“What on earth—­”

“He had traded his own breeches for the rat,” said Roger placidly.

“No!  Oh, father!  Really!” And she sank back laughing on the lounge.

“His school report,” said Roger, “was quite as bad as ever.”

“Of course it was,” said Deborah.  And she spoke so sharply that her father glanced at her in surprise.  She was up again on one elbow, and there was an eager expression on her bright attractive face.  “Do you know what we’re going to do some day?  We’re going to put the rat in the school,” Deborah said impatiently.  “We’re going to take a boy like George and study him till we think we know just what interests him most.  And if in his case it’s animals, we’ll have a regular zoo in school.  And for other boys we’ll have other things they really want to know about.  And we’ll keep them until five o’clock—­when their mothers will have to drag them away.”  Her father looked bewildered.

“But arithmetic, my dear.”

“You’ll find they’ll have learned their arithmetic without knowing it,” Deborah answered.

“Sounds a bit wild,” murmured Roger.  Again to his mind came the picture of hordes of little Italians and Jews.  “My dear, if I had your children to teach, I don’t think I’d add a zoo,” he said.  And with a breath of discomfort he turned back to his reading.  He knew that he ought to question her, to show an interest in her work.  But he had a deep aversion for those millions of foreign tenement people, always shoving, shoving upward through the filth of their surroundings.  They had already spoiled his neighborhood, they had flowed up like an ocean tide.  And so he read his paper, frowning guiltily down at the page.  He glanced up in a little while and saw Deborah smiling across at him, reading his dislike of such talk.  The smile which he sent back at her was half apologetic, half an appeal for mercy.  And Deborah seemed to understand.  She went into the living room, and there at the piano she was soon playing softly.  Listening from his study, again the feeling came to him of her fresh and abundant vitality.  He mused a little enviously on how it must feel to be strong like that, never really tired.

And while her father thought in this wise, Deborah at the piano, leaning back with eyes half closed, could feel her tortured nerves relax, could feel her pulse stop throbbing so and the dull aching at her temples little by little pass away.  She played like this so many nights.  Soon she would be ready for sleep.

* * * * *

After she had gone to bed, Roger rose heavily from his chair.  By long habit he went about the house trying the windows and turning out lights.  Last he came to the front door.  There were double outer doors with a ponderous system of locks and bolts and a heavy chain.  Mechanically he fastened them all; and putting out the light in the hall, in the darkness he went up the stairs.  He could so easily feel his way.  He put his hand lightly, first on the foot of the banister, then on a curve in it halfway up, again on the sharper curve at the top and last on the knob of his bedroom door.  And it was as though these guiding objects came out to meet him like old friends.