more money now than I ought to. I want to save, too–––”

Miss Mason laughed.

“For the wedding! Lucky girl! I hope you’ll ask me to come and see you married––and I hope he’s very nice,” she added.

“He is,” said Esther eagerly. “And he’s very handsome,” she added shyly.

But Miss Mason was not impressed.

“I don’t care a fig if a man is handsome or not,” she said bluntly. “If he’s just manly and straightforward and kind, that’s all I expect him to be. Now look here––we have dinner at half-past seven in this establishment. It’s only supper really, but we all put on our best blouses––if we’ve got any––and call it dinner. I’ll call for you on the way down and we’ll go in together. I’ll tell Mrs. Elders you are going to share my table, if you like; it’s deadly dull sitting alone.”

“I should like to sit with you very much,” Esther said eagerly. “But I really haven’t got a ‘best’ blouse.” She glanced down at the plain white silk shirt she wore; it 54 had been washed many times, and had lost its first freshness.

54

“Come down as you are, then,” Miss Mason urged, “and I will too! I hate changing. This yellow rag is good enough for the old tabbies we get here.”

Esther went half-way down the stairs and came back.

“Charlie––I’ve forgotten Charlie.”

“Charlie can stay where he is till bedtime,” June declared. “You can come up and fetch him then. Hurry, or you’ll be late.”

Esther went down to her room, feeling more light-hearted than she had done for a long time.

As she unpacked her boxes and tidied her hair she could hear June Mason moving about upstairs, singing cheerily.

“I’m going to like her––I’m going to like her awfully,” she told herself. She hurried to be ready in time, but the rather unmelodious dinner-bell had clanged through the house twice before June came to the door.

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