l so wonderful, to be having supper
away from home, to be here, to go to bed upstairs, to take part perhaps in
a pillow fight.... And glancing at the glowing face and the parted lips of
his small grandson Roger felt a current of warm new life pour into his
soul.

Early in the evening he went up to Edith's apartment. He found his daughter
in her room, looking flushed and very tense. He took her arm and they
walked for a time. A trained nurse was soaping the windows. Roger asked the
reason for this and was told that in case the baby did not come till
morning the doctor wanted to pull up the shades in order to work by
daylight. "And neighbors in New York are such cats! You've no idea!" said
Edith. She looked out at the numberless windows crowding close about her
home, and she fairly bristled with scorn. "Oh, how I loathe apartments!"

"They seem to have come to stay, my dear. In a few years more New York will
be a city without a house," he said. "Only a palace here and there." The
thought flashed in his mind, "But I shall be gone."

"Then we'll move out to the country!" she cried. Still walking the floor
with her father, she talked of the perplexities which in her feverish state
of mind had loomed suddenly enormous. She had planned everything so nicely
for the baby to come the first of June, but now her plans were all upset.
She did not want the children here, it would make too much confusion. They
had much better go up to the mountains, even though George and Elizabeth
lost their last few weeks at school. But who could she find to take them?
Bruce was simply rushed to death with his new receivership. Laura was
getting her trousseau. Deborah, said Edith, had time for nothing on earth
but school.

"Suppose I take them," Roger ventured. But she only smiled at this. "My
dear," he urged, "your nurse will be with me, and when we arrive there's
the farmer's wife." But Edith impatiently shook her head. Her warm bright
eyes seemed to picture it all, hour by hour, day and night, her children
there without her.

"You poor dear," she told him, "you haven't the slightest idea what it
means. The summer train is not on yet, and you have to change three times
on the way--with all the children--luggage, too. And there are their naps,
and all their meals. You don't arrive till late at night. No," she decided
firmly, "Bruce will simply have to go." She drew a breath of discomfort.
"You go and talk to him," she said.

"I will, my dear.