review the situation with any measure of calm."

Then--

"It is well that my poor brother, your father, is not here to
see to what depths his only child has descended, and to what a
milieu!"

(The "descent" being from that potty little row of packing-cases in
Putney to the Hotel Cecil, where I am engaging a suite of rooms for Miss
Million and her maid to-morrow!)

"Your dear great-grandmother, Lady Anastasia, would turn in her
grave, did she ever dream that a Miss Lovelace, a descendant of
the Lovelaces of Lovelace Court," etc., etc.

(But I am not a Lovelace now. I have told Million--I mean, I have
requested my new employer--to call me "Smith." Nice, good, old,
useful-sounding sort of name. And more appropriate to my present
station!)

Then my aunt writes:

"Your fondness for associating with young men of the bounder
class over garden walls and on doorsteps was already a
sufficiently severe shock to me. As that particular young man
appears to be still about here, poisoning the air of the garden
with his tobacco smoke and obviously gazing through the trellis
in search of you each evening, I suppose I must acquit him of
any complicity in your actions."

(I suppose that nice-looking young man at No. 44 has been wondering when
I was going to finish giving him Million's address to return that
brooch.)

There's miles more of Auntie's letter. It ends up with a majestically
tearful supplication to me to return to my own kith and kin (meaning
herself and the Gainsborough portrait!) and to remember who I am.

Nothing will induce me to do so! I've felt another creature since I left
No. 45, with the bamboo furniture and the heirlooms. And, oh, what fun
I'm going to have over forgetting who I was. Hurray for the new life of
liberty and fresh experiences as Miss Million's maid!

The first thing to do, of course, is to provide ourselves with means to
go about, to shop, to arrange the preliminaries of our adventure! That
five pounds which Mr. Chesterton advanced to his new client (smiling as
he did so) will not do more than pay our bill at the Home for
Independent Cats, as Million calls this Kensington place.

Mr. Chesterton not only smiled, he laughed outright when we presented
ourselves at the Chancery Lane office together once more. I was again
spokeswoman and I came to the point at once.

"We want some more money, please."

"Not an uncommon complaint," said