Part 52 (1/2)

”Nearly twenty! You don't say so! She might be fourteen at the present moment. Look at that! Look at it!” For Toby was suddenly whizzing like a b.u.t.terfly across the lawn in a giddy flight that seemed scarcely to touch the ground, the little girl still upon her shoulder, the elder child standing apart and clapping her hands in delighted admiration.

”Yes, she is rather like fourteen,” Maud said, with her tender smile. ”Do you know what she did the other day? It was madness of course, and my husband was very angry with her. I was frightened myself though I have more faith in her than he has. She climbs like a cat, you know, and she actually took both those children up to a high bough of the old beech tree; I don't know in the least how she did it. None of the party seemed to think there was any cause for alarm till Jake came on the scene. He fetched them down with a ladder--all but Toby who went higher and pelted him with beech nuts till he retreated--at my urgent request.”

”And what happened after that?” questioned Saltash, with his eyes still upon the dancing figure. ”From what I have observed of Jake, I should say that an ignominious retreat is by no means in his line.”

Maud laughed a little. ”Oh, Jake can be generous when he likes. He had it out with her of course, but he wasn't too severe. Ah, look! She is going to jump the sun dial!”

Sheila turned to her. ”Surely you are nervous! If she fell, the little one might be terribly hurt.”

”She won't fall,” Maud said with confidence.

And even as she spoke, Toby leapt the sun dial, leaving the ground as a bird leaves it, without effort or any sort of strain, and alighting again as a bird alights from a curving flight with absolute freedom and a natural adroitness of movement indescribably pleasant to watch.

”A very pretty circus trick!” declared the General, and even Bunny's clouded brow cleared a little though he said nothing.

”A circus trick indeed!” said Sheila, as if speaking to herself. ”How on earth did she do it?”

”She is like a boy in many ways,” said Maud.

Sheila looked at her. ”Yes. She is just like a boy, or at least--” Her look went further, reached Saltash who lounged on Maud's other side, and fell abruptly away.

As Toby came up with the two children, all of them flushed and laughing, Toby herself in her white frock looking like a child just out of school, she rose and turned to Bunny.

”We ought to go now,” she said. ”I am going to fetch the car round for Dad.”

”I'll do it,” he said.

But she went with him as he had known she would. They left the group at the window and moved away side by side in silence as they had walked that afternoon.

Saltash stood up and addressed Maud. ”I'm going too. Bunny is dining with me tonight. I suppose you won't come?”

She gave him her hand, smiling. ”I can't thank you. Ask me another day!

You and Bunny will really get on much better without me.”

”Impossible!” he declared gallantly, but he did not press her.

He turned to the General and took his leave.

Toby and the two children walked the length of the terrace with him, all chattering at once. She seemed to be in a daring, madcap mood and Saltash laughed and jested with her as though she had been indeed the child she looked. Only at parting, when she would have danced away, he suddenly stopped her with a word.

”Nonette!”

She stood still as if at a word of command; there had been something of compulsion in his tone.

He did not look at her, and the smile he wore was wholly alien to the words he spoke.

”Be careful how you go! And don't see Bunny again--till I have seen him!”