There followed for Roger, after that, many quiet evenings at home, untroubled days in his office.  Seldom did he notice the progress of his ailment.  His attention was upon his house, as this woman who mothered thousands of children worked on for her great family, putting all in order, making ready for the crisis ahead when she would become the mother of one.

Now even more than ever before, her work came crowding into his home.  The house was old, but the house was new.  For from schools and libraries, cafes and tenements and streets, the mighty formless hunger which had once so thrilled her father poured into the house itself and soon became a part of it.  He felt the presence of the school.  He heard the daily gossip of that bewildering system of which his daughter was a part:  a world in itself, with its politics, its many jarring factions, its jealousies, dissensions, its varied personalities, ambitions and conspiracies; but in spite of these confusions its more progressive elements downing all distrusts and fears and drawing steadily closer to life, fearlessly rousing everywhere the hunger in people to live and learn and to take from this amazing world all the riches that it holds:  the school with its great challenge steadily increasing its demands in the name of its children, demands which went deep down into conditions in the tenements and ramified through politics to the City Hall, to Albany, and even away to Washington—­while day by day and week by week, from cities, towns and villages came the vast prophetic story of the free public schools of the land.

And meanwhile, in the tenements, still groping and testing, feeling her way, keeping close watch on her great brood, their wakening desires, their widening curiosities, Deborah was bringing them, children, mothers and fathers too, together through the one big hope of brighter and more ample lives for everybody’s children.  Step by step this hope was spread out into the surrounding swamps and jungles of blind driven lives, to find surprising treasures there deep buried under dirt and din, locked in the common heart of mankind—­old songs and fables, hopes and dreams and visions of immortal light, handed down from father to son, nurtured, guarded, breathed upon and clothed anew by countless generations, innumerable millions of simple men and women blindly struggling toward the sun.  Over the door of one of the schools, were these words carved in the stone: 

“Humanity is still a child.  Our parents are all people who have lived upon the earth—­our children, all who are to come.  And the dawn at last is breaking.  The great day has just begun.”

This spirit of triumphal life poured deep into Roger’s house.  It was as though his daughter, in these last months which she had left for undivided service, were strengthening her faith in it all and pledging her devotion—­as communing with herself she felt the crisis drawing near.

CHAPTER XL