"
"You'll quit work in your schools?"
"A month before."
"And in the meantime, not too hard."
"No, and not too easy. I'm so sure now that I can do both." And Deborah
kissed him gently. "I'm so happy, dearie--and oh, so very glad you're
here!"
There followed for Roger, after that, many quiet evenings at home,
untroubled days in his office. Seldom did he notice the progress of his
ailment. His attention was upon his house, as this woman who mothered
thousands of children worked on for her great family, putting all in order,
making ready for the crisis ahead when she would become the mother of one.
Now even more than ever before, her work came crowding into his home. The
house was old, but the house was new. For from schools and libraries, cafes
and tenements and streets, the mighty formless hunger which had once so
thrilled her father poured into the house itself and soon became a part of
it. He felt the presence of the school. He heard the daily gossip of that
bewildering system of which his daughter was a part: a world in itself,
with its politics, its many jarring factions, its jealousies, dissensions,
its varied personalities, ambitions and conspiracies; but in spite of these
confusions its more progressive elements downing all distrusts and fears
and drawing steadily closer to life, fearlessly rousing everywhere the
hunger in people to live and learn and to take from this amazing world all
the riches that it holds: the school with its great challenge steadily
increasing its demands in the name of its children, demands which went deep
down into conditions in the tenements and ramified through politics to the
City Hall, to Albany, and even away to Washington--while day by day and
week by week, from cities, towns and villages came the vast prophetic story
of the free public schools of the land.
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