His Family by Ernest Poole (popular ebook readers txt) 📕

understand⁠—and so she’s jealous⁠—of her job.” But A. Baird was in no joking mood.

“She’s narrow,” he said sternly. “That’s what’s the matter with Deborah. She’s so centered on her job she can’t see anyone else’s. She thinks I’m doing all this work solely in order to help her school⁠—when if she’d use some imagination and try to put herself in my shoes, she’d see the chance it’s giving me!”

“How do you mean?” asked Roger, looking a bit bewildered.

“Why,” said Baird with an impatient fling of his hand, “there are men in my line all over the country who’d leave home, wives and children for the chance I’ve blundered onto here! A hospital fully equipped for research, a free hand, an opportunity which comes to one man in a million! But can she see it? Not at all! It’s only an annex to her school!”

“Yes,” said Roger gravely, “she’s in a pretty unnatural state. I think she ought to get married, Baird⁠—” To his friendly and disarming twinkle Baird replied with a rueful smile.

“You do, eh,” he growled. “Then tell her to plan her wedding to come before her funeral.” As he rose to go, Roger took his hand.

“I’ll tell her,” he said. “It’s sound advice. Good night, my boy, I wish you luck.”

A few moments later he heard in the hall their brief good nights to each other, and presently Deborah came in. She was not looking quite herself.

“Why are you eyeing me like that?” his daughter asked abruptly.

“Aren’t you letting him do a good deal for you?”

Deborah flushed a little:

“Yes, I am. I can’t make him stop.”

Her father hesitated.

“You could,” he said, “if you wanted to. If you were sure,” he added slowly, “that you didn’t love him⁠—and told him so.” He felt a little panic, for he thought he had gone too far. But his daughter only turned away and restlessly moved about the room. At last she came to her father’s chair:

“Hadn’t you better leave this to me?”

“I had, my dear, I most certainly had. I was all wrong to mention it,” he answered very humbly.

From this night on, Baird changed his tack. Although soon busy with the plans for the hospital, to be built at once, he said little about it to Deborah. Instead, he insisted on taking her off on little evening sprees uptown.

“Do you know what’s the matter with both of us?” he said to her one evening. “We’ve been getting too durned devoted to our jobs and our ideals. You’re becoming a regular school marm and I’m getting to be a regular slave to every wretched little babe who takes it into his head to be born. We haven’t one redeeming vice.”

And again he took up dancing. The first effort which he made, down at Deborah’s school one evening, was a failure quite as dismal as his attempts of the previous year. But he did not appear in the least discouraged. He came to the house one Friday night.

“I knew I could learn to dance,” he said, “in spite of all your taunts and jibes. That little fiasco last Saturday night⁠—”

“Was perfectly awful,” Deborah said.

“Did not discourage me in the least,” he continued severely. “I decided the only trouble with me was that I’m tall and I’ve got to bend⁠—to learn to bend.”

“Tremendously!”

“So I went to a lady professor, and she saw the point at once. Since then I’ve had five lessons, and I can foxtrot in my sleep. Tomorrow is Saturday. Where shall we go?”

“To the theater.”

“Good. We’ll start with that. But the minute the play is over we’ll gallop off to the Plaza Grill⁠—just as the music is in full swing⁠—”

“And we’ll dance,” she groaned, “for hours. And when I get home, I’ll creep into bed so tired and sore in every limb⁠—”

“That you’ll sleep late Sunday morning. And a mighty good thing for you, too⁠—if you ask my advice⁠—”

“I don’t ask your advice!”

“You’re getting it, though,” he said doggedly. “If you’re still to be a friend of mine we’ll dance at the Plaza tomorrow night⁠—and well into the Sabbath.”

“The principal of a public school⁠—dancing on the Sabbath. Suppose one of my friends should see us there.”

“Your friends,” he replied with a fine contempt, “do not dance in the Plaza Grill. I’m the only roisterer you know.”

“All right,” she conceded grudgingly, “I’ll roister. Come and get me. But I’d much prefer when the play is done to come home and have milk and crackers here.”

“Deborah,” he said cheerfully, “for a radical school reformer you’re the most conservative woman I know.”

XVIII

In Deborah’s school, in the meantime, affairs had drawn to a climax. The moment had come for the city to say whether her new experiment should be dropped the following year or allowed to go on and develop. There came a day of sharp suspense when Deborah’s friends and enemies on the Board of Education sat down to discuss and settle her fate. They were at it for several hours, but late in the afternoon they decided not only to let her go on the next year but to try her idea in four other schools and place her in charge with ample funds. The long strain came to an end at last in a triumph beyond her wildest hopes; when the news arrived she relaxed, grew limp, and laughed and cried a little. And her father felt her tremble as he held her a moment in his arms.

“Now, Baird,” he thought, “your chance has come. For God’s sake, take it while it’s here!”

But in place of Baird that afternoon came men and women from the press, and friends and fellow workers. The doorbell and the telephone kept ringing almost incessantly. Why couldn’t they leave her a moment’s peace? Roger buried himself in his study. Later, when he was called to dinner, he found that Allan was there, too, but at first the conversation was all upon Deborah’s victory. Flushed with success, for the moment