“Yes,” said Roger determinedly, “and she’s got to give it up.”

“You mean she ought to.  But she won’t.”

“She’s got to be made to,” Roger growled.  “This summer at least.”  Baird shook his head.

“You forget her fresh air work,” he replied.  “She has three thousand children on her mind.  The city will be like a furnace, of course, and the children must be sent to camps.  If you don’t see the necessity, go and talk to her, and then you will.”

“But you can forbid it, can’t you?”

“No.  Can you?”

“I can try,” snapped Roger.

“Let’s try what’s possible,” said Baird.  “Let’s try to keep her in bed three days.”

“Sounds modest,” Roger grunted.  And a glimmer of amusement came into Baird’s impassive eyes.

“Try it,” he drawled.  “By to-morrow night she’ll ask for her stenographer.  She’ll make you think she is out of the woods.  But she won’t be, please remember that.  A few years more,” he added, “and she’ll have used up her vitality.  She’ll be an old woman at thirty-five.”

“It’s got to be stopped!” cried Roger.

“But how?” came the low sharp retort.  “You’ve got to know her trouble first.  And her trouble is deep, it’s motherhood—­on a scale which has never been tried before—­for thousands of children, all of whom are living in a kind of hell.  I know your daughter pretty well.  Don’t make the mistake of mixing her up with the old-fashioned teacher.  It isn’t what those children learn, it’s how they live that interests her, and how they are all growing up.  I say she’s a mother—­in spirit—­but her body has never borne a child.  And that makes it worse—­because it makes her more intense.  It isn’t natural, you see.”

A little later he rose to go.

“By the way,” he said, at the door, “there’s something I meant to tell her upstairs—­about a poor devil she has on her mind.  A chap named Berry—­dying—­lungs.  She asked me to go and see him.”

“Yes?”

“I found it was only a matter of days.”  The tragic pity in Baird’s quiet voice was so deep as barely to be heard.

“So I shot him full of morphine.  He won’t wake up.  Please tell her that.”

Tall, ungainly, motionless, he loomed there in the doorway.  With a little shrug and a smile he turned and went slowly out of the house.

CHAPTER XIII

Deborah’s recovery was rapid and determined.  The next night she was sitting up and making light of her illness.  On the third day she dismissed her nurse, and when her father came home from his office he found gathered about her bed not only her stenographer but both her assistant principals.  He frowned severely and went to his room, and a few minutes later he heard them leave.  Presently she called to him, and he came to her bedside.  She was lying back on the pillow with rather a guilty expression.

“Up to your old antics, eh?” he remarked.