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

It had rained so hard for the past two days that no one had gone to the village, which was nearly three miles from the farm.  But when the storm was over at last, George and Elizabeth tramped down and came back at dusk with a bag full of mail.  Their clothes were mud-bespattered and they hurried upstairs to change before supper, while Roger settled back in his chair and spread open his New York paper.  It was July 30, 1914.

From a habit grown out of thirty odd years of business life, Roger read his paper in a fashion of his own.  By instinct his eye swept the page for news dealing with individual men, for it was upon people’s names in print that he had made his living.  And so when he looked at this strange front page it gave him a swift twinge of alarm.  For the news was not of men but of nations.  Austria was massing her troops along the Serbian frontier, and Germany, Italy, Russia, France and even England, all were in a turmoil, with panics in their capitals, money markets going wild.

Edith came down, in her neat black dress with its narrow white collar, ready for supper.  She glanced at her father.

“Why, what’s the matter?”

“Look at this.”  And he tossed her a paper.

“Oh-h-h,” she murmured softly.  “Oh, how frightful that would be.”  And she read on with lips compressed.  But soon there came from a room upstairs the sudden cry of one of her children, followed by a shrill wail of distress.  And dropping the paper, she hurried away.

Roger continued his reading.

Deborah came.  She saw the paper Edith had dropped, picked it up and sat down to read, and there were a few moments of absolute silence.  Then Roger heard a quivering breath, and glancing up he saw Deborah’s eyes, intent and startled, moving down the columns of print in a swift, uncomprehending way.

“Pretty serious business,” he growled.

“It can’t happen!” she exclaimed.

And they resumed their reading.