tired,” she said quickly.

“Well, I must admit that I am,” Micky answered. He hated walking at the best of times, and he did not like to suggest another taxicab. “Let’s go on top.”

They climbed up and found a front seat; there was a working man next to them smoking shag in a clay pipe; he looked at Micky and Esther doubtfully, then asked––

“Does your good lady mind smoke, mister?”

Esther flushed.

“I don’t mind at all,” she said, laughing.

“You got home all right last night, then?” Micky said presently. “After you had gone I wished I had seen you safely in....”

“It’s kind of you, but I was quite all right.” There was a note of constraint in her voice. “I should like to thank you for what you did for me last night,” she said hesitatingly.

“If it hadn’t been for you....” She stopped.

Micky did not know what to say.

“Anyway, it’s all right now, eh?” he asked presently, with awkward cheerfulness. “I thought it would be; when things look so black that they can’t possibly look any blacker, they always begin to mend. I’ve found that out before; I don’t know if you have.”

“I found it out this morning.”

Micky looked down at her. She was sitting with her hands clasped together in her lap; there was a little flush in her cheeks, and her lips were curved into a faint smile.

“It seems so wonderful too,” she went on softly, “that it should have happened on New Year’s Day–––”

“Fares, all fares, please,” said the conductor beside them. Micky dived into a pocket and found a shilling.

“Two, please,” he said.

He had paid for and shared taxicabs with Marie Deland times without number, but it had never given him 36 quite the same pleasurable little thrill as he experienced at this moment.

36

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