on't
you go. Vi, I don't want her to go," she protested. "She can pop up and
see that baby afterwards, when it is being bathed. I want her now to
stop and talk to this Mr. Jessop with me. I shan't feel so nervous
then," she added, with her little giggle.

"Please yourselves," said "London's Love," with a laugh and a little nod
for her exit. We three were left alone in the sitting-room.

I really think it is wonderful the way Americans will burst at once into
a flood of friendliness that it will take the average young Englishman
at least three or four years of intimate acquaintance to achieve.

And even then I doubt whether the average young Englishman (take, for
example, my prospective fiance, Mr. Reginald Brace) would ever be able
to "let himself go" like they do! Never had I heard such a stream of
earnestly spoken compliments, accompanied by glances of such
unmistakable admiration, as young Mr. Jessop immediately proceeded to
lavish on Miss Million.

He told her, if I can remember correctly the sequence of his remarks:
"That he was real delighted to make her acquaintance; that he had
somehow fixed it up in his mind already that she would be a real, sweet
little girl when he got to know her, and that even he hadn't calculated
what a little Beaut she was going to turn out----"

"Oh, listen to him! If it isn't another of them!" exclaimed the artless
Million, all blushes and smiles as she turned to me; I felt as if I were
a referee in some game of which I wasn't quite certain about the rules.

Mr. Jessop went on to inform his cousin that she had the real, English,
peach-bloom complexion that was so much admired in the States; only that
she did her hair so much better than the way most English girls seemed
to fix theirs.

Here I nearly dropped a little curtsey. The arrangement of Million's
dark, glossy hair stands to my credit!

"There's a style about your dressing that I like, too. So real simple
and girlish," approved Mr. Jessop, with his eyes on the faultlessly cut,
tobacco-brown taffeta that had cost at least four times as much as the
elaborately thought-out crime in cerise which should have been on
Million's conscience. "I must say you take my breath away with your
pretty looks, Cousin Nellie; you do, indeed. If I may say so, you appear
to be the sort of little girl that any one might be thankful to have to
cherish as the regular little queen of the home."

Hereupon Million glowed as pink as any of the roses