"I'm afraid it's going to be a 'mere form' which will make
you rather wretched. When you get so you can't endure it, come in and see
me and the baby."
As he started for home, her words of warning recurred to his mind. Yes,
here was the thing that disturbed him most, the ghost lurking under all
this confusion, the part which had to do with himself. It was bad enough to
know that his daughter, his own flesh and blood, was about to settle her
fate at one throw. But to be moved out of his house bag and baggage! Roger
strode wrathfully up the street.
"It's your duty to talk to her," Edith had said. And he meditated darkly on
this: "Maybe I will and maybe I won't. I know my duties without being told.
How does Edith know what her mother liked? We had our own likings, her
mother and I, and our own ideas, long after she was tucked into bed. And
yet she's always harping on 'what mother would have wanted.' What I should
like to know--right now--is what Judith would want if she were here!"
With a pang of utter loneliness amid these vexing problems, Roger felt it
crowding in, this city of his children's lives. As he strode on down
Broadway, an old hag selling papers thrust one in his face and he caught a
glimpse of a headline. Some bigwig woman re-divorced. How about Laura's
"experiment"? A mob of street urchins nearly upset him. How about Deborah?
How about children? How about schools, education, the country? How about
God? Was anyone thinking? Had anyone time? What a racket it made,
slam-banging along.
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