e, as she lay back with eyes closed, her mind still taut from
the evening called up no simple class-room but far different places--a mass
meeting in Carnegie Hall where she had just been speaking, some schools
which she had visited out in Indiana, a block of tenements far downtown and
the private office of the mayor. For her school had long curious arms these
days.

"Was Bruce here too this evening?" she asked her father presently. Roger
finished what he was reading, then looked over to the lounge, which was in
a shadowy corner.

"Yes, he came in late." And he went on to tell her of Bruce's
"engineering." At once she was interested. Rising on one elbow she
questioned him good-humoredly, for Deborah was fond of Bruce.

"Has he bought that automobile he wanted?"

"No," replied her father. "Edith said they couldn't afford it."

"Why not?"

"This time it's the dentist's bills. Young Betsy's teeth aren't
straightened yet--and as soon as she's been beautified they're going to put
the clamps on George."

"Poor Georgie," Deborah murmured. At the look of pain and disapproval on
her father's heavy face, she smiled quietly to herself. George, who was
Edith's oldest and the worry of her days, was Roger's favorite grandson.
"Has he been bringing home any more sick dogs?"

"No, this time it was a rat--a white one," Roger answered. A glint of dry
relish appeared in his eyes. "George brought it home the other night. He
had on a pair of ragged old pants."

"What on earth--"

"He had traded his own breeches for the rat," said Roger placidly.

"No! Oh, father! Really!" And she sank back laughing on the lounge.

"His school report," said Roger, "was quite as bad as ever."

"Of course it was," said Deborah. And she spoke so sharply that her father
glanced at her in surprise. She was up again on one elbow, and there was an
eager expression on her bright attractive face. "Do you know what we're
going to do some day? We're going to put the rat in the school," Deborah
said impatiently. "We're going to take a boy like George and study him till
we think we know just what interests him most. And if in his case it's
animals, we'll have a regular zoo in school. And for other boys we'll have
other things they really want to know about. And we'll keep them until five
o'clock--when their mothers will have to drag them away." Her father looked
bewildered.

"But arithmetic, my dear."

"You'll find they'll have learned their arithmetic w