"I can't pretend to love you. You see--I don't."
He realized now that she had been right. It was better not to pretend! It was better not to pretend!
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE FIRST OF THE VULTURES
Christmas Day was a farce in which Jake, Maude and Bunny each played their appointed parts with somewhat dreary zest. The brother and sister had drawn much closer to each other during the past fortnight in which they had been thrown together. The old quick understanding, the old comradeship, had revived between them, and on Bunny's part there was added to it a certain protectiveness that created a new and even more intimate element in their intercourse. In a fashion their positions were reversed. Maud leaned upon him as he once had leaned upon her, and his sturdy support comforted her sick heart.
As for Jake, he went his way among his animals, spending his time almost exclusively with them during that day and the days that followed. He was very quiet, invariably kind, but there was about him a suggestion of strain behind his composure, a hint of something terrible, as of a man hiding a mortal wound. He never talked about the animals now, and he did not welcome even Bunny in the stables.
"He's fretting his heart out over them," the boy said, and Maud knew that he spoke the truth. The thought of the coming parting with them hurt him to the soul.
Sam Vickers knew this also, and watched him in mute sympathy. He would have given all he had to avert this bitter blow from the boss, but he could only stand and look on.
It was on the last day in the year, a biting, sunless day, that he sought him late in the afternoon with a visiting card in his hand.
Jake was leaning on the half-door of the loose-box in which was lodged the black colt of his dreams--The Hundredth Chance. The animal's head was nuzzled against his shoulder. There seemed to be a perfect understanding between them.