MILLION BUCKS UP
MISS MILLION has returned, her troubles for the moment forgotten; her
small face rosy from the sunshine and the outdoor air; also as radiant
as if no Assizes loomed before us in a few weeks' time.
"You'll be glad to hear, Smith, that I've settled what to do about all
that fuss and botheration about the money," she told me as I knelt
beside her on the carpet, unfastening her grey suède shoes. "Me and my
cousin have fixed that up."
"Have you?" I said, delightedly glancing up at her, and pausing with one
of her small but dumpy feet in my hand. "Have you really settled it with
Mr. Jessop? Oh, I am so glad! I hope," here I gave an affectionate
little squeeze to that grey, silk-sheathed foot, "I do hope you'll be
very happy."
"Well, he will, that's pretty certain," said Miss Million in her most
matter-of-fact tone of voice; "but whether I will is another matter.
"All depends upon whether this here bomb-dropper turns out a good
investment or a wild-goose chase. 'Twouldn't surprise me a bit if it did
that. Still! He's been talking to me again about it this afternoon,
explaining it all while we sat on two green wooden chairs under the
trees on the grass, as grave as two judges. And I'm taking the chance."
"I think you're so right!" I said enthusiastically. "I'm quite sure he's
exactly the sort of husband for you----"
"Husbands?" echoed Miss Million, and gazed at me stonily. "Who's talking
of husbands?"
"Why----Aren't you?" I exclaimed, utterly taken aback. "Don't you
mean----When you said you'd fixed it up with Mr. Jessop didn't you mean
you'd said you'd marry him?"
"Ow! Now!" ejaculated Million in her Cockniest voice, vigorously shaking
her little dark head. "Marry him? Not much! When I said I'd fixed it up
I meant I was going to 'come in' with the money to float this here
invention of his. No going to Lawr at all. I shall just pay him over so
much.
"We'll get old Mr. Chesterton to arrange about that, and let him do the
best he can. We're goin' shares, and we're going to share profits in
what he makes over the thing--if anything. He seems to me just like a
boy we sor in Kensington Gardens when we was out; a boy with a model
yacht, mad with joy over the machinery of it, and the what-not!
"That's just like my cousin Hiram. Men are kids!" added Miss Million
with a profound smile.
I looked at her with surprise as I fetched her little indoor slippers.
"And you're giving him the money to play with this yacht of his?"
"Yes. He talked me round to that," said my mistress. "But talk me round
into marrying him into the bargain was a thing he couldn't do."
"Why not?" I ventured. "You like him. He's nice----"
"Yes. But marriage! Not for me," said Miss Million, again shaking her
dark head. "I've been thinking it well out, and that's what I've come
to. I'm better single. I've plenty of money, even after I've paid Hiram
all he wants for the blessed machine--sounds like a sewing machine on
the hire system, don't it?
"As I am, I'm my own mistress," said our little ex-maid-servant
exultantly. "Go where I like, do what I like----"
"Except for being arrested and put into prison," I put in ruefully.
"Ow! That about the old ruby. Hiram'll fix that yet, see if he don't,"
said Miss Million, in tones of pride--family pride, I suppose.
"But, as I was saying, while I'm single I can go about as I choose,
nobody saying a word to me. And nobody can twit me with being an old
maid, neither, for when a lady's got money there's no such thing! So
there's one reason gone why she should worry to get married. After all,
what does a gel get married for, mostly?"
I waited expectantly.
"Home of her own," went on Miss Million oracularly. "And I can get that
any day of the week. Two or three I can get. I've been looking at some
o' these illustrated ad-verts in the papers.
"And, Smith, d'you know there's a place down in Wales that u'd suit me
down to the ground if I want a bit of a change, furnished and all. I
always liked the idea of Wales. I'll ask Hiram's advice about that
house."
This reminded me of another young man who had once hoped to have his
advice asked for on subjects of this nature by the little heiress before
me. Poor Mr. Burke, once hero-worshipped by this funny little Dollar
Princess!
