that were spreading
their sweetness abroad on the warm afternoon air outside the gaily
curtained window.

"Doesn't that sound lovely!" she exclaimed.

There was a wistfulness in her voice. I was afraid I knew only too well
what that wistfulness portended if I could read Million at all (and I
really think I ought to be able to now). That wistfulness meant "How
much lovelier it would be if the Honourable Jim Burke had been the one
to pay me that compliment about being the queen of the home!"

Then she added to the young American, whose boyish eyes were fixed
unflinchingly upon her: "Do you know, I am afraid you are an awful
flatterer and deceiver. You are just trying to see how much I am going
to take in about you thinking me nice-looking and all that!"

If she could only have had these misgivings about Mr. Burke himself,
instead of their being about the cousin who, I think, says very little
that he does not really mean! Always the wrong people get credit for
insincerity! "I am not a flatterer, believe me," said Mr. Hiram P.
Jessop. "If you think that I don't mean anything I say nice to you, why!
I am going to be very sad. I would like to have only nice things to say
to you," he added regretfully, "and I tell you it is coming real hard
on me--harder than I thought it would be, to have to say the difficult
things I have gotten to say now, Cousin Nellie."

So now he was coming to the business end of the interview! The part
where he meant to tell Million that her appreciative and gallant cousin
was possibly going to walk off with that fortune of hers!

I rose from my chair. I said respectfully: "Shall I go, Miss, if Mr.
Jessop is going to talk family affairs?"

CHAPTER XXVII

AN UNUSUAL SORT OF BEGGAR

"I GUESS it's not any different 'business' from what I have told you,
coming along in the car, Miss Smith," said the young American simply.
"Don't quit on my account."

"No, nor on mine neither," said Miss Million, turning quite anxiously to
me. "You stop on and hear the end of this, so that me and you can talk
it over like, later.

"Now, then," turning to her cousin again, "what's it all about?"

"To cut a long story short," said the young American, in that earnest
way of his that is really rather lovable. "You see before you, Cousin
Nellie, a man who is"--he paused impressively before he brought out half
a dozen pregnant words--"very badly in want of