“Ah!  How is he?” questioned Maud.

He shot her a swift glance.  “Is the child anxious?”

“Not in the least.  I don’t believe she ever thinks about him.  She told me on the first day that she hardly knows him.”

Saltash laughed.  “How honest of her!  Well, he’s getting better, but he won’t be well yet.  May I leave her in your charge, a while longer?”

“Of course!” Maud said warmly.  “I love to have her, and she is a great help to me too.  The children simply worship her, and she is splendid with them.  I believe Eileen will very soon get over her dread of riding.”

“Toby can ride?” asked Saltash.

“Oh yes, like a cow-boy.  She is amazingly fearless, and never minds a tumble in the least.  She can do the most extraordinary things exactly like a boy.  I am always afraid of her coming to grief, but she never does.”

“Funny little beggar!” said Saltash.

“I am quite sure of one thing,” pursued Maud.  “She never learnt these things at any school.  She tells me she has been to a good many.”

“I believe that’s true,” said Saltash.  “I imagine she is fairly quick to pick up anything, but I haven’t known her myself for long.”

“She must have picked up a good deal on The Night Moth,” observed Maud unexpectedly.

He glanced at her again.  “Why do you say that?  She was under my protection—­and Larpent’s—­on The Night Moth.”

“I know.  She idolizes you,” Maud smiled at him somewhat dubiously.  “But she must have mixed fairly freely with the crew to have picked up the really amazing language she sometimes uses.”

Saltash’s brows worked whimsically.  “Some of us have a gift that way,” he remarked.  “Your worthy Jake, for instance—­”

“Oh, Jake is a reformed character,” she interrupted.  “He hardly ever lets himself go now-a-days.  And he won’t allow it from Bunny.  But Toby—­Toby never seems to know the good from the bad.”

“Has Jake taken her in hand?” asked Saltash with a chuckle.

“Oh yes.  He checks her at every turn.  I must say she takes it very sweetly, even offered to take her meals in her room yesterday when he was rather down on her.  It absolutely disarmed Jake of course.  What could he say?”

“Yes, she’s a disarming monkey certainly,” agreed Saltash.  “But I never was great on the management and discipline of children.  So she knocks under to the great Jake, does she?”

“Oh, not entirely.”  Maud laughed a little.  “Only this morning they had a battle.  I don’t know how it is going to end yet.  But—­she can be very firm.”

“She never tried any battles with me,” said Saltash, with some complacence.

“No.  But then your sense of duty is more elastic than Jake’s.  You never—­probably—­asked her to do anything she didn’t want to do.”

“Can’t remember,” said Saltash.  “What did Jake want?”

Maud’s smile lingered.  “You’ll laugh of course.  But Jake is quite right, whatever you do.  He wanted her to go to church with little Eileen and me this morning.  She’s only a child, you know, and he naturally took it for granted that she was going.  We both did.  But just at the last moment she absolutely refused, told him quite frankly that she was—­an atheist.”