Million. "Where I was before I came here there was three
sons of the house, and seein' so much of them gave me a sort of
cri--terion, like. One was in the Navy. Oh, Miss, he was nice. Oh, the
way he talked. It was better than 'The Flag Lieutenant.' It's a fact,
I'd rather listen to his voice than any one's on the stage, d'you know.

"The two others were at Oxford College. And oh, their lovely ties, and
the jolly, laughing sort of ways they had, and how they used to open the
door for their mother, and to sing in the bathroom of a morning. Well! I
dunno what it was, quite. Different," said little Million vaguely, with
her wistfully ambitious grey eyes straying out of the kitchen window
again. "I did like it. And that's the sort of gentleman I'd like to
marry."

She turned to the oven again, and moved the gooseberry tart to the high
shelf.

I said, smiling at her: "Million, any 'gentleman' ought to be glad to
marry you for your pastry alone."

"Oh, lor', Miss, I'm not building on it," said Million brightly. "A
sergeant's daughter? A girl in service? Why, what toff would ever think
of her? 'Tisn't as if I was on the stage, where it doesn't seem to
matter what you've been. Or as if I was 'a lovely mill-hand,' like in
those tales where they always marry the son of the owner of the works.
So what's the good of me thinking? Not but what I make up dreams in my
head, sometimes," admitted Million, "of what I'd do and say--if 'He' did
and said!"

"All girls have those dreams, Million," I told her, "whether they're
maids or mistresses."

"Think so, Miss Beatrice?" said our little maid. "Well, I suppose I'm as
likely to get my wish of marrying a gentleman as you are of coming in
for a fortune. Talking of gentlemen, have you noticed the tall, fair one
who's come to live at No. 44? Him that plays the pianoler of an evening?
In a City office he is, their girl told me. Wanted to get into the Army,
but there wasn't enough money. Well, he's one of the sort I'd a-liked. A
real gentleman, I call him."

And Auntie calls him an insufferable young bounder!

Funny, funny world where people give such different names to the same
thing!

I can see it's going to take Aunt Anastasia a week before she forgives
me the incident of the young man next door!

Supper this evening was deathly silent; except for the scrunching over
my salad, just like footsteps on the gravel. After supper we sat
speechless in the drawing-room. I darned my holey