"You're as bad as Bruce," he growled at her. "You don't have to be back,"
he argued. "School doesn't begin for nearly three weeks."
"There's the suffrage campaign," she answered. He gave her a look of
exasperation.
"Now what the devil has suffrage to do with your schools?" he demanded.
"When the women get the vote, we'll spend more money on the children."
"Suppose the money isn't there," was Roger's grim rejoinder.
"Then we'll act like old-fashioned wives, I suppose," his daughter answered
cheerfully, "and keep nagging till it is there. We'll keep up such a
nagging," she added, in sweet even tones, "that you'll get the money by
hook or crook, to save yourselves from going insane."
After this he caught her reading in the New York papers the list of
campaign meetings each night, meetings in hot stifling halls or out upon
deafening corners. And as she read there came over her face a look like
that of a man who has given up tobacco and suddenly sniffs it among his
friends. She went down the last night of August.
* * * * *
Roger stayed on for another two weeks, on into the best time of the year.
For now came the nights of the first snapping frosts when the dome of the
heavens was steely blue, and clear sparkling mornings, the woods aflame
with scarlet and gold. And across the small field below the house, at
sunset Roger would go down to the copse of birches there and find it filled
with glints of light that took his glance far in among the slender, creamy
stems of the trees, all slowly swaying to and fro, the leafage rich with
autumn hues, warm orange, yellow and pale green.
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