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MARY MINDS HER BUSINESS

BY GEORGE WESTON

Author of "Oh, Mary, Be Careful," "The Apple-Tree Girl," and "You Never
Saw Such a Girl."

1920

To Karl Edwin Harriman
One of the Noblest of them All
G.W.

MARY MINDS HER BUSINESS

So that you may understand my heroine, I am going to write a preface and tell you about her forebears.

In the latter part of the seventeenth century, there was a young blacksmith in our part of the country named Josiah Spencer. He had a quick eye, a quick hand and a quicker temper.

Because of his quick eye he married a girl named Mary McMillan. Because of his quick hand, he was never in need of employment. And because of his quick temper, he left the place of his birth one day and travelled west until he came to a ford which crossed the Quinebaug River.

There, before the week was over, he had bought from Oeneko, the Indian chief, five hundred acres on each side of the river—land in those days being the cheapest known commodity. Hewing his own timber and making his own hardware, he soon built a shop of his own, and the ford being on the main road between Hartford and the Providence Plantations, it wasn't long before he had plenty of business.

Above the ford was a waterfall. Josiah put in a wheel, a grist mill and a saw mill.

By that time Mary, his wife, had presented him with one of the two greatest gifts that a woman can ever bestow, and presently a sign was painted over the shop:

JOSIAH SPENCER & SON

In course of time young Josiah made his first horse-shoe and old Josiah made his last.

On a visit to New Amsterdam, the young man had already fallen in love with a girl named Matilda Sturtevant. They were married in 1746 and had one of those round old-fashioned families when twelve children seemed to be the minimum and anything less created comment.

Two of the boys were later killed in the Revolution, another became Supreme Court justice, but the likeliest one succeeded to the business of Josiah Spencer & Son, which was then making a specialty of building wagons—and building them so well that the shop had to be increased in size again and again until it began to have the appearance of quite a respectable looking factory.

The third Spencer to own the business married a Yankee—Patience Babcock—but Patience's only son married a French-Canadian girl—for even then the Canadians were drifting down into our part of the country.

So by that time, as you can see—and this is an important part of my preface—the Spencer stock was a thrifty mixture of Yankee, Irish, Scotch, Dutch and French blood—although you would never have guessed it if you had simply seen the name of one Josiah Spencer following another as the owner of the Quinebaug Wagon Works.

In the same year that the fourth Josiah Spencer succeeded to the business, a bridge was built to take the place of the ford and the waterfall was fortified by a dam. By that time a regular little town had formed around the factory.

The town was called New Bethel.

It was at this stage of their history that the Spencers grew proud, making a hobby of their family tree and even possibly breathing a sigh over vanished coats-of-arms.

The fifth of the line, for instance, married a Miss Copleigh of Boston. He built a big house on Bradford Hill and brought her home in a tally-ho. The number of her trunks and the size of her crinolines are spoken of to this day in our part of the country—also her manner of closing her eyes when she talked, and holding her little finger at an angle when drinking her tea. She had only one child—fortunately a son.

This son was the grandfather of our heroine. So you see we are getting warm at last.

The grandfather of our heroine was probably the greatest Spencer of them all.

Under his ownership the factory was rebuilt of brick and stone. He developed the town both socially and industrially until New Bethel bade fair to become one of the leading cities in the state. He developed the water power by building a great dam above the factory and forming a lake nearly ten miles long. He also developed an artillery wheel which has probably rolled along every important road in the civilized world.

Indeed he was so engaged in these enterprises that he didn't marry until he was well past forty-five. Then one spring, going to Charlestown to buy his season's supply of pine, he came back with a bride from one of the oldest, one of the most famous families in all America.

There were three children to this marriage—one son and two daughters.

I will tell you about the daughters in my first chapter—two delightful old maids who later had a baby between them—but first I must tell you about the seventh and last Josiah.

In his youth he was wild.

This may have been partly due to that irreducible minimum of Original Sin which (they say) is in all of us—and partly due to his cousin Stanley.

Now I don't mean to say for a moment that Stanley Woodward was a natural born villain. I don't think people are born that way at all. At first the idea probably struck him as a sort of a joke. "If anything happens to young Josiah," I can imagine him thinking to himself with a grin, "I may own this place myself some day…. Who knows?"

And from that day forward, he unconsciously borrowed from the spiders—if you can imagine a smiling spider—and began to spin.

Did young Josiah want to leave the office early? Stanley smilingly did his work for him.

Was young Josiah late the next morning? Stanley smilingly hid his absence.

Did young Josiah yearn for life and adventure? Stanley spun a few more webs and they met that night in Brigg's livery stable.

It didn't take much of this—unexpectedly little in fact—the last of the Spencers resembling one of those giant firecrackers of bygone days—the bigger the cracker, the shorter the fuse. Some say he married an actress, which was one of the things which were generally whispered when I was a boy. A Russian they said she was—which never failed to bring another gasp. Others say she was a beautiful bare-back rider in a circus and wore tights—which was another of the things which used to be whispered when I was a boy, and not even then unless the children had first been sent from the room and only bosom friends were present.

Whatever she was, young Josiah disappeared with her, and no one saw him again until his mother died in the mansion on the hill. Some say she died of a broken heart, but I never believed in that, for if sorrow could break the human heart I doubt if many of us would be alive to smile at next year's joys. However that may be, I do believe that young Josiah thought that he was partly responsible for his mother's death. He turned up at the funeral with a boy seven years old; and bit by bit we learned that he was separated from his wife and that the court had given him custody of their only child.

As you have probably noticed, there are few who can walk so straight as those who have once been saved from the crooked path. There are few so intolerant of fire as those poor, charred brands who have once been snatched from the burning.

After his mother's funeral young Spencer settled down to a life of atonement and toil, till first his father and then even his cousin Stanley were convinced of the change which had taken place in the one-time black sheep of the family.

