"You understand, don't you?" he said, encouraged by his silence. "She owes them a bit at the boarding-house where she is living. I promised to wipe it off for her, but the mater cutting up rough altered everything, and so ... if you could give her a little----"
"I'll see to it," said Micky. He opened the door of the taxi and got out before it was at a standstill. He took off his hat and let the cold air play on his hot forehead. He could hardly trust himself to speak.
He was thankful when Ashton went off to see to his luggage. He walked into the station and found himself aimlessly staring at a notice board. He could not remember when he had felt so furiously angry.
Had Ashton changed? he was asking himself in bewilderment. Or was it merely that he had never seen the man he really was until to-night?
He tried to remember what Ashton had told him about Esther Shepstone in the past. That she had been at Eldred's he knew, and that Eldred's was a place where women bought silk petticoats and things he also knew. He had heard Marie Deland and her friends talking about it lots of times. Marie had once invited him to accompany her there when they had been out together, but he had refused and had waited outside for her. Now he came to think of it, that was about all Ashton had ever told him of Esther Shepstone.
He knew that Ashton had been seen about with her a great deal; knew that he had had to stand a lot of harmless chaff in consequence; he himself had joked about Ashton's "latest" as they had all called her: it seemed a memory to be ashamed of, when he thought of the way he had heard her sobbing in the street that night, of the distress in her eyes, of the hopeless way in which she had spoken.
They went along the platform, followed by a porter with Ashton's baggage. Micky looked at it resentfully; Ashton was evidently prepared to enjoy himself; this was no rush after mere solitude and forgetfulness.
He stood stiffly at the carriage door while Ashton stowed his smaller traps on the rack. Presently he came to the window.
"You'll do the best you can, won't you, old man?" There was a real anxiety in his eyes, but Micky was not looking at him; he answered stiffly--
"She'll soon get another job," Ashton went on, with forced confidence. "I'm sorry she left Eldred's, now it's come to this, but how was I to know?" he appealed to Micky, but he might as well have appealed to a brick wall for all response he got.