"June! You're not turning match-maker! If you are, I give you fair
warning that our friendship will have to end once and for ever. I'll
put up with a lot from you, but not this--not...."
"Don't be an idiot!" said June calmly. "There isn't the slightest
fear! And anyway----" she added, with a half sigh, "she's engaged, so
it wouldn't be any good. But I want you to help her.... Oh, I know I'm
always bringing you foundlings to help and look after, but you've got
such a big heart--and such a big banking account," she added
audaciously.
"Well, go on----" he said resignedly. "Who is the foundling this time,
and what am I to do?"
Micky laughed.
"She's a darling," June said warmly. "I've only known her for four
days--she lives in the same house. I took a fancy to her from the
first moment I saw her. No, it was before that--it was when I first
heard her name...."
Micky raised his brows.
"What a creature of impulse! My dear, you'll burn your fingers badly
some day."
"And when I do," said Miss Mason sharply, "I shan't come crying to you
for sympathy; however ... Well, she's poor! she's one of those
horribly poor, frightfully proud people whom it's impossible to help.
I've tried all ways! I asked her to go shares with my sitting-room,
and she said she couldn't afford it; she'll hardly let me give her a
cup of tea or coffee for fear I should think she is sponging on me.
She seems most frightfully alone in the world. She says she engaged to
a man, but he's abroad, and I'm sure he's not nice, anyway. He's only
written to her once since I've known her, at all events, and this
morning when there wasn't a letter, I know she went back to her room
and cried. I knocked at the door, but she wouldn't let me in."
She paused, and looked at Micky for sympathy.
He half smiled; he knew how enthusiastic June always was about
everything.
"Well, and what do you want me to do for this damsel in distress?" he
asked gently.
"I want you to get her a berth somewhere," he was told promptly. "No,
it's no use saying you can't! My dear man, you must know scores of
people who'd take her in. She thought she was fixed up all right, but
now it appears that the people she was with before haven't got a
vacancy for her, and so that's knocked on the head. She told me that
she's have to just take the first thing that came along. I don't
believe she's hardly got a shilling to her name. I offered to take her
into partnership with me. I said we'd go travelling together for my
beauty cream, but she wouldn't hear of it.... She's so proud!"--and
here a sound of tears crept into June Mason's voice. "I ask you,
Micky, what can be done with any one like that?"
Micky shrugged his shoulders.
"If she'll take anything that comes along, she ought to get a job
pretty soon," he said laconically. "I'll speak to a man I know--can
she write a decent hand and all that sort of thing?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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