brown hair-restorer. And this lady gave one piercing glance at me and another at Million as she sidled towards a writing-table at the further end of the drawing-room and sat down with her back towards us. I'm sorry to say that Million twisted her small face into a perfectly horrible grimace and stuck out her tongue at the back. Then she, Million, lowered her voice as she chattered on about her new surroundings.

"Cry myself to sleep every night, I should, if I was to try to stay on here," she said. "Couldn't feel happy here, not if it was ever so! Oh, I'd rather go back to the Orphanage. Something of me own 'age' there, anyhow! Don't care if it is very tony and high-class and recommended. It's not my style.... I don't know where I'm going after, but, Miss Beatrice, I'm going to get out of this! I can't stay in a place that makes me feel as if I was in prison, so I'm going to hop it."

"That's just how I felt, Million. That's what I made up my mind to do," I told her. The new heiress gazed at me with all her bright grey eyes.

[Pg 48] "What? You, Miss Beatrice? You don't mean——"

[Pg 48]

"That I'm not going on living at No. 45 Laburnum Grove!"

"What?" Million raised her voice incautiously, and the myrtle-green-haired lady glanced around. "Miss Nosey Parker," muttered Million, and then "Straight? You mean you've had a bust-up with your Aunt Nasturtium?"

"Rather," I nodded.

"About that young gentleman, I lay?" said Million. "Him from next door."

"How did you guess it was that? It was," I admitted. "He came to return this brooch of yours that you dropped on the 'bus—here it is—and my aunt chose to—to—to——"

"Oh, I know the way Miss Lovelace would 'choose'," said Million, with gusto. "So you left her, Miss Beatrice! So you done a flit at last, like I always been saying you did ought to do! You done it! Cheers! And now what are you thinking to do? Coming to me, are you?"

I smiled into the little affectionate rosy face that I was so accustomed to seeing under a white frilly cap with a black bow.

I said: "Yes, Million. I'm coming to you if you'll have me."

"Ow! That's the style, Miss——"

"If I come, you won't have to call me 'Miss' any more," I said 

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