of 'em married, except one, who's a colonel's widow, and
thinks she's everybody, and all of 'em about eighty-in-the-shade. And
spiteful! And nosey!" enlarged Million, as we sat down together on one
of the massive red-plush covered sofas, under a large steel engraving of
"Lord Byron and the Maid of Athens." She went on: "They wanted to know
all about me, o' course. Watchin' me every bite I put into my mouth at
table, and me so nervous that no wonder I helped myself to peas into me
glass of water! Lookin' down their noses at me and mumbling to each
other about me--not what I call very polite manners--and chance the
ducks! I----"

Here the drawing-room door opened to admit one of the ladies, I suppose,
of whom Million had been complaining. She wore a grey woolly
shoulder-shawl and myrtle-green hair--I suppose something had gone wrong
with the brown hair-restorer. And this lady gave one piercing glance at
me and another at Million as she sidled towards a writing-table at the
further end of the drawing-room and sat down with her back towards us.
I'm sorry to say that Million twisted her small face into a perfectly
horrible grimace and stuck out her tongue at the back. Then she,
Million, lowered her voice as she chattered on about her new
surroundings.

"Cry myself to sleep every night, I should, if I was to try to stay on
here," she said. "Couldn't feel happy here, not if it was ever so! Oh,
I'd rather go back to the Orphanage. Something of me own 'age' there,
anyhow! Don't care if it is very tony and high-class and recommended.
It's not my style.... I don't know where I'm going after, but, Miss
Beatrice, I'm going to get out of this! I can't stay in a place that
makes me feel as if I was in prison, so I'm going to hop it."

"That's just how I felt, Million. That's what I made up my mind to do,"
I told her. The new heiress gazed at me with all her bright grey eyes.

"What? You, Miss Beatrice? You don't mean----"

"That I'm not going on living at No. 45 Laburnum Grove!"

"What?" Million raised her voice incautiously, and the
myrtle-green-haired lady glanced around. "Miss Nosey Parker," muttered
Million, and then "Straight? You mean you've had a bust-up with your
Aunt Nasturtium?"

"Rather," I nodded.

"About that young gentleman, I lay?" said Million. "Him from next door."

"How did you guess it was that? It was," I admitted. "He came to return
this brooch of yours that you dropped on the 'bus--here it is--and my