“I think you had much better not, Letty,” he answered. “He ought not to have let you miss your train. My friend here and I are going to look after you.”
“It’s very kind of you,” the girl said listlessly, “but it doesn’t matter much what becomes of me now. Mother will never forgive me—and the others will all know—that I missed the train.”
“We must think of some way of putting that all right,” Macheson declared. “I only wish that I had some relations in London. Can you suggest anything, Dick?”
“I can take the young lady to some decent rooms,” Holderness answered. “The landlady’s an old friend of mine. She’ll be as right as rain there.”
The girl shook her head.
“I’d as soon walk about the streets,” she said pathetically. “Mother’ll never listen to me—or the others. Some of them saw me with Stephen, and they said things. I think I’ll go to the station and wait till the five o’clock train.”
They were walking slowly up towards Piccadilly. A fine rain had begun to fall, and already the pavements were shining. Neither of them had an umbrella, and Letty’s hat, with its cheap flowers and ribbon, showed signs of collapse. Suddenly Macheson had an idea.
“Look here,” he said, “supposing you spent the night at Miss Thorpe-Hatton’s house in Berkeley Square—no one could say anything then, could they?”
The girl looked up with a sudden gleam of hope.
“No! I don’t suppose they could,” she admitted; “but I don’t know where it is, and I don’t suppose they’d take me in anyway.”