of the added good looks she had acquired by being in
love with another man. Such is life.

"You mean it seriously?" she repeated.

"I do," he said, nodding emphatically. "I certainly do."

Miss Million said: "You must be barmy!"

"Barmy?" echoed her American cousin. "You mean----"

"Off your onion. Up the pole. Wrong in your 'ead--head," explained Miss
Million. "That's what you must be. Why, good gracious alive! The idea!
Proposing to marry a girl the first time you ever set eyes on her.
Smith, did you ever----"

"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