But these were bright distractions. He took a deep,
amused delight in watching these two youngsters caught between two fires,
on the one side their mother and upon the other their aunt; both obviously
drawn toward Deborah, a figure who stood in their regard for all that
thrilling outside world, that heaving sparkling ocean on which they too
would soon embark; both sternly repressing their eagerness as an insult to
their mother, whom they loved and pitied so, regarding her as a brave and
dear but rapidly ageing creature "well on in her thirties," whom they must
cherish and preserve. They both had such solemn thoughts as they looked at
Edith in her chair. But as Roger watched them, with their love and their
solemnity, their guilt and their perplexity, with quiet enjoyment he would
wait to see the change he knew would come. And it always did. The sudden
picking up of a book, the vanishing of an anxious frown, and in an instant
their young minds had turned happily back into themselves, into their own
engrossing lives, their plans, their intimate dreams and ambitions, all so
curiously bound up with memories of small happenings which had struck them
as funny that day and at which they would suddenly chuckle aloud.
And this was only one stage in their growth. What would be the next, he
asked, and all the others after that? What kind of world would they live
in? Please heaven, there would be no wars.
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