“This house?” exclaimed her father.

“I know—­it’s sold,” she answered.  “But we’re going to get a lease.  We’ll see the new owner and talk him around.”

“Then you’ll have to talk your father around—­”

“You around?” And Deborah stared.  “You mean to say you’re not going to sell?”

“I do,” said Roger blithely.  He told them the story of John’s new scheme.  “And if things turn out in the office as I hope they will,” he ended, “we’ll clear the mortgage on the house and then make it your wedding gift—­from the new firm to the new family.”

Deborah choked a little: 

“Allan!  What do you think of us now?”

“I think,” he answered, in a drawl, “that we’d better try to persuade the new firm to live with the new family.”

“We will, and the sooner the better!” she said.

“I’m going up to the mountains,” said Roger.

“Yes, but you’re coming back in the fall, and when you do you’re coming here!  And you’re going to live here years and years!”

“You’re forgetting my doctor.”

“Not at all.  I had a long talk with him Sunday and I know just what I’m saying.”

“You don’t look it, my dear,” said Roger, “but of course you may be right.  If you take the proper care of me here—­and John keeps booming things for the firm—­”

“And George makes a huge success of the farm,” Deborah added quickly.

“And Deborah of teaching the world—­”

“Oh, Allan, hush up!”

“Look here,” he said.  “You go upstairs and tell Edith all this.  Your father and I want to be alone.”

And when the two men were left alone, they smoked and said nothing.  They smiled at each other.

“It’s hard to decide,” grunted Roger at last.  “Which did it—­my wonderful sermon or your own long waiting game?  I’m inclined to think it was the game.  For any other man but you—­with all you’ve done, without any talk—­no, sir, there wouldn’t have been a chance.  For she’s modern, Baird, she’s modern.  And I’m going to live just as long as I can.  I want to see what happens here.”

* * * * *

The next night in his study, how quiet it was.  Edith was busy packing upstairs, Deborah and Allan were gone.  Thoughts drifted slowly across his mind.  Well, she was married, the last of his daughters, the one whom he cared most for, the one who had taken the heaviest risks.  And this was the greatest risk of all.  For although she had put it happily out of her thoughts for the moment, Roger knew the old troublesome question was still there in Deborah’s mind.  The tenement children or her own, the big family or the small?  He felt there would still be struggles ahead.  And with a kind of a wistfulness he tried to see into the future here.

He gave a sudden start in his chair.