Million would be so overwhelmed that she would look as if she had a whole mine full of stolen rubies sewn into the tops of her corsets. She has a wild and baseless horror of anything to do with the police. (I saw her once, at home, when a strange constable called to inquire about a lost dog. It was I who'd had to go to the door. Million had sat, shuddering, in the kitchen, her hand on her apron-bib, and her whole person suffering from what she calls "the palps.")
So this was going to be awkward, hideously awkward.
I said, desperately: "What am I to do about it?"
"There is only one thing for it as far as I can see," said the young American thoughtfully; "you will have to let me go down with a suit-case full of lady's wearing apparel. You will have to let me make all the inquiries in Lewes."
"You? Oh, no! That is quite impossible," I exclaimed firmly. "You could not."
"Why not? I tell you, Miss Smith, it seems to me just to meet the case," he said earnestly.
"Here's this little cousin of mine, that I have never yet seen, that I've got to make friends with. I am to be allowed to make her acquaintance by doing her a service. Now, isn't that the real, old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon chivalry? It would just appeal to me."
"I don't think it would appeal to Miss Million," I said, "to have a perfectly strange young man suddenly making his appearance in the middle of--wherever she is, with a box full of all sorts of her things, and saying he is her cousin! No, I shall have to go," I said.
And then a sudden awful thought struck me. How far could I go on the money that was left to me? Three and sixpence!
"My goodness! What's the railway fare from Victoria, or wherever you go to Lewes from? I don't believe I have got it!" I turned to the young man with a resigned sigh of desperation. "I shall have to borrow from you," I said.
"With great pleasure," said the young American promptly. Then, with a twinkle, he added swiftly: "See here, Miss Smith. Cut out the railroad business altogether. Far better if you were to permit me to take you down by automobile. Will you let me do that, now? I can hire an automobile and tear off a hundred miles or so of peaceful English landscape before anybody has had time to say 'How very extraordinary!' which is the thing they always are saying in England when any remark is put forward about what they do in the States. Pack up my cousin's contraptions to-night, will you? To-morrow morning, at nine or eight or seven if you like, we'll buzz out of this little old town and play baseball with all the police traps between here and Brighton! Does this appeal to you?"