“Are you?  I’ll be glad to.”

“Thank you, Baird, I want your advice.”  And as he hung up the receiver he said, “Now then!” to himself, in a tone of firm decision.  But later, as the day wore on, he cursed himself for what he had done.  “Don’t it beat the devil,” he thought, “how I’m always putting my foot in it?” And when Baird came into the room that night he loomed, to Roger’s anxious eye, if anything taller than before.  But his manner was so easy, his gruff voice so natural, and he seemed to take this little party of two so quietly as a matter of course, that Roger was soon reassured, and at table he and Allan got on even better than before.  Baird talked of his life as a student, in Vienna, Bonn and Edinburgh, and of his first struggles in New York.  His talk was full of human bits, some tragic, more amusing.  And Roger’s liking for the man increased with every story told.

“I asked you here,” he bluntly began, when they had gone to the study to smoke, “to talk to you about Deborah.”  Baird gave him a friendly look.

“All right.  Let’s talk about her.”

“It strikes me you were right last year,” said Roger, speaking slowly.  “She’s already showing the strain of her work.  She don’t look to me as strong as she was.”

“She looks to me stronger,” Allan replied.  “You know, people fool doctors now and then—­and she seems to have taken a fresh start.  I feel she may go on for years.”  Roger was silent a moment, chagrined and disappointed.

“Have you had a good chance to watch her?” he asked.

“Yes, and I’m watching her still,” said Baird.  “I see her down there at the school.  She tells me you’ve been there yourself.”

“Yes,” said Roger, determinedly, “and I mean to keep on going.  I’m trying not to lose hold of her,” he added with harsh emphasis.  Baird turned and frankly smiled at him.

“Then you have probably seen,” he replied, “that to keep any hold at all on her, you must make up your mind as I have done that, strength or no strength, this job of hers is going to be a life career.  When a woman who has held a job without a break for eleven years can feel such a flame of enthusiasm, you can be pretty sure, I think, it is the deepest part of her.  At least I feel that way,” he said.  “And I believe the only way to keep near her—­for the present, anyhow—­is to help her in her work.”

When Baird had gone, Roger found himself angry.

“I’m not in the habit, young man,” he thought, “of throwing my daughter at gentlemen’s heads.  If you feel as calm and contented as that you can go to the devil!  Far be it from me to lift a hand!  In fact, as I come to think of it, you would probably make her a mighty poor husband!” He worked himself into quite a rage.  But an hour later, when he had subsided, “Hold on,” he thought.  “Am I right about this?  Is the man as contented as he talks?  No, sir, not for a minute he isn’t!  But what can