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.
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