She suddenly quivered as though from fatigue.
"I'm going to watch you close down there," he said in a moment, huskily.
CHAPTER XXV
Roger saw little of Deborah in the weeks that followed. She was gathering her forces for the long struggle she saw ahead. And his own worries filled his mind. On his house he succeeded in borrowing five thousand dollars at ten per cent, and in his office he worked out a scheme along the lines of Deborah's plan. At first it was only a struggle to save the remnants of what was left. Later the tide began to turn, new business came into the office again. But only a little, and then it stopped. Hard times were here for the winter.
Soon Edith would come with the children. He wondered how sensible she would be. It was going to mean a daily fight to make ends meet, he told himself, and guiltily he decided not to let his daughter know how matters stood in his office. Take care of your own flesh and blood, and then be generous as you please—that had always been his way. And now Deborah had upset it by her emotional appeal. "How dramatic she is at times!" he reflected in annoyance. "Just lets herself out and enjoys herself!" He grew angry at her interference, and more than once he resolved to shut down. But back in the office, before those watchful faces, still again he would put it off.
"Wait a little. We'll see," he thought.
In the meantime, in this interplay, these shifting lights and shadows which played upon the history of the life of Roger's home, there came to him a diversion from an unexpected source. Laura and Harold returned from abroad. Soon after landing they came to the house, and talking fast and eagerly they told how they had eluded the war.
For them it had been a glorious game. In Venice in early August, Harold had seen a chance for a big stroke of business. He had a friend who lived in Rome, an Italian close to his government. At once they had joined forces, worked day and night, pulled wires, used money judiciously here and there, and so had secured large orders for munitions from the U.S.A. Then to get back to God's country! There came the hitch, they were too late. Naples, Genoa, and Milan, all were filled with tourist mobs. They took a train for Paris, and reaching the city just a week before the end of the German drive they found it worse than Italy. But there Hal had a special pull—and by the use of those wits of his, not to be downed by refusals, he got passage at last for Laura, himself and his new Italian partner. At midnight, making their way across the panic-stricken city, and at the station struggling through a wild and half crazed multitude of men and women and children, they boarded a train and went rushing westward right along the edge of the storm. To the north the Germans were so close that Laura was sure she could hear the big guns. The train kept stopping to take on troops. At dawn some twenty wounded men came crowding into their very car, bloody and dirty, pale and worn, but gaily smiling at the pain, and saying, "Ça n'fait rien, madame." Later Harold opened his flask for some splendid Breton soldier boys just going into action. And they stood up with flashing eyes and shouted out the Marseillaise, while Laura shivered and thrilled with delight.