one thing I know.

I'm not going back to be Aunt Anastasia's niece any more!

I'm going on being Miss Million's maid; I shall go to this new place in
Wales with her!

CHAPTER XXXII

WALES FOREVER!

WELL, here we are again, as the clown says in the harlequinade.

Once more the lives of Miss Million and her maid have been set amidst
scenes until now quite unfamiliar to us.

After the noise and bustle of the Strand about the hotel in July, the
quiet, leafy depths of a remote Welsh valley. After the glaring London
sunshine on the baked pavements, the soft Welsh rain that has been
weeping ever since our arrival over the wooded hills and the tiny,
stone-fenced fields, and the river that prattles over its slaty bed and
swirls into deep, clear pools a stone's-throw below this furnished
country house that Miss Million has taken for three months.

At present the house party consists of Miss Million, Miss Vi Vassity,
Mrs. Flukes, the ventriloquist's wife, her baby and her monthly nurse.
Mr. Jessop, who wrote all the business letters with regard to the taking
of the house, is to come down later, I believe.

So is Mr. Reginald Brace.

In the meantime we have the place to ourselves, also the staff left
behind by the people of the house, consisting of one fat cook, two
housemaids who speak soft Welsh-English, and a knives and boots boy who
appears to say nothing at all but "Ur?" meaning "I beg your pardon?"

I, the lady's-maid, have meals with the staff in the big, slate-floored
kitchen.

This I insisted upon, just as I insisted upon travelling third-class
down from Euston, while my young mistress "went first."

"We've simply got to behave more like real mistress and maid, now that
you've taken a country house for the summer," I told her. "This isn't
the 'Refuge'----"

"It's nowhere so lively, if you ask me," said Miss Million, looking
disconsolately out of the dining-room window. "Look at that view!"

The "view" shows a rain-soaked lawn, stretching down to a tall
rhododendron hedge, also dripping with rain. Beneath the hedge is spread
a dank carpet of fallen pink blooms. Beyond the hedge is a brook that
was once a lane, leading down to a river that was once a brook.

Beyond this come a flooded field and the highroad that is a network of
puddles. In the distance there rises like a screen against the sky a
tall hill, wooded almost to the top, and set