She was at the end of this long and kind-hearted speech before I could find breath to interrupt.
I said hastily: "Oh, but now you're making the same mistake that I did about you! I may not have to leave you at all, Miss Million. I don't know if I shall ever be 'Mrs. Brace.' I don't know if I've made up my mind to marry him—I told him I must think it over——"
"Better 'ook him while you can, dear. Young men are fearful ones for chopping and changing, once you leave 'em to go off the coil, so ter speak," Miss Million advised me in a friendly, motherly little tone. "Not too much of your thinkin' it over. You're suited; well, you tell him so!"
I said nothing. I didn't know what to say.
"Or," pursued Miss Million, "if you reely think he's the sort to think more of you for 'keeping him guessing,' as Hiram calls it, well, I tell you what. Me and you'll go down to my country house——"
"Where?" I asked, astounded. I had forgotten Miss Million's new plan of campaign. "Where will we go?"
"Why, to this Plass or Plarse, or whatever they call it, in Wales, that I'm thinking of takin'," said Miss Million, rustling the glossy leaves of the Country Life with the advertisement that had taken her fancy. "We'll go there, Smith, and chance the ducks. If the perlice want us again——"
She gave a little shiver.
"Well, they can come and fetch us from there, same as they did from the 'Refuge.' Any'ow, we'll have a bit of peace and quiet there first. I always did like the idear of scenery, and there's lots of that there. And we'll have down people to stay with us, so as to liven things up a bit," enlarged Miss Million, wetting her finger to turn over the pages of the magazine. "Vi Vassity we'll have; must have her, after her bein' so decent to us. A friend in need, that's what I call her. And Mrs. Flukes——" (This is the ventriloquist's wife.)
"We'll have her," planned the future mistress of the country house. "Give her a bit of a change, and get her strength up again after that baby. We'll take them down with us after we've been at the 'Refuge' for a few days; and the nurse. And then we'll ask this Mr. Brace of yours to come down, Smith, after a week or so. Y'orter be able to give him word, one way or another, after all that time, didn't you?"