the dagger!"

She stepped towards the back window.

I didn't feel equal to seeing the encounter between Aunt Anastasia in
her most icily formal mood and the young man with the nice voice, of
whom I caught white-and-gold glimpses hovering about on the other side
of the green trellis.

I knew she'd be rude to him, as only "our families" can be rude to those
whom they consider "bounders." He's nothing to me. I've never spoken to
him before this evening. I oughtn't to mind what he thinks about those
weird people who live at No. 45. I oughtn't to wonder what it was he was
just going to say to me.

So I fled out of the bamboo and heirloom furnished drawing-room, down
the narrow little oil-clothed passage, and into the kitchen with its
heartening smell of hot gooseberry tart and the cheerful society of
Million, our little maid-of-all-work. It's the custom of our family to
call the maid by her surname.

(At the same time I couldn't help wondering what that young man had been
going to say.)

CHAPTER II

TWO GIRLS IN A KITCHEN

LITTLE Million, looking very cheery and trim in her black gown and her
white apron, and the neat little cap perched upon her glossy black hair,
smiled welcomingly upon me as I came into the kitchen.

I like Million's nice smile and her Cockney chatter about the Soldiers'
Orphanage where she was brought up and trained for domestic service, and
about her places before she came here. Aunt Anastasia considers that it
is so demoralising to gossip with the lower orders. But Millions is the
only girl of my own age in London with whom I have the chance of
gossiping!

She likes me, too. She considers that Miss Beatrice treats her as if she
were a human being instead of a machine. She tossed the paper-covered
Celandine Novelette that she had been reading into the drawer of
the kitchen-table among the lead spoons and the skewers and the
cooking-forks, and then she spread the table with a clean tea-cloth, and
brought out the colander with the lettuce and the cucumber and the cress
that I was going to cut up into salad; doing everything as if she liked
helping me.

"There, now! What a mercy I left the kitchen window open. Now I haven't
seen the new moon through the glass!" she exclaimed, as she put all
ready before me--the hard-boiled egg, the mustard, sugar, pepper, salt,
oil, and vinegar--for me to make the salad-dressing. "Miss Beatrice,