tan cashmere
stockings.

Auntie read her last book from the library, "Rambles in Japan." She's
always reading books of travel--"Our Trip to Turkey," "A Cycle in
Cathay," "Round the World in a Motor-boat," and so on. Poor dear! She
would so adore travelling! And she'll never get the chance except in
print. Once I begged her to sell the Gainsborough portrait of Lady
Anastasia, and take out the money in having a few really ripping tours.
I thought she would have withered me with her look.

She'll never do anything so desperately disrespectful to our family.
She'll never do anything, in fact. Nothing will ever happen. Life will
just go on and on, and we shall go on too, getting older, and shabbier,
and more "select," and duller. They say that fortune knocks once in a
lifetime at every one's door. But I'm sure there'll never be a knock at
the door of No. 45 Laburnum Grove, except----

"Tot--Tot!"

Ah! the postman. Then Million's quick step into the hall. Then nothing
further. No letters for us? The letter must have been for our little
maid. Perhaps from the young man who attended to the Orphanage gas?
Happy Million, to have even an unwanted young man to write to her!

CHAPTER III

A BOLT FROM THE BLUE

OH! to think that fortune should have given its knock at the door of No.
45 after all! To think that this is how it should have happened! Of all
the unexpected thunderbolts! And after that irresponsible talk about
money and legacies and wishes this evening in the kitchen, and to think
that Destiny had even then shuffled the cards that she has just dealt!

It was ten minutes after the postman had been that we heard a flurried
tap on the drawing-room door, and Million positively burst into the
room. She was wide-eyed, scarlet with excitement. She held a letter out
towards us with a gesture as if she were afraid it might explode in her
hand.

"What is this, Million?" demanded my aunt, severely, over the top of her
"Rambles."

"Oh, Miss Lovelace!" gasped our little maid. "Oh, Miss Beatrice! I don't
rightly know if I'm standing on my head or my heels. I don't know if
I've got the right hang of this at all. Will you--will you please read
it for me?"

I took the letter.

I read it through without taking any of it in, as so often happens when
something startling meets one's eyes.

Million's little fluttered voice queried, "What do you make of that,
Mis