"It's about your friend, Miss Million."
"My mistress," I reminded him, fingering my apron.
The young man looked very uncomfortable.
Being so fair, he reddens easily. He looks much less grown-up and reliable than he had seemed that first morning at the bank. I wonder how this is.
He looked at the apron and said: "Well, if you must call her your mistress—I don't think it's at all—but, never mind that now—about Miss Million."
"Don't tell me all her money's suddenly lost!" I cried in a quick fright.
The manager shook his fair head. "Oh, nothing of that kind. No. Something almost as difficult to tell you, though. But I felt I had to do it, Miss Lovelace."
His fair face set itself into a sort of conscientious mask. "I turned to you instead of to her because—well, because for obvious reasons you were the one to turn to.
"Miss Million is a young—a young lady who seems at present to have more money than friends. It is natural that, just now, she should be making a number of new acquaintances. It is also natural that she should not always know which of these acquaintances are a wise choice——"
"Oh, I know what you mean," I interposed, for I thought he was going on in that rather sermony style until Million came home. "You're going to warn me that Mr. Burke, whom you met here, isn't a fit person for Mill—for Miss Million to know."