the old lawyer. "But, pardon me, I
have no money of yours! You mean Miss Million wants some more money?"

I hope he doesn't think I'm a parasite of a girl who clings on to little
Million because she's happened to inherit a fortune. Rather angrily I
said: "We both want it; because until Miss Million has some more she
cannot pay me my salary!"

He looked a little amazed at this, but he did not say anything about his
surprise that I was in a salaried capacity to my little friend. He only
said: "Well! How much do you--and Miss Million--want? Five pounds again?
Five hundred----"

"Oh, not five hundred all at once," gasped the awe-struck Million; "I'd
never feel I could go to sleep with it----"

While I cut in abruptly: "Yes, five hundred will do for us to arrange
ourselves on."

Thereupon the old lawyer made the suggestion that was to be fraught with
such odd consequences.

"Wouldn't it be more convenient," he said, "if an account could be
opened in Miss Million's name at a bank?"

"That will do," said Miss Million's maid (myself), while Miss Million
gazed round upon the black dispatch-boxes of the office.

Ten minutes later, with a cheque for L500 clutched tightly in Miss
Million's hand, also a letter from Mr. Chesterton to Mr. Reginald Brace,
the manager, we found ourselves at the bank near Ludgate Circus that Mr.
Chesterton had recommended.

Million was once more doddering with nervousness. Once more Miss
Million's new maid had to take it all upon herself.

"Mr. Brace," I demanded boldly over the shoulder of an errand-lad who
was handing in slips of paper with small red stamps upon them.

One moment later and we were ushered into the manager's private room.

Yet another second, and that room seemed echoing with Million's gleeful
shriek of "Why! Miss Beatrice! See who it is? If it isn't the gent from
next door!"

She meant the manager.

I looked up and faced the astonished blue eyes in his nice sunburnt
face.

Yes! It was the young man from No. 44 Laburnum Grove; "the insufferable
young bounder" on whose account I had got into those "rows" with Aunt
Anastasia. So this was Mr. Reginald Brace, the bank manager! This was
where he took the silk hat I'd seen disappearing down the grove each
morning at 9.30.

He recognised us. All three of us laughed! He was the first to be grave.
Indeed, he was suddenly alarmingly formal and ceremonious as he asked us
to sit down and opened Mr. Chesterton's letter.

I