trellis. I knew she'd be rude to him, as only "our families" can be rude to those whom they consider "bounders." He's nothing to me. I've never spoken to him before this evening. I oughtn't to mind what he thinks about those weird people who live at No. 45. I oughtn't to wonder what it was he was just going to say to me. So I fled out of the bamboo and heirloom furnished drawing-room, down the narrow little oil-clothed passage, and into the kitchen with its heartening smell [Pg 9] of hot gooseberry tart and the cheerful society of Million, our little maid-of-all-work. It's the custom of our family to call the maid by her surname. [Pg 9] (At the same time I couldn't help wondering what that young man had been going to say.) [Pg 10] [Pg 10] CHAPTER II TWO GIRLS IN A KITCHEN Little Million, looking very cheery and trim in her black gown and her white apron, and the neat little cap perched upon her glossy black hair, smiled welcomingly upon me as I came into the kitchen. Little I like Million's nice smile and her Cockney chatter about the Soldiers' Orphanage where she was brought up and trained for domestic service, and about her places before she came here. Aunt Anastasia considers that it is so demoralising to gossip with the lower orders. But Millions is the only girl of my own age in London with whom I have the chance of gossiping! She likes me, too. She considers that Miss Beatrice treats her as if she were a human being instead of a machine. She tossed the paper-covered Celandine Novelette that she had been reading into the drawer of the kitchen-table among the lead spoons and the skewers and the cooking-forks, and then she spread the table with a clean tea-cloth, and brought out the colander with the lettuce and the cucumber and the cress that I was going to cut up into salad; doing everything as if she liked helping me.
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