Hereupon my young mistress, sitting there on the corner of the pink hotel couch, proceeded to give me some (changed) views of her own on the subject of love.
"It's all very well, but love is not what it's cracked up to be in those tales out of the Celandine novelettes that I used ter be so fonder readin'," she said decidedly. "The fack is, I've had some. Look how gone I was on that Mr. Burke. Fair sloppin' over with love, as they call it."
"Miss Million, dear, do try not to talk quite so--err--quite like that," I ventured mildly. But my mistress was no longer to be guided by what I thought suitable or unsuitable expressions to come from the mouth of a young lady of fortune.
"Hiram thinks I talk lovely, and what's good enough for him ought to be good enough for the rest of the people I'm likely to meet, so I'm not goin' to break my neck no more trying to talk like your Aunt Nasturtium," announced Million defiantly. "I'm goin' to talk straight, the way it comes natchrul to me. Now about this love. As I say, I been let down once with it. And once bit, twice shy. I'm not goin' to let myself get buzzed, as Vi calls it, no second time. S'no use any more good-lookin' young gentlemanly men comin' round to try and get on the soft side of Nellie Million, and fillin' her up with a lot of Tales of Hoffmann jest because she happens to have a bit of her own. That was a shock to me, Smith, that was. That about the Honourable Mr. Burke being such a liar. It's a good job, in a way. Because it's put me off love for life!"
"I wonder," I said, standing there, and looking thoughtfully down at the well-dressed, sturdy little figure with the black hair that I can still see looking neat and glossy under a cap. "If it has done that, it may, as you say, be 'a good job.' But it might be--a great pity!"
"Ar, go on. Don't you believe that, Miss Kid," returned my mistress with a funny little echo of England's Premier Comedienne in her voice. "Love's all right for anybody that hasn't got anything else to hope for, and that's about as much as you can say for it. But what about yourself, Smith?"
Here my mistress's bright grey eyes gave me a very straight glance.
"What about our young Mr. Brace, him from the bank? I sor him in court, and it wasn't at me he was looking at all. Then there was at lunch to-day. Several times Vi has passed the remark about him and you being very thick----"