ics of a young man who can't be serious for two
seconds together. "Foreigners? What for?"

"Why, for a husband! Supposing now that I were to introduce to you a
fellow I knew, a fellow with 'a heart of gold' and pretty well
everything else in metal to match it, like all these German Jews----"

I gasped: "You think I ought to marry a German Jew?"

"That's just the merest idea of mine. Startled you, did it? We'll
discuss it later, you and I. But it'll take time. Lots of time--and, by
Jove! There isn't any too much of that now," he exclaimed, glancing at
his wrist-watch as we passed the lions of Trafalgar Square, "if I'm to
get back to your--to our Miss Million----"

"Is she expecting you," I asked rather sharply, "again?"

"She is not. But here are these two friends of mine calling on her; and
I'm bound to put in an appearance before they leave. Rather so! I'm not
turning them loose on any new heiresses, without keeping my eye on what
they're up to," explained the Honourable James Burke with his usual
bland frankness. "So here I stop the taxi."

He got out. I saw him feel in all his pockets, and at last he took out
half a sovereign. (The last, I daresay.)

Then he turned to me. "I'll give you three minutes' start, child, to get
back to the hotel and into that cap and apron of yours. One more
word.... Go through the lounge, and you'll see the animals feeding. Go
on, man"--to the taxi driver: "The Hotel Cecil; fly!"

CHAPTER XV

A DIFFERENT KIND OF PARTY

MISS MILLION and her callers were having tea in the bigger "lounge," or
whatever they call the gilded hall behind the great glass doors which
shut it off from the main entrance.

Now, this was the first time that my mistress had plucked up courage to
take a meal downstairs since we had come to the Cecil.

I wondered how she'd been getting on. I must see!

So, still in my outdoor things, I passed the glass doors. I walked into
the big tea-room. There were palms, and much gilding, and sofas, and
dark-eyed, weary-looking waiters wheeling round little carts spread with
dainties, and offering the array of eclairs and flat apple-cakes to the
different groups--largely made up of American visitors--who were sitting
at the plate-glass-topped tables.

I couldn't see Million--Miss Million's party--anywhere at first!

I looked about....

At the further end of the place a string band, half-hidden behind
gre