By that time the patents on the artillery wheel had expired and a competition had set in which was cutting down the profits to zero. Young Josiah began experimenting on a new design which finally resulted in a patent upon a combination ball and roller bearing. This was such an improvement upon everything which had gone before, that gradually Spencer & Son withdrew from the manufacture of wagons and wheels and re-designed their whole factory to make bearings.

This wasn't done in a month or two, nor even in a year or two. Indeed the returned prodigal grew middle aged in the process. He also saw the possibilities of harnessing the water power above the factory to make electric current. This current was sold so cheaply that more and more factories were drawn to New Bethel until the fame of the city's products were known wherever the language of commerce was spoken.

At the height of his son's success, old Josiah died, joining those silent members of the firm who had gone before. I often like to imagine the whole seven of them, ghostly but inquisitive, following the subsequent strange proceedings with noiseless steps and eyes that missed nothing; and in particular keeping watch upon the last living Josiah Spencer—a heavy, powerfully built man with a look of melancholy in his eyes and a way of sighing to himself as though asking a question, and then answering it with a muffled "Yes… Yes…" This may have been partly due to the past and partly due to the future, for the son whom he had brought home with him began to worry him—a handsome young rascal who simply didn't have the truth in him at times, and who was buying presents for girls almost before he was out of short trousers.

His name was Paul—"Paul Vionel Olgavitch Spencer," he sometimes proudly recited it, and whenever we heard of that we thought of his mother.

The older Paul grew, the handsomer he grew. And the handsomer he grew, the wilder he became and the less the truth was in him. At times he would go all right for a while, although he was always too fond of the river for his aunts' peace of mind.

At a bend below the dam he had found a sheltered basin, covered with grass and edged with trees. And there he liked to lie, staring up into the sky and dreaming those dreams of youth and adventure which are the heritage of us all.

Or else he would sit and watch the river, although he couldn't do it long, for its swift movement seemed to fascinate him and excite him, and to arouse in him the desire to follow it—to follow it wherever it went. These were his quieter moods.

Ordinarily there was something gipsy-like, something Neck-or-Nothing about him. A craving for excitement seemed to burn under him like a fire. The full progression of correction marched upon him and failed to make impression: arguments, orders, warnings, threats, threshings and the stoppage of funds: none of these seemed to improve him in the least.

Josiah's two sisters did their best, but they could do nothing, either.

"I wouldn't whip him again, Josiah," said Miss Cordelia one night, timidly laying her hand upon her brother's arm. "He'll be all right when he's a little older…. You know, dear … you were rather wild, yourself … when you were young…. Patty and I were only saying this morning that if he takes after you, there's really nothing to worry about—"

"He's God's own punishment," said Josiah, looking up wildly. "I know—things I can't tell you. You remember what I say: that boy will disgrace us all…."

He did.

One morning he suddenly and simply vanished with the factory pay-roll and one of the office stenographers.

In the next twelve months Josiah seemed to age at least twelve years—his cousin Stanley watching him closely the while—and then one day came the news that Paul Spencer had shot and killed a man, while attempting to hold him up, somewhere in British Columbia.

If you could have seen Josiah Spencer that day you might have thought that the bullet had grazed his own poor heart.

"It's God's punishment," he said over and over. "For seven generations there has been a Spencer & Son—a trust that was left to me by my father that I should pass it on to my son. And what have I done…!"

Whereupon he made a gesture that wasn't far from despair—and in that gesture, such as only those can make who know in their hearts that they have shot the albatross, this preface brings itself to a close and at last my story begins.

CHAPTER I

"Patty," said Miss Cordelia one morning, "have you noticed Josiah lately?"

"Yes," nodded Miss Patricia, her eyes a little brighter than they should have been.

"Do you know," continued the other, her voice dropping to a whisper, "I'm afraid—if he keeps on—the way he is—"

"Oh, no, Cordelia! You know as well as I do—there has never been anything like that in our family."

Nevertheless the two sisters looked at each other with awe-stricken eyes, and then their arms went around each other and they eased their hearts in the immemorial manner.

"You know, he worries because we are the last of the Spencers," said Cordelia, "and the family dies with us. Even if you or I had children, I don't think he would take it so hard—"

A wistful look passed over their faces, such as you might expect to see on those who had repented too late and stood looking through St. Peter's gate at scenes in which they knew they could never take a part.

"But I am forty-eight," sighed Cordelia.

"And I—I am fifty—"

The two sisters had been writing when this conversation started. They were busy on a new generation of the Spencer-Spicer genealogy, and if you have ever engaged on a task like that, you will know the correspondence it requires. But now for a time their pens were forgotten and they sat looking at each other over the gatelegged table which served as desk. They were still both remarkably good-looking, though marked with that delicacy of material and workmanship—reminiscent of old china—which seems to indicate the perfect type of spinster-hood. Here and there in their hair gleamed touches of silver, and their cheeks might have reminded you of tinted apples which had lightly been kissed with the frost.

And so they sat looking at each other, intently, almost breathlessly, each suddenly moved by the same question and each wishing that the other would speak.

For the second time it was Cordelia who broke the silence.

"Patty—!"

"Yes, dear?" breathed Patty, and left her lips slightly parted.

"I wonder if Josiah—is too old—to marry again! Of course," she hurriedly added, "he is fifty-two—but it seems to me that one of the Spicers—I think it was Captain Abner Spicer—had children until he was sixty—although by a younger wife, of course."

They looked it up and in so doing they came across an Ezra Babcock, father-in-law of the Third Josiah Spencer, who had had a son proudly born to him in his sixty-fourth year.

They gazed at each other then, those two maiden sisters, like two conspirators in their precious innocence.

"If we could find Josiah a young wife—" said the elder at last.

"Oh, Cordelia!" breathed Patty, "if, indeed, we only could!"

Which was really how it started.

As I think you will realize, it would be a story in itself to describe the progress of that gentle intrigue—the consultations, the gradual eliminations, the search, the abandonment of the search—(which came immediately after learning of two elderly gentlemen with young wives—but no children!)—the almost immediate resumption of the quest because of Josiah's failing health—and finally then the reward of patience, the pious nudge one Sunday morning in church, the whispered "Look, Cordelia, that strange girl with the Pearsons—no, the one with the red cheeks—yes, that one!"—the exchange of significant glances, the introduction, the invitation and last, but least, the verification of the fruitfulness of the vine.

