"Bother!" grumbled Katharine, who was correcting exercises on the bed. "He never said he was coming to-night."
"It isn't Mr. Morton," volunteered Phyllis, from behind her own curtain. "I've never seen him before. He's tall, and thin, and serious looking, with a leathery sort of face, and a dear little fizzly beard."
She made a few more gratuitous remarks on the gentleman in the hall, until she began to wonder why she received no reply to them, and then made the discovery that the occupant of the neighbouring cubicle was no longer there.
Paul was already regretting his impulse. He had never been inside the little distempered hall before, and it struck a feeling of chill into him. A good many girls came in at the door while he was waiting, and they all stared at him inquiringly, and most of them were dull looking. He remembered the sumptuous house in Mayfair that would soon contain Marion Keeley, and he shuddered a little.
"I don't think I should like to live with working-women much," he said, when Katharine came running down the wooden stairs.
It was the only remark that came easily to him, when he felt the warm clasp of her hand and saw the glad look in her eyes.
CHAPTER XIII
She was looking rather tired, he thought, when he examined her more critically; her eyes seemed larger, and her expression had grown restless, and she had lost some of the roundness of her face. But she had gained a good deal in repose of manner; and her voice, when she answered him, was more under control at the moment than his own.
"I shouldn't think you would," she laughed. "I shocked them all at breakfast, this morning, by saying I should like to try idle men for a change!"
It struck him that she would not have made such a remark when he left her last autumn; and again he would have liked to possess a chronicle of the last six weeks. But her laugh was the same as ever, and her hand was still grasping his with a reassuring fervour.