l.

"I hope you'll have a good time," she said cheerily. "Have you got
anything to read?"

"I shan't want anything--I'm not in a reading mood."

Micky was longing to ask about Esther, but pride prevented him.

The guard was blowing his whistle; doors were slamming; June gripped
Micky's hand.

"Be a good boy, and have a good time," she said. There was a furious
excitement in her eyes.

He made a grimace.

"I'm not expecting to have a good time," he answered.

The train was slowly moving; June ran a few steps to keep up with it.
Micky blurted out his question at last--

"Miss Shepstone ... Esther ... is she all right, June?"

June smiled.

"Oh, she's first rate," she said airily. "She's gone away for a
holiday.... Good-bye." She fell back laughing and waving her hand.

Micky kept his head out of the window till a cloud of smoke from the
engine blown backwards shut out all sight of her, then he drew in,
dragging the window up with a slam.

Gone away for a holiday, had she?--well--it was nothing to him. He
turned round to go back to his seat in the corner then stopping dead,
staring as if he had seen a ghost; for Esther was sitting there just
behind him, looking up at him with scared eyes.

For a moment Micky did not move; he was like a man turned to stone.
Then the blood rushed to his face in a crimson tide; he broke out into
stammering speech--

"You ... you ... what ... what ... I thought...." He swayed forward a
little and caught her hands. "You are real--I thought ... I thought I
was just imagining it all; I thought.... Oh, wait a moment...." He sat
down and leaned his head in his hands.

He felt sure that he must be mad or dreaming--the world had turned
upside down and pitched his thoughts into chaos; he was sure that when
next he looked Esther would no longer be there--he dreaded having to
raise his eyes.

Esther stretched a timid hand to him; her voice shook as she said--

"Oh, I thought ... I thought perhaps you'd be glad to see me--just ...
just a little--glad...."

"Glad!" Micky echoed the word with almost a shout. He got up and went
over to her; he looked down at her with an agony of doubt and fear in
his eyes.

"Why have you come?" he asked hoarsely. "If this is only a joke--if
it's any nonsense of June's ... by God, it's the cruellest joke you
could have played on me.... I--I...."

Esther covered her face with her hands.

"If that's all you've got to say to me," she began tremblin