The girl's name was Martha Berger and her home was in California. She had come east to attend the wedding of her brother and was now staying with the Pearsons a few weeks before returning west. Her age was twenty-six. She had no parents, very little money, and taught French, English and Science in the high school back home.

"Have you any brothers or sisters!" asked Miss Cordelia, with a side glance toward Miss Patty.

"Only five brothers and five sisters," laughed Martha.

For a moment it might be said that Miss Cordelia purred.

"Any of them married?" she continued.

"All but me."

"My dear! … You don't mean to say that they have made you an aunt already?"

Martha paused with that inward look which generally accompanies mental arithmetic.

"Only about seventeen times," she finally laughed again.

When their guest had gone, the two sisters fairly danced around each other.

"Oh, Patty!" exulted Miss Cordelia, "I'm sure she's a fruitful vine!"

CHAPTER II

There is something inexorable in the purpose of a maiden lady—perhaps because she has no minor domestic troubles to distract her; and when you have two maiden ladies working on the same problem, and both of them possessed of wealth and unusual intelligence—!

They started by taking Martha to North East Harbor for the balance of the summer, and then to keep her from going west in the fall, they engaged her to teach them French that winter at quite a fabulous salary. They also took her to Boston and bought her some of the prettiest dresses imaginable; and the longer they knew her, the more they liked her; and the more they liked her, the more they tried to enlist her sympathies in behalf of poor Josiah—and the more they tried to throw their brother into Martha's private company.

"Look here," he said one day, when his two sisters were pushing him too hard. "What's all this excitement about Martha? Who is she, anyway?"

"Why, don't you know!" Cordelia sweetly asked him, and drawing a full breath she added: "Martha—is—your—future—wife—"

If you had been there, you would have been pardoned for thinking that the last of the Spencers had suddenly discovered that he was sitting upon a remonstrative bee.

The two sisters smiled at him—rather nervously, it is true, but still they kept their hands upon their brother's shoulders, as though they were two nurses soothing a patient and saying: "There, now … The-e-e-ere … Just be quiet and you'll feel better in a little while."

"Yes, dear," whispered Cordelia, her mouth ever so close to his ear.
"Your future wife—and the mother of your future children—"

"Nonsense, nonsense—" muttered Josiah, breaking away quite flustered.
"I'm—I'm too old—"

Almost speaking in concert they told him about Captain Abner Spencer who had children until he was sixty, and Ezra Babcock, father-in-law of the third Josiah Spencer, who had a son proudly born to him in his sixty-fourth year.

"And she's such a lovely girl," said Cordelia earnestly. "Patty and I are quite in love with her ourselves—"

"And think what it would mean to your peace of mind to have another son—"

"And what it would mean to Spencer & Son—!"

Josiah groaned at that. As a matter of fact he hadn't a chance to escape. His two sisters had never allowed themselves to be courted, but they must have had their private ideas of how such affairs should be conducted, for they took Josiah in hand and put him through his paces with a speed which can only be described as breathless.

Flowers, candy, books, jewellery, a ring, the ring—the two maiden sisters lived a winter of such romance that they nearly bloomed into youth again themselves; and whenever Josiah had the least misgiving about a man of fifty-two marrying a girl of twenty-six, they whispered to him: "Think what it will mean to Spencer & Son—" And whenever Martha showed the least misgivings they whispered to her: "That's only his way, my dear; you mustn't mind that." And once Cordelia added (while Patty nodded her head): "Of course, there has to be a man at a wedding, but I want you to feel that you would be marrying us, as much as you would be marrying Josiah. You would be his wife, of course, but you would be our little sister, too; and Patty and I would make you just as happy as we could—"

Later they were glad they had told her this.

It was a quiet wedding and for a time nothing happened; although if you could have seen the two maiden sisters at church on a Sunday morning, you would have noticed that after the benediction they seemed to be praying very earnestly indeed—even as Sarah prayed in the temple so many years ago. There was this curious difference, however: Sarah had prayed for herself, but these two innocent spinsters were praying for another.

Then one morning, never to be forgotten, Martha thought to herself at the breakfast table, "I'll tell them as soon as breakfast is over."

But she didn't.

She thought, "I'll take them into the garden and tell them there—"

But though she took them into the garden, somehow she couldn't tell them there.

"As soon as we get back into the house," she said, "I'll tell them."

Even then the words didn't come, and Martha sat looking out of the window so quietly and yet with such a look of mingled fear and pride and exaltation on her face, that Cordelia suddenly seemed to divine it.

"Oh, Martha," she cried. "Do you—do you—do you really think—"

Miss Patty looked up, too—stricken breathless all in a moment—and quicker than I can tell it, the three of them had their arms around each other, and tears and smiles and kisses were blended—quite in the immemorial manner.

CHAPTER III

"We must start sewing," said Miss Cordelia.

So they started sewing, Martha and the two maiden sisters, every stitch a hope, every seam the dream of a young life's journey.

"We must think beautiful thoughts," spoke up Miss Patty another day.

So while they sewed, sometimes one and sometimes another read poetry, and sometimes they read the Psalms, especially the Twenty-third, and sometimes Martha played the Melody in F, or the Shower of Stars or the Cinquieme Nocturne.

"We must think brave thoughts, too," said Miss Cordelia.

So after that, whenever one of them came to a stirring editorial in a newspaper, or a rousing passage in a book, it was put on one side to be read at their daily sewing bee; and when these failed they read Barbara Fritchie, or Patrick Henry, or Horatio at the Bridge.

"Do you notice how much better Josiah is looking!" whispered Miss
Cordelia to her sister one evening.

