"I never had to sit in the room before while another girl was being proposed to," I put in uncomfortably. "If you don't mind, Miss, I think I had better go now, and allow you and Mr. Jessop to talk this over between yourselves." "Nothing of the kind, Miss Smith, nothing of the kind," put in the suitor, turning to me as I stood ready to flee to scenes less embarrassing. "You're a nice, well-balanced, intell'gent sort of a young lady yourself. I'd just like to have your point of view about this affair of my cousin arranging to marry me----" "I'm not arranging no such thing," cried Miss Million, "and don't mean to!" "See here; you'd far better," said Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, in his kindly, reasonable, shrewd, young voice. "Look at the worry and discomfort and argument and inconvenience about the money that she'd avoid"--again turning to Miss Million's maid--"if she agreed to do so." "Then, again," he went on, "what a much more comfortable situation for a young lady of her age and appearance if she could go travelling around with a husky-looking sort of husband, with a head on his shoulders, rather than be trapesing about alone, with nothing but a young lady of a lady's-maid no older or fitter to cope with the battles of life than she is herself. A husband to keep away the sordid and disagreeable aspects of life----" Here I remembered suddenly the visit of that detective who wanted to search Miss Million's boxes at the Cecil. I thought to myself: "Yes! if we only had a husband. I mean if she had! It would be a handy sort of thing to be able to call in next time we were suspected of having taken anybody's rubies!" And then I remembered with a shock that I hadn't yet had time to break it to my mistress that we had been suspected--were probably still suspected--by that awful Rattenheimer person! Meanwhile Miss Million's cousin and would-be husband was going on expatiating on the many advantages, to a young lady in her position, of having a real man to look after her interests---- "All very true. But I don't know as I'm exactly hard up for a husband," retorted Miss Million, with a little simper and a blush that I knew was called up by the memory of the blue, black-lashed eyes of a certain Irish scamp and scaramouch who ought to be put in the stocks at Charing Cross as an example to all nice girls of the kind of young man whom it is desirable to avoid and to snub. Miss Million added: "I don't know that I couldn't get married any time I wanted to." "Sure thing," agreed her cousin gravely. "But the question is, how are you going to know which man's just hunting you for the sake of Uncle Sam's dollars? Making love to the girl, with his eyes on the pork factory?" "Well, I must say I think that comes well from you!" exclaimed Miss Million. "You to talk about people wanting to marry me for my money, when you've just said yourself that you've set your heart on those dollars of Uncle Sam's for your old aeroplane machine! You're a nice one!"