formalities, from which I anticipate no difficulties," said the old gentleman.

Some discussion of these formalities followed. In the midst of it I saw Million begin to fidget even more restlessly.

I frowned at her. This drew the attention of the old gentleman upon me. Million was murmuring something about, "Very sorry. Got to get back soon, Miss. Lunch to lay——"

Absurd Million! As if she would ever have to lay lunch again as long as she lived! Couldn't she realise the upheaval in her world? I gazed reproachfully at her.

The lawyer said to me quite pleasantly: "May I ask if you are a relation of Miss Million?"

Hereupon Miss Million shot at him a glance of outrage. "A relation? Her?" she cried. "The ideear!" Little Million's sense of "caste," fostered at the Soldiers' Orphanage, is nearly as strong as my Aunt Anastasia's. No matter if her secret day-dream has always been "to marry a gentleman." She was genuinely shocked that her old lawyer had not realised the relations between her little hard-working self and our family.

So she announced with simple dignity: "This is Miss Lovelace, the young lady where I am in service."

"Were in service," I corrected her.

Million took me up sharply. "I haven't given notice, Miss. I'm not leaving."

"But, you absurd Million, of course you are," I said. "You can't go on living in Laburnum Grove now. You're a rich man's heiress——"

"Will that stop me living where I want? I'm all alone in the world," faltered Million, suddenly looking small and forlorn as she sat there by the big desk. "You're the only real friend I got in the world, Miss Beatrice. I always liked you. You always talked to me as if you was no more a young lady than what I was. D'you think——" Her voice shook. She seemed to have forgotten the presence of old Mr. Chesterton. "D'you think I'd a-stopped so long with your Aunt Nasturtium if it hadn't been for not wantin' to leave where you was? I'd be lost without you. I shouldn't know where to put myself, Miss. Oh, Miss!" There was a sob in her voice. "Don't say I got to go away from you! What am I to do with myself and all that money?" There was a perplexed silence.

Million's lawyer glanced at me over his gold-rimmed glasses, and I glanced back above Million's forget-me-not-wreathed hat.

It is a problem.

This little lonely, thrifty creature—brought up to such a different idea of life—what is to be done about her now?

CHAPTER V

MILLION LEAVES HER PLACE

Million has gone!

She has left us, our little cheerful, and bonnie, and capable maid-of-all-work who has become a millionaire pork-butcher's heiress!

Never again will her trim, aproned figure busy itself about our small and shockingly inconvenient kitchen at No. 45. Never again will she have to struggle with the vagaries of its range. Never again will she "do out" our drawing-room with its disgraceful old carpet and its graceful old cabinet. Never again will she quail under the withering rebuke with which my Aunt Anastasia was wont to greet her if she returned half a minute late from her evening out. Never again will she entertain me with her stream of artless comments on life and love and her own ambition—"Oh, Miss, dear, I should like to marry a gentleman!"

Well, I suppose there's every probability now that this ambition may be gratified. Plenty of hard-up young men about, even of the Lovelace class, "our" class, who would be only too pleased to provide for themselves by marrying a Million, in both senses of the word.

Laburnum Grove, Putney, S.W., will know her no more. And I, Beatrice Lovelace, who was born in the same month of the same year as this other more-favoured girl—I feel as if I'd lost my only friend.

I also feel as if it were at least a couple of years since it all happened. Yet it is only three days since Million and I went down to Chancery Lane together to interview the old lawyer person on the subject of her new riches. I shall never forget that interview. I shall never be able to forget the radiant little face of Million at the end of it all, when the kind old gentleman offered to advance her some of her own money "down on the nail," and did advance her five pounds in cash—five golden, gleaming, solid sovereigns!

"My godfathers!" breathed Million, as she tucked the coins into the palm of her brown-thread glove.

She'd never had so much money at once before in the whole course of her twenty-three years of life. (I've never had it, of course!) And the tangible presence of those heavy coins in her hand seemed to bring it home to Million that she was rich, more than all the explanations of her old lawyer about investments and capital.

I saw him look, half-amusedly, half-anxiously, at the little heiress's flushed face and the gesture with which she clenched that fist full of gold. And it was then that he began to urge upon us that "Miss Million" must find some responsible older person or persons, some ladies with whom she might live while she made her plans respecting the rearrangement of her existence.

To cut a long story short, it was he, the old lawyer, who suggested and arranged for "Miss Million's" next step. It appears that he has sisters "of a reasonable age" (I suppose that means about a hundred and thirty-eight) who are on the committee of a hostelry for gentlewomen of independent means, somewhere in Kensington.

Sure to be a "pussery" of some sort! "Gentlewomen" living together generally relapse into spitefulness and feuds, and "means" can often be pronounced "mean"!

Still, as Million's old lawyer said, the place would provide a haven pro tem.

Our millionairess went off there this morning. She wouldn't take a taxi.

"What's the use o' wasting all that fare from here to Kensington, good gracious?" said Million. "There's no hurry about me getting there long before lunch, after all, Miss Beatrice. And as for me things, they can come by Carter Paterson a bit later. I'll put the card up now, if Miss Lovelace don't mind. There's only that tin trunk that I've had ever since the Orphanage, and me straw basket with the strap round——"

Such luggage for an heiress! I couldn't help smiling at it as it waited in the kitchen entrance. And then the smile turned to a lump in my throat as Million, in her hat and jacket, stumped down the wooden back stairs to say good-bye to me.

"I said good-bye to your Aunt Nastur—to Miss Lovelace, before she went out, Miss." (My aunt is lunching at the hotel of one of her few remaining old friends who is passing through London.)

"Can't say I shall breck my heart missin' her, Miss Beatrice," announced the candid Million. "Why, at the last she shook 'ands—hands as if I was all over black-lead and she was afraid of it coming off on her! But you—you've always been so different, as I say. You always seemed to go on as if"—Million's funny little voice quivered—"as if Gord had made us both——"

"Don't, Million," I said chokily. "I shall cry if you go on like this. And tears are so unlucky to christen a new venture with."

"Is that what they say, Miss?" rejoined the superstitious Million, winking back the fat, shiny drops that were gathering in her own grey eyes. "Aw right, then, I won't. 'Keep smiling,' eh? Always merry and bright, and