"A different man entirely," proudly nodded Miss Patty. "I heard him speaking yesterday about an addition to the factory—"

"I suppose it's because he's living in the future now—"

"Instead of in the past. But I do wish he wouldn't be quite so sure that it's going to be a boy. I'm afraid sometimes—that perhaps he won't like it—if it's a girl—"

They had grown beautiful as they spoke, but now they looked at each other in silence, the same fear in both their glances.

"Oh, Cordelia," suddenly spoke Miss Patty. "Suppose it is a girl—!"

"Hush, dear. Remember, we must have brave thoughts. And even if the first one is a girl, there'll be plenty of time for a boy—"

"I hadn't thought of that," said Miss Patty.

They smiled at each other in concert, and a faint touch of colour arose to Miss Cordelia's slightly withered cheeks.

"Do you know," she said, hesitating, smiling—yes, and thrilling a little, too—"we've had so much to do with bringing it about, that somehow I feel as though it's going to be my baby—"

"Why, Cordelia!" whispered Miss Patty, who had been nodding throughout this confession. "That's exactly how I feel about it, too!"

It wasn't long after that before they began to look up names.

"If Josiah wasn't such a family name," said Miss Cordelia, "I'd like to call him Basil. That means kingly or royal." Then of course they turned to Cordelia. Cordelia meant warm-hearted. Patricia meant royal. Martha meant the ruler of the house.

They were pleased at these revelations.

The week before the great event was expected, Martha had a notion one day. She wished to visit the factory. Josiah interpreted this as the happiest of auguries.

"After seven generations," was his cryptic remark, "you simply can't keep them away. It's bred in the bone…."

He drove Martha down to the works himself, and took her through the various shops, some of which were of such a length that when you stood at one end, the other seemed to vanish into distance.

Everything went well until they reached the shipping room where a travelling crane was rolling on its tracks overhead, carrying a load of boxes. This crane was hurrying back empty for another load, its chain and tackle swinging low, when Martha started across the room to look at one of the boys who had caught his thumb between a hammer and a nail and was trying to bind it with his handkerchief. The next moment the swinging tackle of the crane struck poor Martha in the back, caught in her dress and dragged her for a few horrible yards along the floor.

That night the house on the hill had two unexpected visitors, the Angel of Death following quickly in the footsteps of the Angel of Life.

"You poor motherless little thing," breathed Cordelia, cuddling the baby in her arms. "Look, Josiah," she said, trying to rouse her brother. "Look …it's smiling at you—"

But Josiah looked up with haggard eyes that saw nothing, and could only repeat the sentence which he had been whispering to himself, "It's God's own punishment—God's own punishment—there are things—I can't tell you—"

The doctor came to him at last and, after he was quieter, the two sisters went away, carrying their precious burden with them.

"Wasn't there a girl's name which means bitterness?" asked Miss Cordelia, suddenly stopping.

"Yes," said Miss Patty. "That's what 'Mary' means."

The two sisters looked at each other earnestly—looked at each other and nodded.

"We'll call her 'Mary' then," said Miss Cordelia.

And that is how my heroine got her name.

CHAPTER IV

I wish I had time to tell you in the fulness of detail how those two spinsters brought up Mary, but there is so much else to put before you that I dare not dally here. Still, I am going to find time to say that all the love and affection which Miss Cordelia and Miss Patty had ever woven into their fancies were now showered down upon Mary—falling softly and sweetly like petals from two full-blown roses when stirred by a breeze from the south.

When she was a baby, Mary's nose had an upward tilt.

One morning after Miss Cordelia had bathed her (which would have reminded you of a function at the court of the Grand Monarque, with its Towel Holder, Soap Holder, Temperature Taker and all and sundry) she suddenly sent the two maids and the nurse away and, casting dignity to the winds, she lifted Mary in a transport of love which wouldn't be denied any longer, and pretended to bite the end of the poor babe's nose off.

"Oh, I know it's candy," she said, mumbling away and hugging the blessed child. "It's even got powdered sugar on it—"

"That's talcum powder," said Miss Patty, watching with a jealous eye.

"Powdered sugar, yes," persisted Miss Cordelia, mumbling on. "I know. And I know why her nose turns up at the end, too. That naughty Miss Patty washed it with yellow soap one night when I wasn't looking—"

"I never, never did!" protested Miss Patty, all indignation in a moment.

"Washed it with yellow soap, yes," still persisted Miss Cordelia, "and made it shine like a star. And that night, when Mary lay in her bed, the moon looked through the window and saw that little star twinkling there, and the moon said 'Little star! Little star! What are you doing there in Mary's bed? You come up here in the sky and twinkle where you belong!' And all night long, Mary's little nose tried to get up to the moon, and that's why it turns up at the end—" And then in one grand finale of cannibalistic transport, Miss Cordelia concluded, "Oh, I could eat her up!"

But it was Miss Patty's turn then, because although Cordelia bathed the child, it was the younger sister's part to dress her. So Miss Patty put her arms out with an authority which wouldn't take "No" for an answer, and if you had been in the next room, you would then have heard—

"Oh, where have you been
My pretty young thing—?"

Which is a rather active affair, especially where the singer shows how she danced her a dance for the Dauphin of France. By that time you won't be surprised when I tell you that Miss Patty's cheeks had a downright glow on them—and I think her heart had something of the same glow, too, because, seating herself at last to dress our crowing heroine, she beamed over to her sister and said (though somewhat out of breath) "Isn't it nice!"

This, of course, was all strictly private.

In public, Mary was brought up with maidenly deportment. You would never dream, for instance, that she was ever tickled with a turkey feather (which Miss Cordelia kept for the purpose) or that she had ever been atomized all over with Lily of the Valley (which Miss Patty never did again because Ma'm Maynard, the old French nurse, smelled it and told the maids). But always deep down in the child was an indefinable quality which puzzled her two aunts.

As Mary grew older, this quality became clearer.

"I know what it is," said Miss Cordelia one night. "She has a mind of her own. Everything she sees or hears: she tries to reason it out."

I can't tell you why, but Miss Patty looked uneasy.