I couldn't understand her.
I had to remind her gently: "It isn't only a home of her own, surely,
that a girl's thinking of when she gets married. I--I never thought you
thought so, either, Miss Million. What about--what about being in love
with the man?"
Hereupon my young mistress, sitting there on the corner of the pink
hotel couch, proceeded to give me some (changed) views of her own on the
subject of love.
"It's all very well, but love is not what it's cracked up to be in those
tales out of the Celandine novelettes that I used ter be so fonder
readin'," she said decidedly. "The fack is, I've had some. Look how gone
I was on that Mr. Burke. Fair sloppin' over with love, as they call it."
"Miss Million, dear, do try not to talk quite so--err--quite like that,"
I ventured mildly. But my mistress was no longer to be guided by what I
thought suitable or unsuitable expressions to come from the mouth of a
young lady of fortune.
"Hiram thinks I talk lovely, and what's good enough for him ought to be
good enough for the rest of the people I'm likely to meet, so I'm not
goin' to break my neck no more trying to talk like your Aunt
Nasturtium," announced Million defiantly. "I'm goin' to talk straight,
the way it comes natchrul to me. Now about this love. As I say, I been
let down once with it. And once bit, twice shy. I'm not goin' to let
myself get buzzed, as Vi calls it, no second time. S'no use any more
good-lookin' young gentlemanly men comin' round to try and get on the
soft side of Nellie Million, and fillin' her up with a lot of Tales of
Hoffmann jest because she happens to have a bit of her own. That was a
shock to me, Smith, that was. That about the Honourable Mr. Burke being
such a liar. It's a good job, in a way. Because it's put me off love for
life!"
"I wonder," I said, standing there, and looking thoughtfully down at the
well-dressed, sturdy little figure with the black hair that I can still
see looking neat and glossy under a cap. "If it has done that, it may,
as you say, be 'a good job.' But it might be--a great pity!"
"Ar, go on. Don't you believe that, Miss Kid," returned my mistress with
a funny little echo of England's Premier Comedienne in her voice.
"Love's all right for anybody that hasn't got anything else to hope for,
and that's about as much as you can say for it. But what about yourself,
Smith?"
Here my mistress's bright grey eyes gave me a very straight glance.
"What about our young Mr. Brace, him from the bank? I sor him in court,
and it wasn't at me he was looking at all. Then there was at lunch
to-day. Several times Vi has passed the remark about him and you being
very thick----"
I repressed a wish to check this expression. After all, if "Hiram"
considers it lovely, and it comes "natchrul" to Miss Million, why should
I worry any longer about her flowers of speech?
She then put a "straight" question:
"Has that young gentleman bin makin' up to you?"
I answered her in a "straight" manner:
"Yes. He has. He's asked me to marry him."
"Oh! Good for you!" exclaimed my young mistress delightedly. "Marry you,
already? That would be a step up for you, wouldn't it, Smith? From being
my maid to being a bank manager's wife! Something like, that is. I
always liked him--always thought him a very nice, gentlemanly, superior
sort of looking young feller. And so did you, Miss Beat--so did you,
Smith! In the old days at Putney, with his garden-hose and all!
(Artful!) Well! Of course, it'll be a bit strange for me at first,
having to have somebody fresh to do for me, after getting accustomed to
you. But I've got my clothes now; and I'm sort of used to things. I
shan't feel quite so lorst as I should at first. I shall be sorry to say
good-bye to you, o' course. You and me have always hit it, Smith,
some'ow, whether when you was the maid--or I was," concluded my young
mistress simply, looking up at me with genuine affection in her eyes.
"And I shall always remember you, wherever you are, and I hope you'll
come round and have a cup o' tea sometimes when you're Mrs. Brace, and I
hope you'll accept that two quarters' salary from me now as a wedding
present--not that I won't try and find you some sort of a little
resermenter when it comes to The Day! How soon 'ull him and you be
getting married, do you suppose?"
