an I tell her so? Not at
all. I can't say, 'You're not wanted here.' If I do, _she'll_ be hurt. Oh
Lord, these girls! And Deborah knows very well that if she does get married
this month, with Laura abroad and Edith up here and only me at the wedding,
Edith will smile to herself and say, 'Now isn't that just like Deborah?'"

As Roger slowly rode along a steep and winding mountain road, gloomily he
reflected to what petty little troubles a family of women could descend, so
soon after death itself. And he lifted his eyes up to the hills and decided
to leave this matter alone. If women would be women, let them settle their
own affairs. Deborah was due to arrive on the following Friday evening. All
right, let her come, he thought. She would soon see she was in the way, and
then in a little affectionate talk he would suggest that she marry right
off and have a decent honeymoon before the school year opened.

So he dismissed it from his mind. And as he listened in the dusk to the
numberless murmuring voices of living creatures large and small which rose
out of the valley, and as from high above him the serenity of the mountains
there towering over thousands of years stole into his spirit, Roger had a
large quieting sense of something high and powerful looking down upon the
earth, a sense of all humanity honeycombed with millions upon millions of
small sorrows, absorbing joys and hopes and fears, and in spite of them all
the Great Life sweeping on, with no Great Death to check its course, no
immense catastrophe, all these little troubles like mere tiny specks of
foam upon the surface of the tide.

Deborah's visit, the following week, was as he had expected. Within an hour
after her coming he could feel the tension grow. Deborah herself was tense,
both from the work she had left in New York where she was soon to have five
schools, and from the thought of her marriage, only a few weeks ahead. She
said nothing about it, however, until as a sisterly duty Edith tried to
draw her out by showing an interest in her plans. But the cloud of Bruce's
death was there, and Deborah shunned the topic. She tried to talk of the
children instead. But Edith at once was on the defensive, vigilant for
trouble, and as she unfolded her winter plans she grew distinctly brief and
curt.

"If Deborah doesn't see it now, she's a fool," her father told himself.
"I'll just wait a few days more, and then we'll have that little talk."

CHAPTER XXIV