“What’s the matter with Deborah?” inquired Roger dismally.

“Oh, nothing’s the matter with Deborah.  She’s quite self-sufficient.  She at least can play with modern ideas and keep her head while she’s doing it.  But when poor Laura—­a mere child with the mind of a chicken—­catches vaguely at such ideas, applies them to her own little self and risks her whole future happiness, it seems to me perfectly criminal for Deborah not to interfere!  Not even a word of warning!”

“Deborah believes,” said her father, “in everyone’s leading his own life.”

“That’s rot,” was Edith’s curt reply.  “Do I lead my own life?  Does Bruce?  Do you?”

“No,” growled Roger feelingly.

“Do my children?” Edith demanded.  “I know Deborah would like them to.  That’s her latest and most modern fad, to run a school where every child shall sit with a rat in its lap or a goat, and do just what he pleases—­follow his natural bent, she says.  I hope she won’t come up to the mountains and practice on my children.  I should hate to break with Deborah,” Edith ended thoughtfully.

Roger rose and walked the room.  The comforting idea entered his mind that when the wedding was over he would take out his collection of rings and carefully polish every one.  But even this hope did not stay with him long.

“With Laura at home,” he heard Edith continue, “you at least had a daughter to run your house.  If Deborah tries to move you out—­”

“She won’t!” cried Roger in alarm.

“If she does,” persisted Edith, “or if she begins any talk of the kind—­you come to me and I’ll talk to her!”

Her father walked in silence, his head down, frowning at the floor.

“It seems funny,” Edith continued, “that women like me who give children their lives, and men like Bruce who are building New York—­actually doing it all the time—­have so little to say in these modern ideas.  I suppose it’s because we’re a little too real.”

“To come back to the wedding,” Roger suggested.

“To come back to the wedding, father dear,” his daughter said compassionately.  “I’m afraid it’s going to be a ‘mere form’ which will make you rather wretched.  When you get so you can’t endure it, come in and see me and the baby.”

As he started for home, her words of warning recurred to his mind.  Yes, here was the thing that disturbed him most, the ghost lurking under all this confusion, the part which had to do with himself.  It was bad enough to know that his daughter, his own flesh and blood, was about to settle her fate at one throw.  But to be moved out of his house bag and baggage!  Roger strode wrathfully up the street.

“It’s your duty to talk to her,” Edith had said.  And he meditated darkly on this:  “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.  I know my duties without being told.  How does Edith know what her mother liked?  We had our own likings, her mother and I, and our own ideas, long after she was tucked into bed.  And yet she’s always harping on ‘what mother would have wanted.’  What I should like to know—­right now—­is what Judith would want if she were here!”