voice. "But he's in Paris--he says he's not staying
there, but he had to pay a business call."

June gave a rather unladylike sniff, but Esther was too engrossed to
notice.

"He seems to have been very lucky," she went on. "He hadn't got very
much money when he went away, but he's got some appointment now; he
does not say what and...."--she gave a little excited laugh--"he says
that he's going to send me L3 a week for as long as he is away....
Isn't it wonderfully good of him? I suppose I ought not to take it,
but he says that if things had turned out as he hoped, we should have
been married, and so ... you don't think it's wrong of me to take it,
do you?" she asked anxiously.

June rose to her feet. She looked chagrined; she had been so sure that
this man was a rotter, that it was a bit of a set-back to hear this
news.

"You take it, my dear, and don't be a goose," she said promptly. "As
he says, if you were his wife you'd take it, and as you're going to be
married, it's quite the right thing if he's well off that he should
help you! I hope you won't let your silly pride make you send it back;
you'd only hurt his feelings."

"I wouldn't do that for anything," Esther said quickly. "But it's such
a lot of money."

"Rubbish!" said June. "Why, Micky Mellowes wouldn't even stop to pick
it up if he dropped it in the road."

"We are not all millionaires like Mr. Mellowes," Esther said sharply.
"And he ought to be ashamed of himself if he really wouldn't stop to
pick it up."

June laughed.

"Don't you take things so literally, my dear," she said. "I know you
don't like Micky, though you've never seen him, but I'm going to ask
him here to tea one day, if he'll come----"

"I don't suppose he will," said Esther. "Elphinstone Road wouldn't be
good enough for him, would it?"

June frowned.

"I don't like to hear you talk like that about Micky! It's not fair,
when you don't know him. I tell you he's one of the best--and, anyway,
as he's a friend of mine----"

Esther flushed.

"I'm sorry--I'd no right to have said anything about him at all;
please forgive me."

"Oh, it's all right," June said laconically. "But he isn't a bit of a
snob; he'd do anything in the world for anybody."

Esther glanced up at his portrait on the shelf. She felt a trifle
ashamed of what she had said; after all, Micky had been good to her in
his own way, even if his own way had been patronising.

"And so I shall stay on here," she said,