"She'll be all right," said Jake stoutly. "Don't you fret any! Bunny's sound."
"Oh, yes, I know—I know! But she's so young." All the yearning of motherhood was in Maud's voice. "Does she love him? Does she?"
Jake's hand gripped hers more closely. He looked into her face with a smile in his red-brown eyes. "Maybe not as we know love," he said. "It doesn't come all at once—that sort."
She smiled back at him, for she could not help it, even as she shook her head in misgiving. "Sometimes—it doesn't come at all!" she said.
CHAPTER IX
THE WARNING
It seemed to Maud that in the days that followed her engagement Toby developed with the swiftness of an opening flower. There was no talk of her leaving them. She fitted into the establishment as though she had always been a part of it, and she took upon herself responsibilities which Maud would never have laid upon her.
Watching her anxiously, it seemed to her that Toby was becoming more settled, more at rest, than she had ever been before. The look of fear was dormant in her eyes now, and her sudden flares of anger had wholly ceased. She made no attempt to probe below the surface, realizing the inadvisability of such a course, realizing that the first days of an engagement are seldom days of expansion, being full of emotions too varied for analysis. That Toby should turn to her or to Jake if she needed a confident she did not for a moment doubt, but unless the need arose she resolved to leave the girl undisturbed. She had, moreover, great faith in Bunny's powers. As Jake had said, Bunny was sound, and she knew him well enough to be convinced that he would find a means of calming any misgivings that might exist in Toby's mind.
It appeared as if he had already done so in fact, for Toby was never nervous in his presence. She greeted him with pleasure and went with him gladly whenever he came to seek her. They met every day, usually in the evening when Bunny was free, and the children gone to bed. Maud would watch them wander out together into the summer solitudes, Chops walking sedately behind, and would smile to herself very tenderly at the sight. She believed that Toby was winning to happiness and she prayed with all her soul that it might last.
Saltash came no more during these summer days. He had departed in his abrupt way for his first pleasure cruise in The Blue Moon, taking no friend, save the ever-present Larpent, to relieve the monotony. No one knew whither they were bound, or if the voyage were to be long or short. He dropped out of his circle as a monkey drops from a tree, and beyond a passing wonder at his movements no one questioned either motive or intention. Probably he had neither in any appreciable degree. It was only the caprice of the moment that ever moved him. So his friends said. He evidently found his new toy attractive, and he would not return until he wearied of it.