CHAPTER IX

LARPENT

“Shall we dig a deep, deep hole for you to lie in?” asked Eileen with serious violet eyes upraised.

“And then cover you right up to your head so as you won’t catch cold?” chimed in Molly.

“Betty dig too!  Betty dig too!” cried the youngest of the party with zest.  “Zite up over Auntie Toy’s head!”

“What an excellent idea!” said Toby with resignation.

She sat down in the golden afternoon sunshine that flooded the beach, the three children buzzing happily about her, and rested her chin on her hands.  The blue eyes that dwelt upon the misty horizon were very tired.  They had the heavy look of unshed tears, and all the delicate colour was gone from her face.  Her slight figure drooped pathetically.  She sat very still.  All the elasticity of youth seemed to have gone out of her.  Once or twice a sharp sigh caught her that was almost like a sob.

Betty’s shrill voice at her side recalled her from her dreams.  “Betty tired now, Auntie Toy.  Betty tummin’ to sit down.”

She turned and took the child upon her lap with a fondling touch and tender words.  Betty pillowed a downy head against her neck and almost immediately fell asleep.  Eileen and Molly laboured on at their self-imposed task in the autumn sunshine, and Toby returned to her dreams.

Perhaps she also had begun to doze, for the day was warm and sound sleep had forsaken her of late; when the falling of a shadow aroused her very swiftly to the consciousness of someone near at hand whose approach she had not heard.  She controlled her quick start before it could awaken the sleeping child, but her eyes as they flashed upwards had the strained, panic-stricken look of a hunted animal.  She made an almost involuntary movement of shrinking and the blood went out of her lips, but she spoke no word.

A man in a navy-blue yachting-suit stood looking down at her with blue-grey eyes that tried to be impersonal but failed at that slight gesture of hers.

“You needn’t be afraid of me, heaven knows,” he said.

“I’m not,” said Toby promptly, and flung him her old boyish smile.  “I wasn’t expecting just you at that moment, that’s all.  Sit down and talk, Captain—­if that’s what you’ve come for!”

Apparently it was.  He lowered himself to the sand beside her.  But at once—­as by irresistible habit—­his eyes sought the horizon, and he sat and contemplated it in utter silence.

Toby endured the situation for a few difficult seconds, then took brisk command.  “Why don’t you have a smoke?” she said.  “You’d find it a help.”

He put his hand mechanically into his pocket and took out his cigarette-case.  His eyes came back out of space as he did so, and rested upon the fair-haired child in the girl’s arms.

“So you’ve come back to the old job!” he said.

Toby nodded.  “Yes.  Jake’s doing.  I’m waiting to—­to—­to be divorced.”