"Only this morning," continued Miss Cordelia, "I heard Ma'm Maynard telling her that there wasn't a prettier syringa bush anywhere than the one under her bedroom window. Mary turned to her with those eyes of hers—you know the way she does—'Ma'm Maynard,' she said, 'have you seen all the other s'inga bushes in the world?' And only yesterday I said to her, 'Mary, you shouldn't try to whistle. It isn't nice.' She gave me that look—you know—and said, 'Then let us learn to whistle, Aunt T'delia, and help to make it nice.'"

"Imagine you and I saying things like that when we were girls," said Miss
Patty, still looking troubled.

"Yes, yes, I know. And yet… I sometimes think that if you and I had been brought up a little differently…."

They were both quiet then for a time, each consulting her memories of hopes long past.

"Just the same," said Miss Patty at last, "there are worse things in the world than being old-fashioned."

In which I think you would have agreed with her, if you could have seen
Mary that same evening.

At the time of which I am now writing she was six years old—a rather quiet, solemn child—though she had a smile upon occasions, which was well worth going to see.

For some time back she had heard her aunts speaking of "Poor Josiah!" She had always stood in awe of her father who seemed taller and gaunter than ever. Mary seldom saw him, but she knew that every night after dinner he went to his den and often stayed there (she had heard her aunts say) until long after midnight.

"If he only had some cheerful company," she once heard Aunt Cordelia remark.

"But that's the very thing he seems to shun since poor Martha died," sighed Miss Patty, and dropping her voice, never dreaming for a moment that Mary was listening, she added with another sigh, "If there had only been a boy, too!"

All these things Mary turned over in her mind, as few but children can, especially when they have dreamy eyes and often go a long time without saying anything. And on the same night when Aunt Patty had come to the conclusion that there are worse things in the world than being old-fashioned, Mary waited until she knew that dinner was over and then, escaping Ma'm Maynard, she stole downstairs, her heart skipping a beat now and then at the adventure before her. She passed through the hall and the library like a determined little ghost and then, gently turning the knob, she opened the study door.

Her father was sitting at his desk.

At the sound of the opening door he turned and stared at the apparition which confronted him. Mary had closed the door and stood with her back to it, screwing up her courage for the last stage of her journey.

And in truth it must have taken courage, for there was something in old Josiah's forbidding brow and solitary mien which would have chilled the purpose of any child. It may have been this which suddenly brought the tears to Mary's eyes, or it may have been that her womanly little breast guessed the loneliness in her father's heart. Whatever it was, she unsteadily crossed the room, her sight blurred but her plan as steadfast as ever, and a moment later she was climbing on Josiah's knee, her arms tight around his neck, sobbing as though it would shake her little frame to pieces.

What passed between those two, partly in speech but chiefly in silence with their wet cheeks pressed together, I need not tell you; but when Ma'm Maynard came searching for her charge and stood quite open-mouthed in the doorway, Josiah waved her away, his finger on his lip, and later he carried Mary upstairs himself—and went back to his study without a word, though blowing his nose in a key which wasn't without significance.

And nearly every night after that, when dinner was over, Mary made a visit to old Josiah's study downstairs; and one Saturday morning when he was leaving for the factory, he heard the front door open and shut behind him and there stood Mary, her little straw bonnet held under her chin with an elastic. In the most matter of fact way she slipped her fingers into his hand. He hesitated, but woman-like she pulled him on. The next minute they were walking down the drive together.

As they passed the end of the house, he remembered the words which he had once used to his sisters, "After seven generations you simply can't keep them away. It's bred in the bone."

A thrill ran over him as he looked at the little figure by his side.

"If she had only been a boy!" he breathed.

At the end of the drive he stopped.

"You must go back now, dear."

"No," said Mary and tried to pull him on.

For as long as it might take you to count five, Josiah stood there irresolute, Mary's fingers pulling him one way and the memory of poor Martha's fate pulling him the other.

"And yet," he thought, "she's bound to see it sometime. Perhaps better now—before she understands—than later—"

He lifted her and sat her on his arm.

"Now, listen, little woman," he said as they gravely regarded each other.
"This is important. If I take you this morning, will you promise to be a
good girl, and sit in the office, and not go wandering off by yourself?
Will you promise me that?"

This, too, may have been heredity, going back as far as Eve: Still gravely regarding him she nodded her head in silence and promised him with a kiss. He set her down, her hand automatically slipping into his palm again, and together they walked to the factory.

The road made a sharp descent to the interval by the side of the river, almost affording a bird's-eye view of the buildings below—lines of workshops of an incredible length, their ventilators like the helmets of an army of giants.

A freight train was disappearing into one of the warehouses. Long lines of trucks stood on the sidings outside. Wisps of steam arose in every direction, curious, palpitating.

From up the river the roar of the falls could just be heard while from the open windows of the factory came that humming note of industry which, more than anything else, is like the sound which is sometimes made by a hive of bees, immediately before a swarm.

It was a scene which always gave Josiah a well-nigh oppressive feeling of pride and punishment—pride that all this was his, that he was one of those Spencers who had risen so high above the common run of man—punishment that he had betrayed the trust which had been handed down to him, that he had broken the long line of fathers and sons which had sent the Spencer reputation, with steadily increasing fame, to the corners of the earth. As he walked down the hall that Saturday morning, his sombre eyes missing no detail, he felt Mary's fingers tighten around his hand and, glancing down at her, he saw that her attention, too, was engrossed by the scene below, her eyes large and bright as children's are when they listen to a fairy tale.

Arrived at the office, he placed her in a chair by the side of his desk, and you can guess whether she missed anything of what went on. Clerks, business callers, heads of departments came and went. All had a smile for Mary who gravely smiled in return and straightway became her dignified little self again.

"When is Mr. Woodward expected back?" Josiah asked a clerk.

"On the ten-thirty, from Boston."

This was Stanley Woodward, Josiah's cousin—Cousin Stanley of the spider's web whom you have already met. He was now the general manager of the factory, and had always thought that fate was on his side since the night he had heard of Martha's death and that the child she left behind her was a girl.

Josiah glanced at his watch.

