e singing the
praises of Doctor Baird.

Then he began coming to the house.

"I was right," thought Roger complacently.

He laid in a stock of fine cigars and some good port and claret, too; and
on evenings when Baird came to dine, Roger by a genial glow and occasional
jocular ironies would endeavor to drag the talk away from clinics,
adenoids, children's teeth, epidemics and the new education. But no joke
was so good that Deborah could not promptly match it with some amusing
little thing which one of her children had said or done. For she had a
mother's instinct for bragging fondly of her brood. It was deep, it was
uncanny, this queer community motherhood.

"This poor devil," Roger thought, with a pitying glance at Baird, "might
just as well be marrying a widow with three thousand brats."

But Baird did not seem in the least dismayed. On the contrary, his
assurance appeared to be deepening every week, and with it Deborah's air of
alarm. For his clinic, as it swiftly grew, he secured financial backing
from his rich women patients uptown, many of them childless and only too
ready to respond to the appeals he made to them. And one Saturday evening
at the house, while dining with Roger and Deborah, he told of an offer he
had had from a wealthy banker's widow to build a maternity hospital. He
talked hungrily of all it could do in co-operation with the school. He said
nothing of the obvious fact that it would require his whole time, but Roger
thought of that at once, and by the expression on Deborah's face he saw she
was thinking, too.

He felt they wanted to be alone, so presently he left them. From his study
he could hear their voices growing steadily more intense. Was it all about
work? He could not tell. "They've got working and living so mixed up, a man
can't possibly tell 'em apart."

Then his daughter was called to the telephone, and Allan came in to bid
Roger good-night. And his eyes showed an impatience he did not seem to care
to hide.

"Well?" inquired Roger. "Did you get Deborah's consent?"

"To what?" asked Allan sharply.

"To your acceptance," Roger answered, "of the widow's mite." Baird grinned.

"She couldn't help herself," he said.

"But she didn't seem to like it, eh--"

"No," said Baird, "she didn't." Roger had a dark suspicion.

"By the way," he asked in a casual tone, "what's this philanthropic widow
like?"

"She's sixty-nine," Baird answered.

"Oh," said Roger. He smoked for a time, an