"What was your wish, then?" I asked, beginning to tear up the crisp leaves of the lettuce into the gla.s.s salad-bowl. "I"ve told you mine, Million. Tell me yours."
"Sure, you won"t let on to any one if I do?" returned our little maid, putting her black, white-capped head on one side like a little bird.
"Sure you won"t go and make game of me afterwards to your Aunt Nasturtium--oh, lor". Hark at me, now!--to Miss Lovelace, I mean? If there"s one thing that does make me feel queer it"s thinking folks are making game of me."
"I promise I won"t. Tell me the wish!"
Million laughed again, coloured, twiddled her ap.r.o.n. Then, leaning over the deal table towards me, she murmured unexpectedly and bashfully: "I always wish that I could marry a gentleman!"
"A gentleman?" I echoed, rather taken aback.
"Of course, I know," explained Million, "that a young girl in my walk of life has plenty of chances of getting married. Not like a young lady in yours, Miss. Without a young lady like you has plenty of money there"s a very poor choice of husbands!"
"There is, indeed," I sighed.
The little maid went on: "So I could have some sort of young man any day, Miss Beatrice. There"s the postman here--very inclined to be friendly--not to mention the policeman. And the young man who used to come round to attend to the gas at the Orphanage when I was there. He writes to me still."
"And do you write back to him?"
"Picture postcards of Richmond Park. That"s all he"s ever had from me.
He"s not the sort of young man I"d like. You see, Miss, I"ve seen other sorts," said Million. "Where I was before I came here there was three sons of the house, and seein" so much of them gave me a sort of cri--terion, like. One was in the Navy. Oh, Miss, he was nice. Oh, the way he talked. It was better than "The Flag Lieutenant." It"s a fact, I"d rather listen to his voice than any one"s on the stage, d"you know.
"The two others were at Oxford College. And oh, their lovely ties, and the jolly, laughing sort of ways they had, and how they used to open the door for their mother, and to sing in the bathroom of a morning. Well! I dunno what it was, quite. Different," said little Million vaguely, with her wistfully ambitious grey eyes straying out of the kitchen window again. "I did like it. And that"s the sort of gentleman I"d like to marry."
She turned to the oven again, and moved the gooseberry tart to the high shelf.
I said, smiling at her: "Million, any "gentleman" ought to be glad to marry you for your pastry alone."
"Oh, lor", Miss, I"m not building on it," said Million brightly. "A sergeant"s daughter? A girl in service? Why, what toff would ever think of her? "Tisn"t as if I was on the stage, where it doesn"t seem to matter what you"ve been. Or as if I was "a lovely mill-hand," like in those tales where they always marry the son of the owner of the works.
So what"s the good of me thinking? Not but what I make up dreams in my head, sometimes," admitted Million, "of what I"d do and say--if "He" did and said!"
"All girls have those dreams, Million," I told her, "whether they"re maids or mistresses."
"Think so, Miss Beatrice?" said our little maid. "Well, I suppose I"m as likely to get my wish of marrying a gentleman as you are of coming in for a fortune. Talking of gentlemen, have you noticed the tall, fair one who"s come to live at No. 44? Him that plays the pianoler of an evening?
In a City office he is, their girl told me. Wanted to get into the Army, but there wasn"t enough money. Well, he"s one of the sort I"d a-liked. A real gentleman, I call him."
And Auntie calls him an insufferable young bounder!
Funny, funny world where people give such different names to the same thing!
I can see it"s going to take Aunt Anastasia a week before she forgives me the incident of the young man next door!
Supper this evening was deathly silent; except for the scrunching over my salad, just like footsteps on the gravel. After supper we sat speechless in the drawing-room. I darned my holey tan cashmere stockings.
Auntie read her last book from the library, "Rambles in j.a.pan." She"s always reading books of travel--"Our Trip to Turkey," "A Cycle in Cathay," "Round the World in a Motor-boat," and so on. Poor dear! She would so adore travelling! And she"ll never get the chance except in print. Once I begged her to sell the Gainsborough portrait of Lady Anastasia, and take out the money in having a few really ripping tours.
I thought she would have withered me with her look.
She"ll never do anything so desperately disrespectful to our family.
She"ll never do anything, in fact. Nothing will ever happen. Life will just go on and on, and we shall go on too, getting older, and shabbier, and more "select," and duller. They say that fortune knocks once in a lifetime at every one"s door. But I"m sure there"ll never be a knock at the door of No. 45 Laburnum Grove, except----
"Tot--Tot!"
Ah! the postman. Then Million"s quick step into the hall. Then nothing further. No letters for us? The letter must have been for our little maid. Perhaps from the young man who attended to the Orphanage gas?
Happy Million, to have even an unwanted young man to write to her!
CHAPTER III
A BOLT FROM THE BLUE
OH! to think that fortune should have given its knock at the door of No.
45 after all! To think that this is how it should have happened! Of all the unexpected thunderbolts! And after that irresponsible talk about money and legacies and wishes this evening in the kitchen, and to think that Destiny had even then shuffled the cards that she has just dealt!
It was ten minutes after the postman had been that we heard a flurried tap on the drawing-room door, and Million positively burst into the room. She was wide-eyed, scarlet with excitement. She held a letter out towards us with a gesture as if she were afraid it might explode in her hand.
"What is this, Million?" demanded my aunt, severely, over the top of her "Rambles."
"Oh, Miss Lovelace!" gasped our little maid. "Oh, Miss Beatrice! I don"t rightly know if I"m standing on my head or my heels. I don"t know if I"ve got the right hang of this at all. Will you--will you please read it for me?"
I took the letter.
I read it through without taking any of it in, as so often happens when something startling meets one"s eyes.
Million"s little fluttered voice queried, "What do you make of that, Miss?"
"I don"t know. Wait a minute. I must read it over again," I gasped in turn. "May I read it aloud?"
Million, clutching her starched white ap.r.o.n, nodded.
I read it aloud, this letter of Destiny.
It bore the address of a lawyer"s office in Chancery Lane, and it began:
"_To_ MISS NELLIE MILLION.
"Dear Madam:--I am instructed to inform you that under the will of your late uncle, Mr. Samuel Million, of Chicago, U.S.A., you have been appointed heiress to his fortune of one million dollars.
"I shall be pleased to call upon you and to await your instructions, if you will kindly acquaint me with your present address----"
"That was sent to the Orphanage," whispered Million.
"or I should be very pleased to meet you if you would make it convenient to come and call upon me here at my offices at any time which may suit you. I am, Madam,
"Yours obediently, "JOSIAH CHESTERTON."
There was silence in our drawing-room. Million"s little face turned, with a positively scared expression, from Aunt Anastasia to me.