?"

"Is it my livery you mean? Don't you think it's rather neat?" suggested
the Honourable Jim ingratiatingly. "Don't you consider that it suits me
almost as well as the black gown and the apron and the doaty little cap
suit Miss Million's maid?"

"But----" I gasped in amazement. "But why are you wearing a chauffeur's
livery?"

"Isn't the reason obvious? Because I've taken a chauffeur's job."

"You, Mr. Burke?"

"Yes, I, Miss Lovelace!" he laughed. "Is there any reason you have to
give against that, as you have against every other mortal thing that the
unfortunate Jim Burke does?"

"I----Look here, I can't wait here talking," I told him, for just at
this minute I caught the surprised glance of cook upon us both.

The spoon with which she beat up the batter was poised in mid-air as she
listened to everything that this superior-looking lady's-maid and still
more superior-looking chauffeur had to say to each other. "I must take
the tea into the drawing-room."

He opened the kitchen door for me as I hastened away with the tray.

Gentleman-adventurer, bronco-buster, stoker, young gentleman of leisure,
chauffeur! What next will be the role that the Honourable and
Extraordinary Jim will take it into his head to play?

Chauffeur, of all things! Why chauffeur?

My head was still buzzing with the surprise of it all, when I heard the
other buzz--the shrill, insistent, worrying buzz that is made by women's
voices when a lot of them are gathered together in a strange house, and
are all talking at once; "made" talk, small talk, weather talk, the talk
that is--as Miss Vassity, for instance, would put it--"enough to drive
any one to drink."

In the drawing-room where these callers were grouped I just caught a
scrap here and a scrap there as I moved about with the tea-things. This
sort of thing:

"And what do you think of this part of the country, Miss Million? Are
you intending to make a long stay----"

"She seemed such a nice girl! Came to me with such a good character from
her----"

"Never touch it. It doesn't suit me. In coffee I like just a very
little, and my daughter's the same. But my husband"--(impressively)--"my
husband is just the reverse. He won't touch it in coff----"

--"hope you intend to patronise our little Sale of Work, Miss Million,
on the twenty-sixth? Oh, you must all come. And I'm still asking
everybody for contributions to my----"

"Do shut up, Alice!" (fierce whisper from the young girl in n