The Phantom Lover Part 29

"Micky! What in the world has happened to you lately? Do you always read a paper upside down?"

Micky started, looked down at the magazine, and said a bad word; then he laughed too, and flinging the magazine across the room got to his feet, stretching his long arms.

"Where's Esther?" June demanded. "I asked her to stay and amuse you till I came back...."

"She did her best," said Micky drily. "But I am afraid I bored her."

June looked annoyed.

"I do think you two might try and like one another, if only for my sake," she said. "It's so perfectly obvious that you hate one another, and I cannot see why for the life of me."

"One of your instinctive hates, perhaps," Micky submitted, with a touch of irony. He went back to the chair.

"Miss Shepstone tells me she has found a berth," he said, after a moment. June nodded.

"Yes. Did she tell you with whom?"

"Yes; Mrs. Ashton."

Something in the tone of his voice made June look up quickly.

"Well?" she said.

Micky shrugged his shoulders.

"Nothing--I dared to suggest that perhaps she would not like the place, and she flew at me."

June laughed.

"That's just like Esther; she asks for your advice, and then----"

"She didn't ask for mine," Micky cut in. "I very kindly volunteered the information."

"Oh!" June was on her knees now toasting buns.

"They're stale," she informed Micky candidly. "But you won't know it when they're toasted."

Micky watched in silence. He was wondering if June had heard anything of his conversation with Esther; they had both spoken rather loudly.

He was also wondering whether he should tell June the whole story.

"You must make allowances for her," June said briskly, as he was still hesitating. "I know she's worried about this man. I discovered another thing this morning, Micky"--she turned with a sudden jerk to look at him, and the bun fell off the fork into the fire.

Micky laughed.

"Well, what have you discovered now?" he inquired.

"Why, that she can't write to him--he doesn't give her an address--or, if he does, he takes good care to move on before she has time to answer his letters. It looks to me, Micky, as if that young man is shirking his responsibilities. If you ask my candid opinion, Esther won't ever see him again."

Micky said "Rot!" rather uncomfortably. "If the fellow is travelling--moving about...."

"He could give her an address and have the letters sent on, couldn't he?" June demanded.

Micky rubbed his chin.

"What's she want to write to him for?" he asked presently.

June swung round, and a second bun almost shared the fate of the first, but she grabbed it back in time.

"What does she want to write to him for?" she echoed with scorn. "My poor child, what does any one want to write to any one for? She's in love with the man, and when you're in love you simply have to write it down--at least, that's what I understand from people with wide experience. Esther's bursting to write and tell the phantom lover how much she loves him and what a wonderful man he is; as a matter of fact she does write to him, and tears the letters up again, and that's no satisfaction. I wish to goodness he'd get run over and done with," she added exasperatedly.

"I don't suppose she wishes it," said Micky.

"That's because she doesn't know what's good for her; he was probably the first man who had ever paid her any attention, and from what she says he's a bit of a swell, and I suppose she was flattered...."

"Rot!" said Micky violently; it made him boil to hear June say things like this. Ashton superior to Esther? It was like the man's confounded impudence to even think such a thing.

"Not such rot," June said wisely. "And that's what all the trouble is about, or my name's not what it is. He has a stuck-up old cat of a mother who won't condescend to know Esther.... What did you say?"

"Nothing," said Micky. He got up and began strolling about the room with his hands in his pockets, and June finished toasting her buns and made the tea.

"I'll just go up and tell Esther," she said. She went out of the room and upstairs.

"Tea," she announced cheerfully, knocking at Esther's door; she turned the handle and went in. Esther was standing by the window looking out into the neglected garden at the back of the house; she turned.

"I'm not really hungry, and if you'd like to have Mr. Mellowes to yourself----" she began.

June stared at her.

"My dear," she said then drily, "if I'd wanted to have Mr. Mellowes to myself I should have married him long ago; so don't pretend you're not dying for one of the stale but toasted buns."

She linked her arm in Esther's, and they went downstairs together.

Esther did not want to come, but it seemed easier to give way than to make excuses. She took the chair which Micky brought forward; she felt a little nervous and ill at ease. Once, when their eyes met, she found herself colouring sensitively.

Micky let her alone in a marked fashion and talked to June. He had found the man he had been looking for for months, he declared, a good business man, honest----

"Really honest, Micky?" June asked, laughing.

"Really honest," Micky maintained. "Do you think I'd put you on to him else? I've told him all about you. I went out to lunch with him yesterday and we talked face creams and vanities till my head reeled.

He's full of ideas, bursting with fresh notions for advertising. He didn't say so in actual words, but he thinks you'll be a little gold mine if you'll put yourself in his hands."

June's eyes sparkled; she jumped up from her chair, put her arms around Micky's neck, and gave him a sounding kiss.

"You're a dear," she said, "and I just love you!"

Esther glanced up quickly. June need not have done that, she thought with a touch of irritation, but Micky only laughed.

"Come here and you shall have that back with compound interest," he said, but June shook her head.