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"Yes, my child, what is it?"

"It's about John," she answered. And with a movement of alarm he looked at his daughter intently.

"What's the matter with John?" he inquired.

"He has tuberculosis," she said.

"He has no such thing!" her father retorted. "John has Pott's Disease of the spine!"

"Yes, I know he has," she replied. "And I'm sorry for him, poor lad. But in the last year," she added, "certain complications have come. And now he's tubercular as well."

"How do you know? He doesn't cough--his lungs are sound as yours or mine!"

"No, it's--" Edith pursed her lips. "It's different," she said softly.

"Who told you?" he demanded.

"Not Deborah," was the quick response. "She knew it, I'm certain, for I find that she's been having Mrs. Neale, the woman who comes in to wash, do John's things in a separate tub. I found her doing it yesterday, and she told me what Deborah had said."

"It's the first I'd heard of it," Roger put in.

"I know it is," she answered. "For if you'd heard of it before, I don't believe you'd have been as ready as Deborah was, apparently, to risk infecting the children here." Edith's voice was gentle, slow and relentless. There was still a reflection in her eyes of the tenderness which had been there as she had soothed her child to sleep. "As time goes on, John is bound to get worse. The risk will be greater every week."

"Oh, pshaw!" cried her father. "No such thing! You're just scaring yourself over nothing at all!"

"Doctor Lake didn't think I was." Lake was the big child specialist in whose care Edith's children had been for years. "I talked to him to-day on the telephone, and he said we should get John out of the house."

Roger heartily damned Doctor Lake!

"It's easy to find a good home for the boy," Edith went on quietly, "close by, if you like--in some respectable family that will be only too thankful to take in a boarder."

"How about the danger to that family's children?" Roger asked malignantly.

"Very well, father, do as you please. Take any risk you want to."

"I'm taking no risk," he retorted. "If there were any risk they would have told me--Allan and Deborah would, I mean."

"They wouldn't!" burst from Edith with a vehemence which startled him. "They'd take the same risk for my children they would for any street urchin in town! All children are the same in their eyes--and if you feel as they do--"

"I don't feel as they do!"

"Don't you? Then I'm telling you that Doctor Lake said there was very serious risk--every day this boy remains in the house!" Roger rose angrily from his chair:

"So you want me to turn him out! To-night!"

"No, I want you to wait a few days--until we can find him a decent home."

"All right, I won't do it!"

"Very well, father--it's your house, not mine."

For a few moments longer she sat at her sewing, while her father walked the floor. Then abruptly she rose, her eyes brimming with tears, and left the room. And he heard a sob as she went upstairs.

"Now she'll shut herself up with her children," he reflected savagely, "and hold the fort till I come to terms!" Rather than risk a hair on their heads, Edith would turn the whole world out of doors! He thought of Deborah and he groaned. She would have to be told of this; and when she was, what a row there would be! For Johnny was one of her family. He glanced at the clock. She'd be coming home soon. Should he tell her? Not to-night! Just for one evening he'd had enough!

He picked up the book he had meant to read--Stoddard's "Lectures on Japan." And Roger snorted wrathfully. By George, how _he'd_ like to go to Japan--or to darkest Africa! Anywhere!

CHAPTER XXIX

But later in the evening, when Allan and Deborah came in, Roger, who in the meantime had had a good hour in Japan and was somewhat relaxed and soothed, decided at once this was the time to tell her and have done with it. For Deborah was flushed with triumph, the meeting had been a huge success. Cooper Union had been packed to the walls, with an overflow meeting out on the street; thousands