"I want you to," he persisted, with an anxious note in his voice. He had tried life without Hannah here and he did not care to try it again. "It is already settled, father, I sent her away this morning." "Then you get her right back!" he exclaimed. But Edith's face grew obstinate. "I don't care to give Deborah," she replied, "another chance to talk as she did." Roger looked at her gloomily. "You will, though," he was thinking. "You two have only just begun. Let any little point arise, which a couple of men would settle offhand, and you two will get together and go it! There'll be no living in the house!" With deepening displeasure he watched the struggle between them go on. Sometimes it seemed to Roger there was not a topic he could bring up which would not in some way bring on a clash. One night in desperation he proposed the theatre. "I'm afraid we can't afford it," said Edith, glancing at Deborah. And she had the same answer, again and again, for the requests her children made, if they involved but the smallest expense. "No, dear, I'm afraid we can't afford that," she would say gently, with a sigh. And under this constant pressure, these nightly little thrusts and jabs, Deborah would grow rigid with annoyance and impatience. "For Heaven's sake, Edith," she burst out, one night when the children had gone to their lessons, "can you think of nothing on earth, except your own little family?" "Here it comes again," thought Roger, scowling into his paper. He heard Edith's curt reply: "No, I can't, not nowadays. Nobody _else_ seems to think of them." "You mean that I don't!" "Do you?" "Yes! I'm thinking of George! Do you want him killed in the trenches--in a war with Germany or Japan?" "Are you utterly mad?" demanded Edith. "No, I'm awake--my eyes are open! But yours are shut so tight, my dear, you can't see what has happened! You know this war has made us poor and your own life harder, but that's all. The big thing it has done you know nothing about!" "Suppose you teach me," Edith said, with a prim provoking little smile. Deborah turned on her angrily: "It has shown that all such mothers as you are out of date and have got to change! That we're bound together--all over the world--whether we like it or whether we don't! And that if we want to keep out of war, we've got to do it by coming right out of our own little homes--_and thinking, Edith, thinking!_" "Votes for women," Edith said. Deborah looked at her, rose with a shrug. "All right, Edith, I give up." "Thank you. I'm not worth it. You'd better go back to your office now and go on with your work of saving the world. And use every hour of your time and every dollar you possess. I'll stay here and look after my children."