Micky looked at the clock and sighed. After all, June 62 was always amusing; he went off almost cheerfully to the unpretentious club of which she had spoken to Esther. He had to wait in the lobby while a boy in buttons fetched June to him. She came downstairs looking very much at home, and smoking the inevitable cigarette. It was one of June Mason’s charms that she always managed to look at home wherever she was.

62

She had taken off her coat, but she wore a green hat with a gold ornament that suited her to perfection, set on her dark head at rakish angle.

“I began to think you were not coming,” she said.

She gave him her left hand, and Micky squeezed it in friendly fashion. They went upstairs together to a small tea-room, which was just now deserted save for two waitresses who were giggling together over a newspaper.

June walked over to a table in the window, and Micky followed.

He had been here with her scores of times before, and the two waitresses smiled at one another knowingly; they were quite sure that this was romance.

Micky was sitting with an elbow on the table, absently smoothing the back of his head; he was wishing it was Esther sitting opposite to him; he looked up with a little start when June spoke to him.

“What’s up, Micky? I’ve never seen you looking so depressed.”

He roused himself with an effort.

“Oh, nothing, nothing! It’s the beastly weather, I expect.”

She looked at him quizzically with her queer eyes.

“I shouldn’t have thought the weather would depress you,” she said. “However, if you say it does–––”

He shook himself together.

“I’m not depressed any longer,” he declared. “Well, and how are you? And how is the swindle?” It was Micky’s pet joke to call June’s invention the “swindle,” though in his heart he was almost as proud of it as she was.

63

She laughed.

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