"Time to make the rounds," he said and, lifting Mary on his arm, he left the office and started through the plant.

And, oh, how Mary loved it—the forests of belts, whirring and twisting like live things, the orderly lines of machine tools, each doing its work with more than human ingenuity and precision, the enormous presses reminding her of elephants stamping out pieces of metal, the grinders which sang to her, the drilling machines which whirred to her, the polishing machines which danced for her, the power hammers which bowed to her. Yes, and better than all was the smile that each man gave her, smiles that came from the heart, for all the quiet respect that accompanied them.

"It's his daughter," they whispered as soon as Josiah was out of hearing. Here and there one would stop smiling and say, "I remember the day he brought her mother through—"

At the end of one of the workshops, Mr. Spencer looked at his watch again.

"We'd better get back to the office," he said. "Tired, dear?"

In a rapture of denial, she kicked her little toes against his side.

"Bred in the bone…" he mused. "Eh, if she had only been a boy…!" But that was past all sighing for, and in the distance he saw Cousin Stanley, just back from Boston, evidently coming to find him.

Mary, too, was watching the approaching figure. She had sometimes seen him at the house and had formed against him one of those instinctive dislikes which few but children know. As Stanley drew near she turned her head and buried her face against her father's shoulder.

"Good news?" asked Josiah.

"Good news, of course," said Stanley, speaking as an irresistible force might speak, if it were endowed with a tongue. "When Spencer & Son start out for a thing, they get it." You could tell that what he meant was "When Stanley Woodward starts out for a thing, he gets it." His elbows suddenly grew restless. "It will take a lot of money," he added. "Of course we shall have to increase the factory here—"

Still Mary kept her face hidden against her father's shoulder.

"Got the little lady with you, I see."

"Yes; I'm afraid I've tired her out."

A murmur arose from his shoulder.

"What?" said Josiah. "Not tired? Then turn around and shake hands with
Uncle Stanley."

Slowly, reluctantly, Mary lifted her head and began to reach out her hand. Then just before their fingers would have touched, she quickly clasped her hands around her father's neck and again she buried her face upon his shoulder.

"She doesn't seem to take to you," said Josiah.

"So it seems," said the other dryly. Reaching around he touched Mary's cheek with the back of his finger. "Not mad at your uncle, are you, little girl?" he asked.

"Don't!" said Josiah, speaking with quick concern. "You're only making her tremble…."

The two stared at each other, slightly frowning. Stanley was the first to catch himself. "I'll see you at the office later," he said, and with a bow at the little figure on Josiah's arm he added with a touch of irony, "Perhaps I had better wait until you're alone!"

He turned and made his way back to the office, his elbows grown restless again.

"A good thing it isn't a boy," he thought, "or he might not like me when he grows up, either. But a girl… Oh, well, as it happens, girls don't count…. And a good thing, too, they don't," he thoughtfully added. "A good thing, too, they don't…."

CHAPTER V

Mary grew, and grew, and grew.

She never outgrew her aversion to Uncle Stanley, though.

One day, when she was in Josiah's office, a young man entered and was warmly greeted by her father. He carried a walking stick, sported a white edging on his waistcoat and had just the least suspicion of perfumery on him—a faint scent that reminded Mary of raspberry jam.

"He smells nice," she thought, missing nothing of this.

"You've never seen my daughter, have you?" asked Josiah.

"A little queen," said the young man with a brilliant smile. "I hope I'll see her often."

"That's Uncle Stanley's son Burdon," said Josiah when he had left. "He's just through college; he's going to start in the office here."

Mary liked to hear that, and always after that she looked for Burdon and watched him with an interest that had something of fascination in it.

Before she was ten, she and Josiah had become old chums. She knew the factory by the river almost as well as she knew the house on the hill. Not only that but she could have told you most of the processes through which the bearings passed before they were ready for the shipping room.

To show you how her mind worked, one night she asked her father, "What makes a machine squeak?"

"Needs oil," said Josiah, "generally speaking."

The next Saturday morning she not only kept her eyes open, but her ears as well.

Presently her patience was rewarded.

"Squee-e-eak! Squee-e-eak!" complained a lathe which they were passing. Mary stopped her father and looked her very old-fashionedest at the lathe hand.

"Needs oil," said she, "gen'ly speaking."

It was one of the proud moments in Josiah's life, and yet when back of him he heard a whisper, "Chip of the old block," he couldn't repress the well nigh passionate yearning, "Oh, Lord, if she had only been a boy!"

That year an addition was being made to the factory and Mary liked to watch the builders. She often noticed a boy and a dog sitting under the trees and watching, too.

Once they smiled at each other, the boy blushing like a sunset. After that they sometimes spoke while Josiah was talking to the foreman. His name, she learned, was Archey Forbes, his father was the foreman, and when he grew up he was going to be a builder, too. But no matter how often they saw each other, Archey always blushed to the eyes whenever Mary smiled at him.

Occasionally a man would be hurt at the factory. Whenever this happened, Aunt Patty paid a weekly call to the injured man until he was well—an old Spencer custom that had never died out.

Mary generally accompanied her aunts on these visits—which was a part of the family training—and in this way she saw the inside of many a home.

"I wouldn't mind being a poor man," she said one Saturday morning, breaking a long silence, "but I wouldn't be a poor woman for anything."

"Why not?" asked Miss Cordelia.

She couldn't tell them why but for the last half hour she had been comparing the lives of the men in the factory with the lives of their wives at home.

"A man can work in the factory," she tried to tell them, "and everything is made nice for him. But his wife at home-now—nobody cares—nobody cares what happens to her—"

"I never saw such a child," said Miss Cordelia, watching her start with her father down the hill a few minutes later. "And the worst of it is, I think we are partly to blame for it."

"Cordelia!" said Miss Patty. "How?"

"I mean in keeping her surrounded so completely with old people. When everything is said and done, dear, it isn't natural."

"But we would miss her so much if we sent her to school—"

"Oh, I wasn't thinking of sending her to school—"

Miss Patty was quiet for a time.

