She got up, moved by an impulse curiously insistent. "Dr. Capper," she said, "it--it's rather a difficult world, isn't it?"
Her voice had a quiver of wistfulness in it. He reached out a hand at once that sought and held hers. "My dear Mrs. Bolton," he said, "we live too hard--all of us. That's nine-tenths of the trouble. It's because we won't trust the Hand on the helm. We're all so mighty anxious to do our own steering, and we don't know a thing about it."
The hold of the thin yellow fingers was full of kindly comfort. There was nothing disconcerting in the shrewd green eyes that looked into hers.
"I think you'll be happier presently, you know," he said. "It seems to me that two people I'm mighty fond of have got wandering off their bearings in the wilderness. They'll find each other presently and then, I guess, that same wilderness will blossom into a garden and they'll settle down in comfort and enjoy themselves."
He pressed her hand, and released it, making it evident that he had no intention of pursuing the matter further without definite encouragement. And Maud gave him none. Something in her shrank from doing so. He was Jake's friend before he was hers.
The day seemed very long. It was oppressive also, gleams of sunshine alternating with occasional heavy thunder showers.
She was lying in a hammock-chair under the trees in the orchard with Chops at her feet when Jake came striding through at the last moment to find her.
"Capper tells me you don't feel up to coming," he said.
She barely glanced up from the book in her lap, she did not want to meet his eyes. "I didn't tell him so," she said.
"But it is so?" insisted Jake.