"You will have. Your maid will take care of that," I assured her. "She'll go with you to all the best shops and tell you what to buy. She'll see that you choose the right colours," I said, with a baleful glance at the crimson floppy hat disfiguring Million's little dark head. "She'll tell you how your things are to be made. She'll take care that you look like any other young lady with a good deal of money to spend, and some taste to spend it with. You don't want to look odd, Million, do you, or to make ridiculous mistakes when you go about to places where you'd meet----" "Oh, Miss," said Million, blenching, "you know that if there is one thing I can't stick it's havin' to think people may be making game of me!" "Well, the good maid would save you from that." "I'd be afraid of her, then," protested Million. I said: "No, you wouldn't. You've never been afraid of me." "Ah," said Million, "but that's different. You aren't a lady's-maid----" I said firmly a thing that made Million's jaw drop and her eyes nearly pop out of her head. I said: "I want to be a lady's-maid. I want to come to you as your maid--Miss Million's maid." "Miss Bee--atrice! You're laughing." "I'm perfectly serious," I said. "Here I am; I've left home, and I want to earn my own living. This is the only way I can do it. I can pack. I can mend. I can do hair. I have got 'The Sense of Clothes'--that is, I should have," I amended, glancing down at my own perfectly awful serge skirt, "if I had the chance of associating with anything worthy of the name of 'clothes.' And I know enough about people to help you in other ways. Million, I should be well worth the fifty or sixty pounds a year you'd pay me as wages." "Me pay you wages?" little Million almost shrieked. "D'you mean it, Miss Beatrice?" "I do." "You mean for you, a young lady that's belonged to the highest gentry, with titles and what not, to come and work as lady's-maid to me, what's been maid-of-all-work at twenty-two pounds a year in your aunt's house?" "Why not?" "But, Miss----It's so--so--Skew-wiff; too topsy-turvy, somehow, I mean," protested Million, the soldier's orphan, in tones of outrage. I said: "Life's topsy-turvy. One class goes up in the world (that's your millionaire uncle and you, my dear), while another goes down (that's me and my aunts and uncles who used to have Lovelace Court). Won't you even give me a helping hand, Million? Won't you let me take this 'situation' that would be such a good way out of things for both of us? Aren't you going to engage me as your maid, Miss Million?" And I waited really anxiously for her decision. CHAPTER VIII I BECOME MILLION'S MAID THE impossible has happened. I am "Miss Million's maid." I was taken on--or engaged, or whatever the right term is--a week ago yesterday.