"Oh, Jake! Jake's magnificent. He's taught me all I know in that line. I used to be a horrid little bounder before I met Jake. He simply made me—body and soul." Bunny spoke with a simple candour.
"P'raps he had good stuff to work on," suggested Toby.
Bunny's arm drew her almost imperceptibly. "I don't think he had. My father was a wild Irishman, and my mother—well, she's dead too—but she wasn't anything to be specially proud of."
"Oh, was your mother a rotter?" said Toby, with sudden interest.
He nodded. "We don't talk about her much, Maud and I. She married a second time—a brute of a man who used to run the Anchor Hotel. They went to Canada, and she died."
"The Anchor Hotel!" said Toby. "That place at Fairharbour down by the shore?"
"Yes, Maud and I were there too at first. I was a cripple in those days, couldn't even walk. We had a fiendish time there—till Jake came."
"Ah!" Toby's blue eyes suddenly gleamed. "Did Maud marry Jake to get away?" she asked.
Bunny nodded again and began to smile. "Yes. We were in a beastly hole, she and I. Something had to be done."
"She didn't love him then?" questioned Toby, almost with eagerness.