CHAPTER XVII
But she did not appear to care to be helped. Nor did Allan—he rarely came to the house, and he went to Edith's not at all. He was even absent from her Christmas tree for the children, a jolly little festivity which neither he nor Deborah had missed in years.
"What has got into him?" Roger asked. And shortly after Christmas he called the fellow up on the 'phone. "Drop in for dinner to-night," he urged. And he added distinctly, "I'm alone."
"Are you? I'll be glad to."
"Thank you, Baird, I want your advice." And as he hung up the receiver he said, "Now then!" to himself, in a tone of firm decision. But later, as the day wore on, he cursed himself for what he had done. "Don't it beat the devil," he thought, "how I'm always putting my foot in it?" And when Baird came into the room that night he loomed, to Roger's anxious eye, if anything taller than before. But his manner was so easy, his gruff voice so natural, and he seemed to take this little party of two so quietly as a matter of course, that Roger was soon reassured, and at table he and Allan got on even better than before. Baird talked of his life as a student, in Vienna, Bonn and Edinburgh, and of his first struggles in New York. His talk was full of human bits, some tragic, more amusing. And Roger's liking for the man increased with every story told.
"I asked you here," he bluntly began, when they had gone to the study to smoke, "to talk to you about Deborah." Baird gave him a friendly look.
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