Miss Million's Maid Part 42

Hereupon Million glowed as pink as any of the roses that were spreading their sweetness abroad on the warm afternoon air outside the gaily curtained window.

"Doesn't that sound lovely!" she exclaimed.

There was a wistfulness in her voice. I was afraid I knew only too well what that wistfulness portended if I could read Million at all (and I really think I ought to be able to now). That wistfulness meant "How much lovelier it would be if the Honourable Jim Burke had been the one to pay me that compliment about being the queen of the home!"

Then she added to the young American, whose boyish eyes were fixed unflinchingly upon her: "Do you know, I am afraid you are an awful flatterer and deceiver. You are just trying to see how much I am going to take in about you thinking me nice-looking and all that!"

If she could only have had these misgivings about Mr. Burke himself, instead of their being about the cousin who, I think, says very little that he does not really mean! Always the wrong people get credit for insincerity! "I am not a flatterer, believe me," said Mr. Hiram P.

Jessop. "If you think that I don't mean anything I say nice to you, why!

I am going to be very sad. I would like to have only nice things to say to you," he added regretfully, "and I tell you it is coming real hard on me--harder than I thought it would be, to have to say the difficult things I have gotten to say now, Cousin Nellie."

So now he was coming to the business end of the interview! The part where he meant to tell Million that her appreciative and gallant cousin was possibly going to walk off with that fortune of hers!

I rose from my chair. I said respectfully: "Shall I go, Miss, if Mr.

Jessop is going to talk family affairs?"

CHAPTER XXVII

AN UNUSUAL SORT OF BEGGAR

"I GUESS it's not any different 'business' from what I have told you, coming along in the car, Miss Smith," said the young American simply.

"Don't quit on my account."

"No, nor on mine neither," said Miss Million, turning quite anxiously to me. "You stop on and hear the end of this, so that me and you can talk it over like, later.

"Now, then," turning to her cousin again, "what's it all about?"

"To cut a long story short," said the young American, in that earnest way of his that is really rather lovable. "You see before you, Cousin Nellie, a man who is"--he paused impressively before he brought out half a dozen pregnant words--"very badly in want of money!"

"Gracious! I must say I should not have thought it," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Million, with a note of the native shrewdness which I had suspected her of having left behind in our Putney kitchen. "If you are poor"--here her bright grey eyes travelled up her cousin's appearance from his quite new-looking American shoes to his well-kept thick and glossy hair--"if you are poor, all I can say is your looks don't pity you!"

"I need not point out to you that looks are a very poor proposition to go by when you are starting in on summing up a person's status," said the young American easily. "I may not look it, but money is a thing that I am desperate for."

A sequence of emotions pa.s.sed each other over Million's little face. As I watched there were disbelief, impatience, helplessness, and the first symptoms of yielding. She said: "Well, I don't know how it is that since I have come into uncle's money I have been meeting people one after the other who keep offering to show me what to do with it. You know, Smith,"

turning to me. "Haven't I had a fair bushel of begging letters from one person and another who is in need of cash? Some of them was real enough to draw tears from the eyes of a stone! Do you remember that one, Smith, about the poor woman with the two babies, and the operation, and I don't know what all? Well! She dried up quick since I suggested calling round to see the babies! A fine take-in that was, I expect"--this to me, with her eye on the well-set-up young man sitting before her. "Still"--this was where the yielding began to come in--"you are my cousin, when all is said. And so, I suppose, I have got to remember that blood is thicker than water, and----"

She turned to me.

"Did you bring my cheque-book down, Smith, in my dressing-bag?"

"Yes, Miss, I did," I said gravely enough, though I was laughing ruefully within myself.

"Well, just pop upstairs and get it for me," said Miss Million. Then, again turning to her cousin, she said: "I can't say that I myself would have cared particularly to start borrowing money off some one the first time I set eyes on them, cousin or no cousin! Unusual sort of begging I call it! Still, I daresay I could spare you" (here I saw her making a rapid mental calculation) "five pounds, if that is of any good to you."

