A sequence of emotions passed each other over Million's little face. As I watched there were disbelief, impatience, helplessness, and the first symptoms of yielding. She said: "Well, I don't know how it is that since I have come into uncle's money I have been meeting people one after the other who keep offering to show me what to do with it. You know, Smith," turning to me. "Haven't I had a fair bushel of begging letters from one person and another who is in need of cash? Some of them was real enough to draw tears from the eyes of a stone! Do you remember that one, Smith, about the poor woman with the two babies, and the operation, and I don't know what all? Well! She dried up quick since I suggested calling round to see the babies! A fine take-in that was, I expect"--this to me, with her eye on the well-set-up young man sitting before her. "Still"--this was where the yielding began to come in--"you are my cousin, when all is said. And so, I suppose, I have got to remember that blood is thicker than water, and----" She turned to me. "Did you bring my cheque-book down, Smith, in my dressing-bag?" "Yes, Miss, I did," I said gravely enough, though I was laughing ruefully within myself. "Well, just pop upstairs and get it for me," said Miss Million. Then, again turning to her cousin, she said: "I can't say that I myself would have cared particularly to start borrowing money off some one the first time I set eyes on them, cousin or no cousin! Unusual sort of begging I call it! Still, I daresay I could spare you" (here I saw her making a rapid mental calculation) "five pounds, if that is of any good to you." Here, at the very door, I stopped. I had been checked by the hearty laugh of real boyish amusement that broke from Mr. Hiram P. Jessop at her last words. "Five pounds!" he echoed in his crisp, un-English accent. "Five? Any good to me? My dear cousin Nellie, that's no more good to me than a tissue-paper sunshade would be under a waterspout. No, five pounds would be most emphatically not any good to me. Nor ten pounds. Nor twenty pounds. I am not asking for a day's carfare and luncheon ticket. I tell you, my dear little girl, it is _money_ I want!" Miss Million stared at him rather indignantly this time. I didn't dream of leaving her at this juncture. I waited and I watched, without troubling to conceal my interest from these two young people. I felt I had to listen to what would happen next. "Money?" repeated Miss Million, the heiress. "However much do you want, then?" "Thousands of dollars," announced the young American in his grave, sober voice.