"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."
"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.
Something in the tone of his voice made June look up quickly.
"Nothing--I dared to suggest that perhaps she would not like the place, and she flew at me."
"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.
"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.