“I moulded you, my little son.  And as I have been to you, so you will be to your children.  In their lives, too, we shall be there.”

Darker, darker grew the copse and the chill of the night descended.  But to Roger’s eyes there was no gloom.  For he had seen a vision.

CHAPTER XV

On his return to the city, Roger found that Deborah’s school had apparently swept all other interests out of her mind.  Baird hardly ever came to the house, and she herself was seldom there except for a hasty dinner at night.  The house had to run itself more or less; and though Annie the cook was doing her best, things did not run so smoothly.  Roger missed little comforts, attentions, and he missed Deborah most of all.  When he came down to his breakfast she had already left the house, and often she did not return until long after he was in bed.  She felt the difference herself, and though she did not put it in words her manner at times seemed to beg his forbearance.  But there were many evenings when her father found it difficult to hold to the resolve he had made, to go slowly with his daughter until he could be more sure of his ground.  She was growing so intense again.  From the school authorities she had secured a still wider range and freedom for her new experiment, and she was working day and night to put her ideas into effect.

“It’s only too easy,” she remarked, “to launch an idea in this town.  The town will put it in headlines at once, and with it a picture of yourself in your best bib and tucker, looking as though you loved the whole world.  And you can make a wonderful splurge, until they go on to the next new thing.  The real trouble comes in working it out.”

And this she had set out to do.  Many nights in the autumn Roger went down to the school, to try to get some clear idea of this vision of hers for children, which in a vague way he could feel was so much larger than his own, for he had seen its driving force in the grip it had upon her life.  At first he could make nothing of it at all; everywhere chaos met his eyes.  But he found something formless, huge, that made to him a strong appeal.

The big building fairly hummed at night with numberless activities.  Fathers, mothers and children came pouring in together and went skurrying off to their places.  They learned to speak English, to read and write; grown men and women scowled and toiled over their arithmetic.  They worked at trades in the various shops; they hammered and sawed and set up type; they cooked and sewed and gossiped.  “The Young Galician Socialist Girls” debated on the question:  “Resolved that woman suffrage has worked in Colorado.”  “The Caruso Pleasure Club” gave a dance to “The Garibaldi Whirlwinds.”  An orchestra rehearsed like mad.  They searched their memories for the songs and all the folk tales they had heard in peasant huts in Italy, in hamlets along rocky coasts, in the dark