She was at the end of this long and kind-hearted speech before I could
find breath to interrupt.
I said hastily: "Oh, but now you're making the same mistake that I did
about you! I may not have to leave you at all, Miss Million. I don't
know if I shall ever be 'Mrs. Brace.' I don't know if I've made up my
mind to marry him--I told him I must think it over----"
"Better 'ook him while you can, dear. Young men are fearful ones for
chopping and changing, once you leave 'em to go off the coil, so ter
speak," Miss Million advised me in a friendly, motherly little tone.
"Not too much of your thinkin' it over. You're suited; well, you tell
him so!"
I said nothing. I didn't know what to say.
"Or," pursued Miss Million, "if you reely think he's the sort to think
more of you for 'keeping him guessing,' as Hiram calls it, well, I tell
you what. Me and you'll go down to my country house----"
"Where?" I asked, astounded. I had forgotten Miss Million's new plan of
campaign. "Where will we go?"
"Why, to this Plass or Plarse, or whatever they call it, in Wales, that
I'm thinking of takin'," said Miss Million, rustling the glossy leaves
of the _Country Life_ with the advertisement that had taken her fancy.
"We'll go there, Smith, and chance the ducks. If the perlice want us
again----"
She gave a little shiver.
"Well, they can come and fetch us from there, same as they did from the
'Refuge.' Any'ow, we'll have a bit of peace and quiet there first. I
always did like the idear of scenery, and there's lots of that there.
And we'll have down people to stay with us, so as to liven things up a
bit," enlarged Miss Million, wetting her finger to turn over the pages
of the magazine. "Vi Vassity we'll have; must have her, after her bein'
so decent to us. A friend in need, that's what I call her. And Mrs.
Flukes----" (This is the ventriloquist's wife.)
"We'll have her," planned the future mistress of the country house.
"Give her a bit of a change, and get her strength up again after that
baby. We'll take them down with us after we've been at the 'Refuge' for
a few days; and the nurse. And then we'll ask this Mr. Brace of yours to
come down, Smith, after a week or so. Y'orter be able to give him word,
one way or another, after all that time, didn't you?"
"Yes--I ought," I said.
"Well, there you are," said Miss Million complacently, getting up from
the couch. "I'll dress for late dinner now. Did you think to have me
cerise ironed out a bit?"
"No; and I'm afraid it's too crushed for you to wear," I said, with a
great show of penitence. "I'm afraid I shall have to dress you in the
cream, instead." She was ready dressed in the cream-coloured frock, with
the little golden shoes; she was just going down to join her cousin in
the big dining-room when she turned with a last word to put in on Mr.
Brace's account.
She said: "Your Auntie would be pleased about it now."
I said: "I don't suppose I shall hear anything more about what my aunt
would like me to do."
I was wrong.
For by this morning's post there has arrived a note from my aunt at
Putney. Not for me. For my mistress!
The note is short enough. It is signed only "Anastasia Lovelace," and
all it says is:
"Enclosed find notes to the amount of thirty pounds, being the
sum advanced by you as salary to Miss Beatrice Lovelace. She
will now return to Putney, bringing your receipt."
"Will," again. Will she?
And the notes!
Both Miss Million and I have been gazing in amazement upon the rustling
sheaf that my mistress took out of the registered envelope.
Where, in the name of all that's unaccountable, did Aunt Anastasia
"raise" all that money, and in such a short time?
When could she ever have put her hands upon thirty pounds of English
money?
Borrowed--pooh! Who has she to borrow from?
Beg--so like her!
Steal--I'm the only member of her family who's ever been accused of
that!
Surely--oh, surely, she can't have got the money from the Honourable
Jim?
I can't think how else she can have got it, though.
There's only one thing I know.
I'm not going back to be Aunt Anastasia's niece any more!
I'm going on being Miss Million's maid; I shall go to this new place in
Wales with her!