Just so it had been when he was a boy. How unchanged and yet how new were
these fresh hungry cries of life. From the other end of the house he heard
Edith's tiny son lustily demanding his breakfast, as other wee boys before
him had done for over a hundred years, as other babies still unborn would
do in the many years to come. Soon the cry of the child was hushed. Quiet
fell upon the house. And Roger sank again into deep happy slumber.
Here was nothing new and disturbing. Edith's children? Yes, they were new,
but they were not disturbing. Their growth each summer was a joy, a renewal
of life in the battered old house. Here was no huge tenement family
crowding in with dirty faces, clamorous demands for aid, but only five
delightful youngsters, clean and fresh, of his own blood. He loved the
small excitements, the plans and plots and discoveries, the many adventures
that filled their days. He spent hours with their mother, listening while
she talked of them. Edith did so love this place and she ran the house so
beautifully. It was so cool and fragrant, so clean and so old-fashioned.
Deborah, too, came under the spell. She grew as lazy as a cat and day by
day renewed her strength from the hills and from Edith's little brood.
Roger had feared trouble there, for he knew how Edith disapproved of her
sister's new ideas. But although much with the children, Deborah apparently
had no new ideas at all.
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