He glanced over his shoulder, and then almost hurt her hands, he gripped them so hard.
"Good-bye," he said, his eyes looking into hers. "You _do_ understand, don't you, Amory?"
Even then he seemed loth to part from her. He accompanied her to the top of the stairs.--"You'll let me know when you're coming again, won't you?" he asked.
At the first turning of the stairs Amory stood aside to allow a rather untidy young woman to pass. This young woman had a long bare neck that reminded Amory of an artist's model, and her hands were thrust into the fore-pockets of a brown knitted coat. She was whistling, but she stopped when she saw Amory.
"Do you know whether Mr. Dickinson, the poster artist, is up here?" she asked.
"The next floor, I think," Amory replied.
"No, not this week," Dorothy said. "Dot wrote a fortnight ago. This one's from Mollie. (You remember Mollie, Katie? She came to that funny little place we had on Cheyne Walk once, but of course she was only about twelve then. She's nearly nineteen now, and _so_ tall! They've just gone to Kohat).--Shall I read it, auntie?"
"'I'm afraid I wrote you a hatefully skimpy letter last time--,'" h'm, we can skip that; here's where they started: "'It was the beastliest journey that I ever made. To begin with, we were the eighteenth tonga that day, so we got tired and wretched ponies; we had one pair for fifteen miles and couldn't get another pair for love or money. We left Murree at two o'clock and got to Pindi at nine. The dust was ghastly. Mercifully Baba slept like a lump in our arms from five till nine, so he was all right. We had from nine till one to wait in Pindi Station, and had dinner, and Baba had a wash and clean-up and a bottle, and we got on board the train and off. Baba's cot, etc.; and we settled down for the night. Nurse and Baba and Mary and I were in one carriage and Jim next door. I slept beautifully till one o'clock, and then I woke and stayed awake. The bumping was terrific, and it made me so angry to look down on the others and see them fast asleep! I had an upper berth. Baba slept from eleven-thirty till six-thirty! So we had no trouble at all with him----'
"Well, and so they got to Kohat. (I hope this isn't boring you, Katie.)"