ou've contrived to improve the little Million in several ways
since last I saw you."
Oh!
So possibly he really had been paying serious court to the heiress. Yes;
again I had the foreboding shudder. Complications ahead; what with the
Honourable Jim and the Determined Jessop, and the Enamoured Million--to
say nothing of the bomb-dropping machine and the fortune that may be
lost!
"You look thoughtful, Miss Lovelace," said the fortune-hunter who
doesn't know there may be no fortune in it. "Mayn't I congratulate
you----"
"What?" I said, quickly looking up from the luncheon basket that I was
repacking. I wondered where he might have heard anything about my Mr.
Brace. "Congratulate me?"
"Why, on your achievements as a lady's-maid."
"Oh! Oh, yes. Very kind of you to say I had effected 'improvements,'" I
said as bitingly as I could. "I suppose you mean Miss Million's hands
that you were so severe about?"
Here my glance fell upon Mr. Burke's own hands, generally gloved.
They gave me a shock.
They were so surprisingly out of keeping with the rest of his otherwise
well-groomed and expensive appearance, for the nails were rough and
worn; the fingers stumpy and battered and hard, the palms horny as those
of a navvy.
The Honourable Jim saw my look.
"Yes! You think my own hands are no such beauties. Faith, you're right,
child," he said, carelessly flicking the ash from his cigarette off
against a flint. "I never could get my hands fit to be seen again after
that time I came across as a stoker."
"A stoker?" I repeated, staring at the young man. "What on earth were
you doing as a stoker?"
"Working my passage across home from Canada one time," he told me. "You
know I was sent out to Canada by the old man with about five bob a week
to keep up the old family traditions and found a new family fortune. Oh,
quite so."
"What did you do?" I asked. One couldn't help being a little interested
in the gyrations of this rolling stone that has acquired polish and
nothing else.
"Do? Nothing. A bit of everything. Labourer, farm hand. On a ranch,
finally," he said, "where they wouldn't give me anything to eat until
I'd 'made good.' Yes, they were harder than you are, little black
pigeon-girl that I thought had the heart of a stone under the soft
black plumage of her. And by 'making good' they meant taking a horse--a
chestnut, same coloured coat as your hair, child--that nobody else could
ride. I had to stick on her
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