y and drew back beside
Jake as if she could not bear to look.

"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
frie