set up a lodging-house for
hard-up theatrical girls who are what they call "resting," that is, out
of a job for the moment.

I have picked up from Million and from the others that London's Love has
the kindest heart in all London for those members of her profession who
have been less successful than she has. She has a hundred pensioners;
she is simply besieged with begging-letters. It is a wonder that there
is any of her own salary left for this bright-haired, sharp-tongued
artiste to live on!

Well, to cut a long story short, she bought the place. Here it is,
crammed full of stage girls and women of one sort and another, mostly
from the music-halls. The woman with the hair is Miss Alethea Ashton,
the "serio." The honey-blonde in the dressing-jacket, who sat at one
side of me at dinner, is "Marmora, the Twentieth Century Hebe," who
renders classic poses or "breathing marbles."

The tiny, gipsy-looking one on my other side is Miss Verry Verry, the
boy impersonator, who appears in man-o'-war suits and sailor hats. There
is a snake-charmer lady and a ventriloquist's assistant, and I have not
yet been able to discover who all the others were.

Miss Vi Vassity lets those pay her who can. The others owe "until their
ship comes in"; but the mistress of the place keeps a shrewd though
kindly eye on all their doings, and she comes down at least once a week
herself to make sure that all is well with "Refuge" and "Refugettes."

The secret of her sudden pilgrimage into Sussex the other night was that
she had received a telephone message at the club of The Thousand and One
Nights to inform her of still another arrival at the "Refuge." This was
the infant daughter of the ventriloquist's assistant, who is also the
ventriloquist's wife. This event seems to have come off some weeks
before it was expected. And at the time the "Refuge" was short of
domestic service; there was no one to wait on the nurse who had been
hastily summoned. The house was at sixes and sevens....

In a fever of hurry Miss Vi Vassity went down, taking with her a
volunteer who said she loved little babies and would do anything to "be
a bit of a help" in the house.

This volunteer was the little heiress, who still kept, under all her new
and silken splendour, the heart of the good-natured, helpful "little
Million" from the Soldiers' Orphanage and the Putney kitchen.

I might have spared myself all my nervous anxiety about Lord
Fourcastles! It seems a bad dr