"Million, you"ll have to "make something of it". Other people do. People who haven"t been brought up to riches. It may not "come natural" to them, at first. But they learn. They learn to live as if they"d always been accustomed to beautiful clothes, and to having houses, and cars, and all that sort of thing, galore. Million, these are the things you"ve got to acquire now you"re rich," I said quite threateningly. "Even your dear old lawyer knew that this Kensington place was only "_pro tem_".
You"ll have to have an establishment, to settle where you"ll live, and what you want to do with yourself."
"I don"t want to do nothing, Miss Beatrice," said little Million helplessly.
"Don"t talk nonsense. You know you told me yourself quite lately," I reminded her, "that you had one great wish."
Million"s troubled little face lifted for a moment into a smile, but she shook her head (in that awful crimsony straw hat that she will wear "for best").
"You do remember that wish," I said. "You told me that you would so like to marry a gentleman. Well, now, here you will have every chance of meeting and marrying one!"
"Oh, Miss! But I"m reely--reely not the kind of girl that----"
"So you"ll have to set to and make yourself into the kind of girl that the kind of "gentleman" you"d like would be wild to marry. You"ll have to----Well, to begin with," I said impressively, "you"ll have to get a very good maid."
"Do you mean a girl to do the work about the house, Miss?"
"No, I don"t. You"ll have a whole staff of people to do that for you," I explained patiently. "I mean a personal maid, a lady"s-maid. A person to do your hair and to marcel-wave, and to manicure, and to ma.s.sage you! A person to take care of your beautiful clo----"
"Haven"t got any beautiful clothes, Miss."
"You will have. Your maid will take care of that," I a.s.sured her.
"She"ll go with you to all the best shops and tell you what to buy.
She"ll see that you choose the right colours," I said, with a baleful glance at the crimson floppy hat disfiguring Million"s little dark head.
"She"ll tell you how your things are to be made. She"ll take care that you look like any other young lady with a good deal of money to spend, and some taste to spend it with. You don"t want to look odd, Million, do you, or to make ridiculous mistakes when you go about to places where you"d meet----"
"Oh, Miss," said Million, blenching, "you know that if there is one thing I can"t stick it"s havin" to think people may be making game of me!"
"Well, the good maid would save you from that."
"I"d be afraid of her, then," protested Million.
I said: "No, you wouldn"t. You"ve never been afraid of me."
"Ah," said Million, "but that"s different. You aren"t a lady"s-maid----"
I said firmly a thing that made Million"s jaw drop and her eyes nearly pop out of her head. I said: "I want to be a lady"s-maid. I want to come to you as your maid--Miss Million"s maid."
"Miss Bee--atrice! You"re laughing."
"I"m perfectly serious," I said. "Here I am; I"ve left home, and I want to earn my own living. This is the only way I can do it. I can pack. I can mend. I can do hair. I have got "The Sense of Clothes"--that is, I should have," I amended, glancing down at my own perfectly awful serge skirt, "if I had the chance of a.s.sociating with anything worthy of the name of "clothes." And I know enough about people to help you in other ways. Million, I should be well worth the fifty or sixty pounds a year you"d pay me as wages."
"Me pay you wages?" little Million almost shrieked. "D"you mean it, Miss Beatrice?"
"I do."
"You mean for you, a young lady that"s belonged to the highest gentry, with t.i.tles and what not, to come and work as lady"s-maid to me, what"s been maid-of-all-work at twenty-two pounds a year in your aunt"s house?"
"Why not?"
"But, Miss----It"s so--so--Skew-wiff; too topsy-turvy, somehow, I mean," protested Million, the soldier"s orphan, in tones of outrage.
I said: "Life"s topsy-turvy. One cla.s.s goes up in the world (that"s your millionaire uncle and you, my dear), while another goes down (that"s me and my aunts and uncles who used to have Lovelace Court). Won"t you even give me a helping hand, Million? Won"t you let me take this "situation"
that would be such a good way out of things for both of us? Aren"t you going to engage me as your maid, Miss Million?"
And I waited really anxiously for her decision.
CHAPTER VIII
I BECOME MILLION"S MAID
THE impossible has happened.
I am "Miss Million"s maid."
I was taken on--or engaged, or whatever the right term is--a week ago yesterday.
I"ve surmounted all objections; the chief being Million--I mean "Miss Million"--herself. Her I have practically bullied into letting her ex-mistress come and work for her. After much talk and many protests, I said, finally, "Million, you"ve got to."
And Million finally said: "Very well, Miss Beatrice, if you will "ave it so, "ave it so you will. It don"t seem right to me, but----"
Then there was my Aunt Anastasia, the controller of my destiny up to now. Her I wrote to from that hostelry in Kensington, which was Million"s first "move" from No. 45, the Putney villa. And from Aunt Anastasia I received a letter of many sheets in length.
Here are a few of the more plum-like extracts:
"When I received the communication of your insane plan, Beatrice, I was forced to retire to the privacy of my own apartment"--
(Not so very "private," when the walls are so thin that she can hear the girls in the adjoining room at No. 46 rustling the tissue-paper of the box under the bed that they keep their nicest hats in!)
"and to take no fewer than five aspirins before I was able to 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 a.s.sociating with young men of the bounder cla.s.s 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.)