"There, now! What a mercy I left the kitchen window open. Now I haven't seen the new moon through the glass!" she exclaimed, as she put all ready before me—the hard-boiled egg, the mustard, sugar, pepper, [Pg 11] salt, oil, and vinegar—for me to make the salad-dressing. "Miss Beatrice, look at it through the open window—there, just to the right of that little pink cloud—turn your money, and you'll get a wish." [Pg 11] I peeped out of the window, and caught sight of that slender festoon of silver swung in the sky above the roses of the garden trellis. "I've no money to turn," I smiled ruefully, "never have." "Turn some o' mine, Miss," said Million. "I've got four-and-six here that I'm going to put into the Post Office Savings Bank to-morrow." Million is extraordinarily thrifty. "There you are. Wished your wish, Miss Beatrice?" "Oh, yes, I've wished it," I said. "Always the same wish with me, you know, Million. Always a perfectly hopeless one. It's always, always that some millionaire may leave me a fortune one day, and that I shall be very rich, rolling in money." "D'you think so much of money, then, Miss Beatrice?" said Million, bustling over the black-and-white chequered linoleum to the range, and setting the lid on to her saucepan full of potatoes. "Rich people aren't always happy——" "That's their own fault for not knowing how to spend the money!" "Ah, but I was readin' a sweetly pretty tale all about that just now. 'Love or Money,' that was the name of it," said Million, nodding at the kitchen-table drawer in which she keeps her novelettes, "and it said these very words: 'Money doesn't buy everythin'.'" [Pg 12] "H'm! It would buy most of the things I want!" I declared as I sliced away at my cucumber. "The lovely country house where I'd have crowds of people, all kinds of paralysingly interesting people to stay with me! The heavenly times in London, going everywhere and seeing everything! The motors! And, oh, Million"—I heard my voice shake with yearning as I pronounced the magic name of what every woman thinks of when she thinks of having money—"oh, Million, the clothes I'd get! If I had decent clothes I'd be decent-looking. I know I should." [Pg 12] "Why, Miss Beatrice, I've always thought you was a very nice-looking young lady,
Prev.
Back
Top