Deborah had not yet stopped work.  Again and again she put it off.  For in her busy office so many demands both old and new kept pressing in upon her, such unexpected questions and vexing little problems kept cropping up as Deborah tried to arrange her work for the colleague who was to take her place in the spring, that day after day she lingered there—­until one afternoon in March her husband went to her office, gave her an hour to finish up, and then brought her home with him.  She had a fit of the blues that night.  Allan was called out on a case, and a little while later Roger found his daughter alone in the living room, a book unopened in her lap, her gray eyes glistening with tears.  She smiled when she caught sight of him.

“It’s so silly!” she muttered unsteadily.  “Just my condition, I suppose.  I feel as though I had done with school for the remainder of my days!...  Better leave me now, dearie,” she added.  “I’m not very proud of myself to-night—­but I’ll be all right in the morning.”

The next day she was herself again, and went quietly on with her preparations for the coming of her child.  But still the ceaseless interests of those hordes of other children followed her into the house.  Not only her successor but principals and teachers came for counsel or assistance.  And later, when reluctantly she refused to see such visitors, still the telephone kept ringing and letters poured in by every mail.  For in her larger family there were weddings, births and deaths, and the endless savage struggle for life; and there were many climaxes of dreams and aspirations, of loves and bitter jealousies.  And out of all this straining and this fever of humanity, came messages to Deborah:  last appeals for aid and advice, and gifts for the child who was to be born; tiny garments quaintly made by women and girls from Italy, from Russia and from Poland; baby blankets, wraps and toys and curious charms and amulets.  There were so many of these gifts.

“There’s enough for forty babies,” Deborah told her father.  “What on earth am I to do, to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings?  And isn’t it rather awful, the way these inequalities will crop up in spite of you?  I know of eight tenement babies born down there in this one week.  How much fuss and feathers is made over them, and their coming into the world, poor mites?” Roger smiled at his daughter.

“You remind me of Jekyll and Hyde,” he said.

“Father!  What a horrible thought!  What have Jekyll and Hyde to do with me?”

“Nothing, my dear,” he answered.  “Only it’s queer and a little uncanny, something I’ve never seen before, this double mother life of yours.”

* * * * *