at man nerved me to knock really
peremptorily on the sturdy panels of the door.

Then at last I got an answer.

"Don't stand knocking there like an idiot, come in," shrieked the
highest-pitched of all the parrot voices. Giving myself a mental shake,
in I went.

I found myself in a big brown distempered room, with a long white table
running down the centre of it. The place seemed full to overflowing with
two elements--one, the overpowering smell of dinner, i. e., pork and
greens and boiled potatoes, and stout; two, a crowd of girls and women
who looked to me absolutely numberless. They were all more or less
pretty, these girlish faces. And they were all turned to me with
wide-open eyes and parted lips. Out of this sea of faces there appeared
to be just two that I recognised as I gazed round. One was the laughing,
devil-may-care face of the Honourable Jim, who sat with a long peg glass
in front of him, at the bottom of the table.

CHAPTER XXV

FOUND!

THE other----

Ah, yes! At last, at last! After all my anxiety and worry and fretting
and search! There she was! I could have kissed the small, animated
grey-eyed face of the girl who was sitting next to the Honourable Jim at
the table. However she'd come there, I had at least found her.

My long-lost mistress; Miss Million herself!

"Oh, it's her!" cried Miss Million's shrill Cockney voice in a sudden
cessation of the parrot-like shrieks of talk and laughter as I ran round
the table. "Oh, it's my Miss--it's my Miss Smith!"

She clapped her hands with impatience, jumping up in her chair.

"Have you brought them, Smith?" she demanded eagerly. "Have you got my
clothes----"

"Oh, 'ark at her!" shrieked some one on the right of the table. "It's
all her clothes! Hasn't thought of anything else since she came
down----"

"Better late than never----" The babble went on all around me, while I
strove to make myself heard.

"Now we shall see a bit o' style----"

"Don't see anything wrong with the blouse the girl's got on, myself----"

"Fits where it touches, doesn't it----"

Indeed, the garment in which my young mistress's small form was
enfolded appeared to be the sort of wrap which a hairdresser's assistant
tucks about one when one is going to have a shampoo!

"Looks like a purser's jacket on a marling-spike!" sang out some one
else; and then more laughter.

Well, if they were lunatics,