Micky looked for a bell, but there wasn't one, so he knocked.
It seemed a long time before anybody came. When at last they did he heard them coming for a long time before the door was opened, heard slipshod steps on shiny linoleum, and a husky sort of breathless cough.
The owner of the cough was young and scared-looking, in shoes several sizes too large for her, and a skirt several inches too short. When Micky asked for Miss Shepstone she stared without answering for a moment, then she turned and slopped back the way she had come, leaving the door on the chain.
Micky chuckled to himself; she evidently did not like the look of him.
He waited patiently; then he heard another step along the shiny linoleumed floor of the hall--a very different step this time--and, turning eagerly, he saw Esther herself in the doorway.
"I didn't really think you would come," she said breathlessly.
For a moment Micky could not find his tongue. If he had thought this girl pretty last night with the tears in her eyes he thought her a thousand times prettier now. She looked as if some magician hand had wiped the distress from her face and convinced her that the sun still shone.
She wore the same clothes she had worn last night, but even they seemed somehow to have changed. There was a bunch of violets pinned in her jacket. Micky wondered if it were the violets that were responsible for the alteration.
"When I make an appointment I always keep it," he said.
He had almost added "with any one like you," but thought better of it. "And are you going to let me take you out to tea?" he asked.
She hesitated; she glanced back into the dingy hall behind her.
"I am leaving here to-day," she said. "My box has gone already. If you will wait a moment ... I would ask you in, but you'd hate it so."
He went down into the street. For the moment he had quite forgotten all about Ashton and the letter which must by this time be in Esther's possession.
"And what about Charlie?" he asked whimsically when she joined him.
"I sent him on--in a basket. Nobody wants him here--he only gets badgered about all day long; so I'm taking him with me. Do you think I ought not to?"
"I think Charlie is a most fortunate cat," said Micky.
"I think he will be happier with me anyway," she said "I'm going to quite a nice boarding-house now. I went out this morning and found it." She looked up at him with a smile. "I don't think even you would mind coming to tea there," she said.