she said briskly. “You bustle about and find a post for Esther, and I’ll love you for ever. Are we ready?”

She rose and gathered up her various belongings. Micky declared that she was always laden with small, oddly-shaped parcels.

“Samples, my dear man, samples!” she said briskly when Micky asked if he might not be allowed to carry some. “And they’re much too precious to risk you dropping any.”

“There’s just one stipulation,” Micky said as he followed her downstairs again. “You’re not to tell Miss Shepstone anything about me––I’m going to be very strict on this subject. Will you promise?”

“Bless your heart, yes––and if you come to tea one day–––”

“Oh, I don’t think I’ll come to tea,” Micky said hastily. “I should only feel rotten––self-conscious and all the rest of it, even if I was quite sure she didn’t know anything––not that there’s anything to know yet,” he added quickly. “I may not be able to help her.”

Miss Mason laughed.

70

“Oh, you’ll help her right enough,” she said breezily. “I know you.”

She dismissed him when they reached the street. “No, I don’t want you to come with me; I’ve got some business to see to and you’d only be a nuisance.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “Good-bye, and thanks ever so much Micky. You’ll write to me––or wire?”

“As soon as there is anything to report.”

He raised his hat and turned away, and June dived across the road, perilously near to a motor-omnibus, clutching her samples jealously to her heart.

“It’ll be all right now,” she told herself, with a sense of comfort. “Everything’s always all right as soon as Micky gets hold of it.”

A soliloquy which made it seem all the more curious that she should have hesitated to trust herself to him for life. Perhaps, as she had told Esther, she cared too much for him to take the risk for them both. He had told her candidly that he did not care for her as a man should care for the woman he marries.

“And he makes a ripping friend! Ripping!” she told herself as she scurried along to interview another beauty specialist about the “swindle,” as Micky politely 

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