ont Milly--Milly true to
type, wearing a grimy matutinal apron, an expression half sleepy, half
sullen, and a horrid soot smudge on her ripe, red, right cheek.

In this guise (so sedulously does life itself ape the conventions of its
literature and drama) Milly looked as lifelike as though viewed through
the illusion of footlights. Otherwise, as Staff never failed to be
gratified to observe, she differed radically from the stock article of
our stage. For one thing, she refrained from dropping her _aitches_ and
stumbling over them on her first entrance in order merely to win a laugh
and so lift her little role from the common rut of "lines" to the
dignity of "a bit." For another, she seldom if ever brandished that
age-honoured wand of her office, a bedraggled feather-duster. Nor was
she by any means in love with the tenant of the fust-floor-front.

But though Staff was grateful for Milly because of this strong and
unconventional individuality of hers, he wasn't at all pleased to be
interrupted, and he made nothing whatever of the ostensible excuse for
the interruption; the latter being a very large and brilliantly
illuminated bandbox, which Milly was offering him in pantomime.

"It have just come," said Milly calmly, in response to his enquiring
stare. "Where would you wish me to put it, sir?"

"Put what?"

Milly gesticulated eloquently with the bandbox.

"That thing?" said Staff with scorn.

"Yessir."

"I don't want you to put it anywhere. Take it away."

"But it's for you, sir."

"Impossible. Some mistake. Please don't bother--just take it away.
There's a good girl."

Milly's disdain of this blandishment was plainly visible in the added
elevation of her already sufficiently tucked-up nose.

"Beg pardon, sir," she persisted coldly, "but it's got your nime on it,
and the boy as left it just now asked if you lived here."

Staff's frown portrayed indignation, incredulity and impatience.

"Mistake, I tell you. I haven't been buying any millinery. Absurd!"

"Beg pardon, sir, but you can see as it's addressed to you."

It was: the box being held out for examination, Staff saw plainly that
it was tagged with a card inscribed in fashionably slapdash feminine
handwriting with what was unquestionably the name and local address of
Benjamin Staff, Esq.

Because of this, he felt called upon to subject the box to more minute
inspection.

It was nothing more nor less than the everyday milliners' hat-box of
comme