Aaron felt reassured. He acknowledged that it might be so.
"Not but what the careless young jackanapes ought to have told me before he went, Miss Ella!" he urged.
"Or have written to you," replied Ella.
But as more days passed on and Hubert neither came nor sent, other people as well as Aaron began to wonder; and the question, What could have become of him? made the chief topic of the neighbourhood. That he had undertaken this bout of swimming to obtain succour for Miss Winter, none disputed, and Ella did not undeceive them. The real facts, there could be little doubt, were these. Upon Hubert's forcing the closed door and finding Miss Winter senseless on the deck, he must at the same time have seen the little boat coming to her rescue. Fearful that her first words might be to denounce him, and probably feeling heartily ashamed of himself, he must have plunged into the sea to swim ashore, not choosing to stay and face the result.
But on what part of the shore had he landed, and where could he be staying? What, in fact, had become of him? Aaron and his wife grew strangely uneasy: if anything were detaining him, business or pleasure, surely he would write, they said to one another.
"He has not got so much as a clean shirt with him--or a collar," lamented Dorothy. "What _can_ he do without them?"
"Oh, drat the shirts and collars!" retorted Aaron, not less crusty and contradictory than usual. "As if he couldn't buy himself things o' that sort!"
There came a relief to their fears. Dr. Jago, hearing that the old people were becoming seriously alarmed, avowed that Hubert Stone had got safely to land that night, after his swimming-feat, and had made his way at once to his house. Here he had put on dry clothes, some things of the young man's happening to be at the Doctor's, had borrowed a little money of him, and had gone away again, saying he had business at a distance.
"And why couldn't you have told this afore, sir?" grumbled Aaron, when he had heard Dr. Jago's narrative.
"Because Hubert asked me not to mention it until he was back again," replied the little Doctor. "But I thought it might be better to do so now, as he stays away so long and you seem to be getting into a fever over it."