tead of preparing her
history lesson she was deep in the evening paper reading about the war
abroad. Stout and florid, rather plain, but with a frank, attractive face
and honest, clear, appealing eyes, this curious creature of thirteen was
sitting firmly in her chair with her feet planted wide apart, eagerly
scanning an account of the work of American surgeons in France. And again
Roger smiled to himself. (He was feeling so much better now.) So Betsy was
still thinking of becoming a surgeon. He wondered what she would take up
next. In the past two years in swift succession she had made up her mind to
be a novelist, an actress and a women's college president. And Roger liked
this tremendously.

He loved to watch these two in the house. Here again his family was
widening out before him, with new figures arising to draw his attention
this way and that. But these were bright distractions. He took a deep,
amused delight in watching these two youngsters caught between two fires,
on the one side their mother and upon the other their aunt; both obviously
drawn toward Deborah, a figure who stood in their regard for all that
thrilling outside world, that heaving sparkling ocean on which they too
would soon embark; both sternly repressing their eagerness as an insult to
their mother, whom they loved and pitied so, regarding her as a brave and
dear but rapidly ageing creature "well on in her thirties," whom they must
cherish and preserve. They both had such solemn thoughts as they looked at
Edith in her chair. But as Roger watched them, with their love and their
solemnity, their guilt and their perplexity, with quiet enjoyment he would
wait to see the change he knew would come. And it always did. The sudden
picking up of a book, the vanishing of an anxious frown, and in an instant
their young minds had turned happily back into themselves, into their own
engrossing lives, their plans, their intimate dreams and ambitions, all so
curiously bound up with memories of small happenings which had struck them
as funny that day and at which they would suddenly chuckle aloud.

And this was only one stage in their growth. What would be the next, he
asked, and all the others after that? What kind of world would they live
in? Please heaven, there would be no wars. Many old things, no doubt, would
be changed, by the work of Deborah and her kind--but not too many, Roger
hoped. And these young people, meanwhile, would be bringing up children in
the