"Has, eh," grunted Roger.
"Yes, she was here to see me to-day. And something has happened--she's
changing fast. I felt it in all kinds of ways. She was just as dear as she
could be--and lonely, as though she were feeling her age. I really think we
can do something now."
"All right, let's do something," Roger growled.
And Edith began to do something. Her hostility to her sister had completely
disappeared. In its place was a friendly affection, an evident desire to
please. She even drew Laura into the secret, and there was a gathering of
the clan. There were consultations in Roger's den. "Deborah is to get
married." The feeling of it crept through the house. Nothing was said to
her, of course, but Deborah was made to feel that her two sisters had drawn
close. And their influence upon her choice was more deep and subtle than
she knew. For although Roger's family had split so wide apart, between his
three daughters there were still mysterious bonds reaching far back into
nursery days. And Deborah in deciding whether to marry Allan Baird was
affected more than she was aware by the married lives of her sisters. All
she had seen in Laura's menage, all that she had ever observed in Edith's
growing family, kept rising from time to time in her thoughts, as she
vaguely tried to picture herself a wife and the mother of children.
So the family, with those subtle bonds from the past, began to press
steadily closer and closer around this one unmarried daughter, and help her
to make up her mind.
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