spruce and affable youth with
thick light hair and ruddy cheeks, a brisk pleasant manner of talking and a
decidedly forcible way of putting the case of his country at war. They kept
the conversation to that. For despite Deborah's friendly air, she showed
plainly that she wanted to keep the talk impersonal. And Laura, rather
amused at this, replied by treating Deborah and Allan and her father, too,
with a bantering forbearance for their old-fashioned, narrow views and
Deborah's religion of brotherhood, democracy. All that to Laura was passe.

From time to time Roger glanced at her face, into her clear and luminous
eyes so warm with the joy of living with this new man, her second. How his
family had split apart. He wrote Edith the news of her sister, and he
received but a brief reply. Nor did Deborah speak of it often. She seemed
to want to forget Laura's life as the crisis in her own drew near.

CHAPTER XLI

Deborah had not yet stopped work. Again and again she put it off. For in
her busy office so many demands both old and new kept pressing in upon her,
such unexpected questions and vexing little problems kept cropping up as
Deborah tried to arrange her work for the colleague who was to take her
place in the spring, that day after day she lingered there--until one
afternoon in March her husband went to her office, gave her an hour to
finish up, and then brought her home with him. She had a fit of the blues
that night. Allan was called out on a case, and a little while later Roger
found his daughter alone in the living room, a book unopened in her lap,
her gray eyes glistening with tears. She smiled when she caught sight of
him.

"It's so silly!" she muttered unsteadily. "Just my condition, I suppose. I
feel as though I had done with school for the remainder of my days!...
Better leave me now, dearie," she added. "I'm not very proud of myself
to-night--but I'll be all right in the morning."

The next day she was herself again, and went quietly on with her
preparations for the coming of her child. But still the ceaseless interests
of those hordes of other children followed her into the house. Not only her
successor but principals and teachers came for counsel or assistance. And
later, when reluctantly she refused to see such visitors, still the
telephone kept ringing and letters poured in by every mail. For in her
larger family there were weddings, births and deaths, and the endless
savage struggle for life; a