"If we could find some one of her own age," she said at last, "whom she could play with, and talk with—some one who would lead her thoughts into more natural channels—"

This question of companionship for Mary puzzled the two Miss Spencers for nearly a year, and then it was settled, as so many things are, in an unexpected manner.

In looking up the genealogy of the Spicer family, Miss Patty discovered that a distant relative in Charleston had just died, leaving a daughter behind him—an orphan—who was a year older than Mary. Correspondence finally led Miss Patty to make the journey, and when she returned she brought with her a dark-eyed girl who might have been the very spirit of youthful romance.

"My dear," said Miss Patty, "this is your cousin Helen. She is going to make us a long visit, and I hope you will love each other very much."

The two cousins studied each other. Then in her shy way Mary held out her hand.

"Oh, I love you already!" said Helen impulsively, and hugged her instead. That evening they exchanged confidences and when Miss Cordelia heard about this, she questioned Mary and enjoyed herself immensely.

"And then what did she ask you?" finally inquired Miss Cordelia, making an effort to keep her face straight.

"She asked me if I had a beau, and I told her 'No.'"

"And then what did she say?"

"She asked me if there was anything the matter with the boys around here, and I told her I didn't know."

"And then?"

"And then she said, 'I'll bet you I'll soon find out.' But just then Aunt
Patty came in and we had to stop."

Later Miss Patty came downstairs looking thoughtful and spoke to her sister in troubled secret.

"I've just been in Helen's room," she said, "and what do you think she has on her dresser?"

"I give it up," replied Miss Cordelia in a very rich, voice.

"Three photographs of young men!"

The two sisters gazed at each other, quite overcome, and if you had been there you would have seen that if they had held fans in their hands, they would have fanned themselves with vigour.

"Didn't you hear anything of this—in Charleston?" asked Miss Cordelia at last.

"Not a word, my dear. I heard she was very popular; that was all."

"'Popular'…!"

"The one thing, perhaps, that we have never been."

Miss Cordelia shook her head and made a helpless gesture. "Well," she said at last, "I must confess we were looking for an antidote … but I never thought we'd be quite so successful…."

CHAPTER VI

A few weeks after her arrival, Helen and Mary were walking to the post-office. Helen had a number of letters to mail, her correspondents being active and her answers prompt.

They hadn't gone far when a young man appeared in the distance, approaching them. Mary gave him a look to see who it was, and after saying to Helen, "This is Bob McAllister—one of our neighbours. He's home from school," she continued the conversation and failed to give Sir Robert another thought.

Not so Helen, however.

One hand went to the back of her hair with a graceful gesture, and next she touched her nose with a powdered handkerchief.

A moment before, she had been looking straight ahead with a rather thoughtful expression, but now she half turned to Mary, smiling and nodding. In some manner her carriage, even her walk, underwent a change. But when I try to tell you what I mean I feel as tongue-tied as a boy who is searching for a word which doesn't exist. As nearly as I can express it, she seemed to "wiggle" a little, although that isn't the word. She seemed to hang out a sign "Oh, look—look at me!"—and that doesn't quite describe it, either.

Just as Master McAllister reached them, raising his hat and bowing to Mary and her friend—Helen's eyes and Helen's smile unconsciously lingered on him for a second or two until, apparently recollecting that she was looking at another, she lowered her glance and peeped at him through her eyelashes instead.

Mary meanwhile was calmly continuing her conversation, never even suspecting the comedy which was going on by her side, but when Helen shot a glance over her shoulder and whispered with satisfaction "He turned to look!" even Mary began to have some slight idea of what was going on.

"Helen," she demurred, "you should never turn around to look at a young man."

"Why not?" laughed Helen, her arm going around her cousin's waist. And speaking in the voice of one who has just achieved a triumph, she added, "They're all such fo-oo-ools!"

Mary thought that over.

Helen's correspondents continued active, and as each letter arrived she read parts of it to her cousin. She was a mimic, and two of the letters she read in character one afternoon when Mary was changing her dress for dinner.

"Oh, Helen, you shouldn't," said Mary, laughing in spite of herself and feeling ashamed of it the same moment. "I think it's awful to make fun of people who write you like that."

"Pooh!" laughed Helen. "They're all such fo-oo-ools!"

"You don't think that of all men, do you!"

"Why not?" laughed Helen again, and tucking the letters into her waist she started humming. Unobserved Ma'm Maynard had entered to straighten the room and, through the mirror, Mary saw her grimly nodding her head.

"Why, Ma'm Maynard," said Mary, "you don't think that all men are fools, too, do you?"

"Eet is not halways safe to say what one believes," said Ma'm, pursing her lips with mystery. "Eef mademoiselles, your aunts, should get to hear—"

"Oh, I won't tell."

"Then, yes, ma cherie, I think at times all men are fools … and I think it is also good at times to make a fool of man. For why? Because it is revenge.

"Ah, ma cherie, I who have been three times wed—I tell you I often think the old-world view is right. Man is the natural enemy of a woman.

"He is not to be trus'.

"I have heard it discuss' by great minds—things I cannot tell you yet—but you will learn them as you live. And halways the same conclusion arrives: Man is the natural enemy of a woman, and the one best way to keep him from making a fool of you, is to turn 'round queeck and make it a fool of him!"

"Oh, Ma'm Maynard, no!" protested Mary, who had turned from the mirror and was staring with wide eyes. "I can't believe it—never!"

"What is it, ma cherie, which you cannot believe?"

"That man is woman's natural enemy."

"But I tell you, yes, yes…. It has halways been so and it halways will. Everything that lives has its own natural enemy—and a woman's natural enemy—it is man!

"Think just for a moment, ma cherie," she continued. "Why are parents so careful? Mon Dieu, you would think it at times that a tiger is out in the streets at night—such precautions are made if the girl she is out after dark. And yes, but the parents are right. There is truly a tiger who roams in the black, but his name—eet is Man!

