in the white French muslin with
the broad grey-blue ribbon to match your best feature, your eyes. Very
successful."

"Looks so plain, to me," objected little Million unhappily. "You might
have let me put on something more elabyrinth. Nobody'd ever believe I'd
been and gone and given as much as fifteen guineas for this thing."

"Anybody would know, who knew anything," I consoled her. "And I'll tell
you one thing. A man like Mr. Burke knows everything. Give him my
love--no. Mind you don't!"

"I shall be too scared to say a word to him," began Million, whimpering.
"You might----" I shut the door.

I went into my room across the corridor and prepared to spend a quiet,
useful, self-effacing afternoon with my work-basket and my employer's
new "pretties."

LATER.

What a different afternoon it has turned out to be!

I suppose it was about twenty minutes later, but scarcely had I
embroidered the first white silken "M" on Million's new crepe-de-chine
"nightie" than there was a light tap at my door. I thought it was my own
tea.

"Come in," I called.

Enter the sandy-haired, middle-aged chamber-maid. She stood, looking
mightily perplexed.

Well, I suppose we are rather a perplexing proposition! Two girls of
twenty-three, turning up at the Hotel Cecil with highly
luxurious-looking but empty baggage, and clad as it were off a stall at
some country rectory jumble sale! Blossoming forth the next day into
attire of the most chic and costly! One girl, with a voice and accent of
what Aunt Anastasia still calls "the governing class," acting as maid to
the other, whose accent is--well, different. I wonder what the
chamber-maid thinks?

She said: "Oh, if you please--"

(No "madam" this time, though she was obviously on the verge of putting
it in!)

"--if you please, Miss Million sent me to tell you that she wished her
maid to come to her at once."

Good gracious! This was an unexpected move.

An "S O S" signal, I supposed, from Million in distress! My employer,
utterly unable to cope with the situation and the "strange young
gentlemen alone," had ordered up reinforcements! An order! Yes, it was
an order from mistress to maid!

My first impulse was frankly to refuse. I wonder how many maids have
felt it in their time over an unbargained-for order?

"Tell her I'm not coming." This was what I nearly said to the
chamber-maid.

Then I remembered that one coul