Then he said: "You didn't like it, did you? All that?" with a jerk of his head towards the side street from which the 'bus was lurching away.
I said: "Well! I don't think there seemed to be any real harm in that sort of frivolling. It's very expensive, though, I suppose——"
"Very," said Mr. Brace grimly.
"But, of course, Miss Million has plenty of money to waste. Still, it's rather silly—a lot of grown-up people behaving like that——"
Here I had another mental glimpse of Mr. Burke's reckless, merry, well-bred face, bending over Miss Vi Vassity's common, good-humoured one, with its shrewd, black eyes, its characteristic flash of prominent white teeth; I saw his tall, supple figure whirling round her rather squat, overdressed little shape in that one-step.
"'Larking' about with all sorts of people they wouldn't otherwise meet, I suppose, and shrieking and 'ragging' like a lot of costers on Hampstead Heath. Yes. Really it was rather like a very much more expensive Bank Holiday crowd. It was only another way of dancing to organs in the street, and of flourishing 'tiddlers,' and of shrieking in swing-boats, and of changing hats. Only all that seems to 'go' with costers. And it doesn't with these people," I said, thinking of Mr. Burke's clean-limbed, public-school, hunting-field look.
"I shall tell Mill—Miss Million that. And she won't like it," I chattered on, as Mr. Brace didn't seem to be going to say anything more. "I really think she's better away from those places, perhaps, after all.
"Late hours won't suit her, I know. Why, she's never been out of bed after half-past ten before in her whole life. And she's never tasted those weird things they were having for supper; hot dressed crab and pastry with mushrooms inside it! As for champagne—well, I expect she'll have a horrid headache to-morrow. I shall have to give her breakfast in bed and look after her like a moth——"
"Miss Lovelace! You must do nothing of the sort. That sort of thing must stop," the young man at my side blurted out. "You oughtn't to be doing that. It's too preposterous——"
This was the second time to-day I'd heard that word applied to my working as Miss Million's maid. The first time the Honourable Jim Burke had said it. Now here was a young man who disagreed with the Honourable Jim on every other point, apparently working himself up into angry excitement over this.