at £20 a year! To think of it! I could see my Aunt Anastasia thinking of it—with bitterness, with envy. It was she who ought to have taken Million to that office in Chancery Lane. But she—the mistress of the house—excused herself by saying it was her morning for doing the silver. [Pg 20] We left her in the kitchen surrounded by what I am irreverent enough to call the relics of our family's grandeur—the Queen Anne tea service, the Early Georgian forks and spoons that have been worn and polished fragile and thin. Indeed, one teaspoon is broken. Aunt Anastasia took to her bed on the day of that accident. And the maid we had before Million scoured my grandfather's Crimean medal so heartily that soon there would have been nothing left to see on it. Since then my aunt has tended the relics with her own hands. [Pg 20] We left her brooding darkly over the injustice that had brought fortune to a wretched little maid-of-all-work and poverty to our family; we hailed the big white motor-'bus at the top of the road by the subscription library, and dashed up the steps to the front seat. "There! Bit of all right, this, ain't it, Miss Beatrice!" gasped Million ecstatically. Stars of delight shone in each grey eye as she settled herself down on the tilted seat. I thought that this change of expression was because she had thought over her marvellous good fortune during the night, and because she had begun to realise a little what it would all mean to her. But I was quite wrong. Million, peering down over the side of the 'bus, exclaimed gleefully, "Look at 'em! Look at 'em!" "Look at what?" "At all the girls down our road, there," explained Million, with a wave of her tightly gloved hand. At almost every house in Laburnum Grove a maid, in pink or lilac print, with pail and floor-cloth, was [Pg 21] giving the steps their matutinal wash. One was polishing the knocker, the bell-handles, and the brass plate of the doctor's abode. [Pg 21] "And here am I, as large as life, a-ridin' on a 'bus the first thing in the morning!" enlarged Million, clenching her fists and sitting bolt upright. "At half-past nine o'clock, if you please—first time I've ever done such a thing! I've often
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