Here, at the very door, I stopped. I had been checked by the hearty laugh of real boyish amus.e.m.e.nt that broke from Mr. Hiram P. Jessop at her last words.

"Five pounds!" he echoed in his crisp, un-English accent. "Five? Any good to me? My dear cousin Nellie, that's no more good to me than a tissue-paper sunshade would be under a waterspout. No, five pounds would be most emphatically not any good to me. Nor ten pounds. Nor twenty pounds. I am not asking for a day's carfare and luncheon ticket. I tell you, my dear little girl, it is _money_ I want!"

Miss Million stared at him rather indignantly this time. I didn't dream of leaving her at this juncture.

I waited and I watched, without troubling to conceal my interest from these two young people. I felt I had to listen to what would happen next.

"Money?" repeated Miss Million, the heiress. "However much do you want, then?"

"Thousands of dollars," announced the young American in his grave, sober voice.

There came into the bright grey eyes of Miss Nellie Million an angry look that I had once seen there when an unwise milk-boy had tried to convince our thrifty little maid-of-all-work that he had given her sixpennyworth instead of the bare threepennyworth that filled the little cardboard vessel which she held in her hand! For I believe that at the bottom of her heart "little Million" is still as thrifty, still as careful, still as determined that she won't be "done"!

In the matter of clothes she has, of course, allowed herself for once to loose her firmly screwed-on little dark head.

But now that the trousseau of new clothes is bought the brief madness had left her. She is again the same Million who once said to me at home: "Extravagant! That is a thing I could never be!"

In a voice of the old Million she demanded sharply of the quite prosperous-looking, well-dressed and well-fed young man in front of her: "Whatever in the wide world would you do with all that money, supposing you had it?"

"Well, I should not waste it, I guess," retorted the young man. "In fact, it would be put to a considerably bigger purpose than what it would if you had kept it, to buy yourself candies and hair-ribbon and whatever you girls do with money when it gets into your little hands. I want that money," here his voice grew more serious than before, "for an Object!"

"I want that money for an object," repeated Miss Million's American cousin. And then he went on, at last, to tell us what "the object" was.

It took a long time. It was very complicated. It was full of technical terms that were absolute Greek to me, as well as to Million. There she sat in the big basket-chair, with the coloured cus.h.i.+ons behind her dark head; her grey eyes wide open, and fixed, defensively, upon the face of this young man with a story to tell.

To cut it short, it was this. About a year ago Mr. Hiram P. Jessop had left off being manager of the pork factory belonging to the late Samuel Million because of his other work. He was, he said, "no factory boss by nature." He was an inventor. He had invented a machine--yes! This was where the technical terms began raining thick and fast upon our bewildered ears--a machine for dropping bombs from aeroplanes----

"Bombs? Good heavens alive!" interrupted Miss Million, with a look of real horror on her little face. "D'you mean them things that go off?"

"Why, I guess I hope they'd go off," returned the young man with the shrewd and courteous smile. "Certainly that would be the idea of them--to go off! Why, yes!"

"Then--are you," said Million, gazing reproachfully upon him, "one of these here anarchists?"

He shook his mouse-coloured head.

"Do I look like one, Cousin Nellie? Nothing further from my thoughts than anarchy. The last thing I'd stand for."

"Then whatever in the wide world d'you want to go dropping bombs for?"

retorted my young mistress. "Dropping 'em on who, I should like to know?"

"On the enemy, I guess."

"Enemy?"

"Sure thing. I wouldn't want to be dropping them on our own folks now, would I?" said the young American in his pleasant, reasonable voice; while I, too, gazed at him in wonder at the unexpected things that came from his firm, clean-shaven lips.

He began again to explain.

"Now you see, Cousin Nellie and Miss Smith, I am taking the aeroplane as it will be. Absolutely one of the most important factors in modern warfare----"