“We’ll have trouble there, too!” he told himself, as he jerked the black satin cravat into place, a tie he thoroughly disliked.  Yes, black, by George, he felt like it to-night!  These women!  These evenings!  This worry!  This war!  This world gone raving, driveling mad!

And frowning with annoyance, Roger went down to his dinner.

As he waited he grew impatient.  He had eaten no lunch, he was hungry; and he was very tired, too, for he had had his own hard day.  Pshaw!  He got up angrily. Somebody must be genial here.  He went into the dining room and poured himself a good stiff drink.  Roger had never been much of a drinker.  Ever since his marriage, cigars had been his only vice.  But of late he had been having curious little sinking spells.  They worried him, and he told himself he could not afford to get either too tired or too faint.

Nevertheless, he reflected, it was setting a bad example for George.  But glancing into his study he saw that the lad was completely absorbed.  With knees drawn up, his long lank form all hunched and huddled on the lounge, hair rumpled, George was reading a book which had a cover of tough gray cloth.  At the sight of it his grandfather smiled, for he had seen it once before.  Where George had obtained it, the Lord only knew.  Its title was “Bulls and Breeding.”  A thoroughly practical little book, but nothing for George’s mother to see.  As his grandfather entered behind him, the boy looked up with a guilty start, and resumed with a short breath of relief.

Young Elizabeth, too, had a furtive air, for instead of preparing her history lesson she was deep in the evening paper reading about the war abroad.  Stout and florid, rather plain, but with a frank, attractive face and honest, clear, appealing eyes, this curious creature of thirteen was sitting firmly in her chair with her feet planted wide apart, eagerly scanning an account of the work of American surgeons in France.  And again Roger smiled to himself. (He was feeling so much better now.) So Betsy was still thinking of becoming a surgeon.  He wondered what she would take up next.  In the past two years in swift succession she had made up her mind to be a novelist, an actress and a women’s college president.  And Roger liked this tremendously.

He loved to watch these two in the house.  Here again his family was widening out before him, with new figures arising to draw his attention this way and that.  But these were bright distractions.  He took a deep, amused delight in watching these two youngsters caught between two fires, on the one side their mother and upon the other their aunt; both obviously drawn toward Deborah, a figure who stood in their regard for all that thrilling outside world, that heaving sparkling ocean on which they too would soon embark; both sternly repressing their eagerness as an insult to their mother, whom they loved and pitied so, regarding her as a brave and dear but rapidly ageing creature