No--I don't suppose you did. Your daughter has a habit of keeping things
like this to herself. She came to me and I warned her, but she wanted to
finish out her year. Do you know anything about her school work?"

"Yes, I was with her there this week."

"What did she show you?" Baird inquired. Roger tried to tell him. "No,
that's not what I'm after," he said. "That's just one of her usual
evenings." For a moment he smoked in silence. "I'm hunting now for
something else, for some unusual nervous shock which she appears to me to
have had."

"She has!" And Roger told him of her visit up to Sing Sing. Baird's lean
muscular right hand slowly tightened on his chair.

"That's a tough family of hers," he remarked.

"Yes," said Roger determinedly, "and she's got to give it up."

"You mean she ought to. But she won't."

"She's got to be made to," Roger growled. "This summer at least." Baird
shook his head.

"You forget her fresh air work," he replied. "She has three thousand
children on her mind. The city will be like a furnace, of course, and the
children must be sent to camps. If you don't see the necessity, go and talk
to her, and then you will."

"But you can forbid it, can't you?"

"No. Can you?"

"I can try," snapped Roger.

"Let's try what's possible," said Baird. "Let's try to keep her in bed
three days."

"Sounds modest," Roger grunted. And a glimmer of amusement came into
Baird's impassive eyes.

"Try it," he drawled. "By to-morrow night she'll ask for her stenographer.
She'll make you think she is out of the woods. But she won't be, please
remember that. A few years more," he added, "and she'll have used up her
vitality. She'll be an old woman at thirty-five."

"It's got to be stopped!" cried Roger.

"But how?" came the low sharp retort. "You've got to know her trouble
first. And her trouble is deep, it's motherhood--on a scale which has never
been tried before--for thousands of children, all of whom are living in a
kind of hell. I know your daughter pretty well. Don't make the mistake of
mixing her up with the old-fashioned teacher. It isn't what those children
learn, it's how they live that interests her, and how they are all growing
up. I say she's a mother--in spirit--but her body has never borne a child.
And that makes it worse--because it makes her more intense. It isn't
natural, you see."

A little later he rose to go.

"By the way," he said, at the door, "there's something I meant to tell