“Now, David Kildare, see what you’ve done with your black-cat crawlings!  I’ll have to eat that toast—­see if I don’t!  I’ve consumed it with a smile during stated periods for thirty years.  Yes, girl-love is a kind of cup-custard, but wife-love is bread and butter—­milk toast, for instance—­bless her!  But I am hungry!” The major’s expression was a tragedy.

“I’m going to try and beg you off, Major, dear,” said Caroline Darrah, and she hurried after Mrs. Matilda into Tempie’s domain.

“Major,” said David as he gazed after the girl, “when I look at her I feel cold all over, then hot-mad!  He’s going to-morrow night on the midnight train—­and she doesn’t know!  I can’t even talk to him about it—­he looks like a dead man and works like a demon.  I don’t know what to do!”

“David,” said the major slowly as he pressed the tips of his long lean fingers together and regarded them intently, “how love, tender wise love, love that is fed on heart’s blood and lives by soul-breath, can go deaf, blind, dumb, halt, broken-winged, idiotic and mortally cruel is more than I can see.  God Almighty comfort him when he finds what he has done!”

“And if she does find it out she won’t understand,” exclaimed David.

“No,” answered the major, “she doesn’t even suspect anything.  She thinks it is the press of his work that keeps him away from her.  The child carries about with her that aura of transport that only an acknowledgment from a lover can give a woman.  I had hoped that he had seen some way—­I couldn’t ask!  I wonder—­”

“Yes, Major,” interrupted David quickly, and he winced as he spoke, “it happened on the hunt Saturday evening.  They climbed the bluff and watched the hunt from a distance and I saw how it was the minute they came back to the campfire.  I saw it and I was just jolly happy over it even to the tune of Phoebe’s sulks—­I thought it was all right, and I wish you could have seen him.  His head was up and his eyes danced and he gave up almost the first real laugh I ever heard from him, when I teased her about getting lost.  As I looked at him I thought about the other, your glad Andrew, Major, and I was happy all in a shot for you, because I thought you were going to get back something of what you’d lost.  It all seemed so good!”

“There’s been joy in the boy’s eyes, joy and sorrow waging a war for weeks, David, and I’ve had to sit by and watch, powerless to help him.  Yes, his very father himself has looked out of his eyes at me for moments and I—­well I had hoped.  Are you sure he is going?” As the major asked the question his brows knotted themselves together as if to hide the pain in his eyes.

“Yes, he’s going and he catches the next tramp steamer for Panama from Savannah.  I wish she would suspect something and force it from him.  It’s strange she doesn’t,” answered David despondently.

“Caroline Darrah belongs to the order of humble women whose love feeds on a glance and can be sustained on a crumb—­another class demands a banquet full spread and always ready.  You’ll be careful, boy, don’t—­don’t diet Phoebe too long!” The major eyed David anxiously across the light.