Miss Million’s Maid
Berta Ruck
Romantic Comedy
Published 1915
Synopsis
This is the story of Beatrice Lovelace, a spirited young woman living with her strict Aunt Anastasia in suburban England just before World War I. Life changes dramatically when their loyal maid, Nellie Million, inherits a vast fortune from an unknown uncle, suddenly shifting the power dynamics between employer and servant. Set largely in a British lower- to middle-class neighborhood, the novel follows Beatrice’s efforts to redefine her role in a world where wealth now belongs to her former maid. Beatrice soon becomes Nellie’s personal maid, upending conventions of class, propriety, and female ambition, while drawing attention from fortune hunters and other dubious characters. Through their evolving friendship and love interests, this role reversal tests the limits of their new social statuses and romantic entanglements.
Novel Excerpt
Oh! to think that fortune should have given its knock at the door of No. 45 after all! To think that this is how it should have happened! Of all the unexpected thunderbolts! And after that irresponsible talk about money and legacies and wishes this evening in the kitchen, and to think that Destiny had even then shuffled the cards that she has just dealt!
It was ten minutes after the postman had been that we heard a flurried tap on the drawing-room door, and Million positively burst into the room. She was wide-eyed, scarlet with excitement. She held a letter out towards us with a gesture as if she were afraid it might explode in her hand.
“What is this, Million?” demanded my aunt, severely, over the top of her “Rambles.”
“Oh, Miss Lovelace!” gasped our little maid. “Oh, Miss Beatrice! I don’t rightly know if I’m standing on my head or my heels. I don’t know if I’ve got the right hang of this at all. Will you—will you please read it for me?”
I took the letter.
I read it through without taking any of it in, as so often happens when something startling meets one’s eyes.
Million’s little fluttered voice queried, “What do you make of that, Miss?”
“I don’t know. Wait a minute. I must read it over again,” I gasped in turn. “May I read it aloud?”
Million, clutching her starched white apron, nodded.
I read it aloud, this letter of Destiny.
It bore the address of a lawyer’s office in Chancery Lane, and it began:
“To Miss Nellie Million.
“Dear Madam:—I am instructed to inform you that under the will of your late uncle, Mr. Samuel Million, of Chicago, U.S.A., you have been appointed heiress to his fortune of one million dollars.
“I shall be pleased to call upon you and to await your instructions, if you will kindly acquaint me with your present address——”
“That was sent to the Orphanage,” whispered Million.
“or I should be very pleased to meet you if you would make it convenient to come and call upon me here at my offices at any time which may suit you. I am, Madam,
“Yours obediently,
“Josiah Chesterton.”
There was silence in our drawing-room. Million’s little face turned, with a positively scared expression, from Aunt Anastasia to me