Micky was stooping, patting Charlie's head.
"It's in an office," he said, after a moment; his voice sounded a little uncertain. "I don't think it would really suit her, though--now I've seen her," he hastened to add. "It would be too hard work--late hours and all the rest of it, dontcherknow."
"Humph!" she said. "Perhaps it's just as well this phantom lover of Esther's has turned up trumps, if that's all you'd got to offer her."
"Phantom lover!" said Micky; his voice sounded as if he were annoyed. "Whom are you talking about?"
"Esther's beloved," June said airily. "She won't tell me his name, so I call him the phantom lover, because I've got an eerie sort of feeling in my mind about him that he doesn't really exist. What do you think, Micky?"
"If he were all that she'd like me to believe he is," she said shrewdly, "she'd tell me more about him. She certainly got a bit more confidential to-day, and said that he had a cat for a mother and a few things like that. She had another letter from him this morning; he's in Paris--on business, so he tells her." She laughed, turning her face for a moment against the mauve cushion. Suddenly she sat upright again, "Micky, I should hate that man if I knew him!"
"Another of your 'instinctive hates'?" he asked whimsically.
"I know you don't believe in them, but...."
"Don't I?" said Micky thoughtfully. "I'm not so sure." He looked at his watch. "Well, I must be trotting. There's nothing else I can do for you, I suppose? No more waifs who want billets...?"
"I'm not--I never laugh at you." He laid his hand on her shoulder for a moment. "Don't bother to get up; you look so comfortable ... Good-bye----"
"Good-bye--and, Micky, don't make up your mind not to like Esther just because of this afternoon."
"My dear, I never thought of such a thing," he protested lamely.
June snuggled more cosily into the cushions.
"Ah, but I know what you are," she said, for once hopelessly on the wrong track.
Micky laughed to himself as he went down the stairs; he wondered if he was getting clever, or if June was not so quick to see a thing as he had believed, that she had not noticed the constraint between himself and Esther.
He looked about him eagerly as he went out, hoping to catch a glimpse of Esther, but the house seemed deserted, quite different from what he had pictured it to be. He had always thought that a London boarding-house must be noisy and crowded and perpetually smelling of soap and cabbage water; he was relieved to find that this was fairly comfortable and quiet.