"Think just for a moment, ma cherie. Why are chaperons require'—even in the highest, most culture' society? Why is marriage require'? Is it not because all the world knows well that a man cannot be left to his own promise, but has to be bound by the law as a lion is held in a cage?"

"No," said Mary, shaking her head, "I'm sure it isn't that way. You're simply turning things around and making everything seem horrid."

"You think so, ma cherie? Eh, bien. Three husbands I've had. I am not without experience."

"But you might as well say that woman is man's natural enemy—"

"And some say that," said Ma'm nodding darkly. "Left to himself, they say, man might aspire to be as the gods; but halways at his helbow is a woman like a figure of fate—and she—she keeps him down where he belongs—"

"I hate all that," said Mary quietly. "Every once in a while I read something like it in a book or a magazine, and whenever I do, I put the book down and open the window and breathe the fresh air. Of course I know some married people aren't happy. But it isn't always because they are married. Single people are unhappy, too. Aunt Patty has indigestion sometimes, and I suppose a lot of people do. But you wouldn't call food a natural enemy; would you? And some children are just as bad as they can be. But you wouldn't call children natural enemies, would you—or try to get along without them?"

But Ma'm Maynard would only shrug her shoulders.

"Eh, bien," she said. "When you have live' as long as me—"

Through the open window a clock could be heard.

"Six o'clock!" squealed Helen, "and I'm not changed yet." As she hurried to the door she said, "I heard Aunt Patty say that Uncle Stanley was coming to dinner again tonight. I hope he brings his handsome son again—don't you?"

CHAPTER VII

Uncle Stanley of late had been a frequent visitor on the hill, occasionally bringing his son Burdon with him, but generally coming alone. After dinner he and Josiah would sit in the den till well past midnight, going over papers and figures, and drafting out instructions for Judge Cutler, the firm's lawyer.

Mary was never able to overcome her aversion to Uncle Stanley.

"I wish he'd stay away," she ruefully remarked to her father one night.
"Three evenings this week I haven't been able to come in the den."

"Never mind, dear," said Josiah, looking at her with love in his sombre eyes. "What we're doing: it's all for you."

"All for me? How?"

He explained to her that whereas Josiah Spencer & Son had always been a firm, it was now being changed to a corporation.

"As long as there was a son," he said, "the partnership arrangement was all right. But the way things are now—Well, when I'm gone, Mary, you'll own the stock of the company, and draw your dividends, and have no responsibilities to bother you."

"But who'll run the factory?"

"I suppose Stanley will, as long as he lives. You'll be the owner, of course, but I don't think you'll ever find anybody to beat Uncle Stanley as a general manager."

"And when Uncle Stanley dies—what then?"

"I think you'll find his son Burdon the next best man."

Mary felt her heart grow heavy. It may have been presentiment, or it may have been the thought of her father's possible death.

"Don't let's talk any more about dying," she said. "But tell me: Is that why you are making so many additions to the factory—because we are changing to a corporation?"

Josiah hesitated, struggling to speak to his daughter as though she were a young man instead of a young woman. But heredity, training and world-old custom restrained him. What would a girl know about mergers, combinations, fundamental patents, the differences between common and preferred stock, and all that? "It would only confuse her," he thought, looking at her with love in his eyes. "She would nod her pretty head to be polite, but I might as well be talking Greek to her."

"No, dear," he said, at last. "I'll tell you why we are making those additions. I have bought options on some of the biggest bearing factories in the country—so you won't have so much competition when I'm gone. And instead of running those other factories, I'm going to move their machinery down here. When the changes are once made, it's more economical to run one big factory than half a dozen little ones. And of course it will make it better for New Bethel."

"But it must make it bad for the towns where the factories are now," said Mary after a thoughtful pause. "I know how it would hurt New Bethel if we closed up."

Josiah nodded his head. "I didn't like it myself at first."

"It was Uncle Stanley's idea, then?"

"Yes; he's engineering it."

Again Mary felt her heart grow heavy.

"It must be costing an awful lot of money," she said.

"It is," said Josiah, leaning over and making a gesture. "Of course we'll get it back, and more, too—but for quite a few years now it's been taking a lot of money—a dreadful lot of money. Still, I think the end's in sight—"

He was sitting at his desk with a shaded lamp in front of him, and as he leaned over and gestured with his hands, Mary's eyes caught the shadow on the wall. She seemed to see a spider—a spider that was spinning and weaving his web—and for the third time that night her heart grew heavy within her.

CHAPTER VIII

The next day was Saturday and Mary drove her father down to the factory. A small army of men was at work at the new improvements, and when they reached the brow of the hill which overlooked the scene below, Josiah felt that thrill of pride which always ran over him when beholding this monument to his family's genius.

"The greatest of its kind in the world," he said.

With her free hand, Mary patted his arm.

"That's us!" she said, as proud as he. "I'll leave you at the office door, and then I'm going to drive around and see how the building's going on—"

There was plenty for Mary to see.

A gang of structural workers was putting up the steel frame-work for one of the new buildings. Nearby the brick-layers were busy with mortar and trowels. Carpenters were swarming over a roof, their hammers beating staccato.

As they worked in the sunshine, they joked and laughed and chatted with each other, and Mary couldn't help reverting to some of her old thoughts.

"How nice to be a man!" she half sighed to herself. "Back home, their wives are working in the kitchens—the same thing every day and nothing to show for it. But the men come out and do all sorts of interesting things, and when they are through they can say 'I helped build that factory' or 'I helped build that ship' or whatever it is that they have been doing. It doesn't seem fair, somehow, but I suppose it's the way it always has been, and always will be—"

Near her a trench was being dug for water pipes. At one place the men had uncovered a large rock, and she was still wondering how they were going to get it out of the way, when a young man came briskly forward and gave one glance at the problem.

"We'll rig up a derrick for this little beauty," he said. "Come on, boys; let's get some timbers."

They were back again in no time, and before Mary knew what they were doing, they had raised a wooden tripod over the rock. The apex of this was bound together with a chain from which a pulley was hung. Other chains were slung under the rock. Then from a nearby hoisting engine, a cable was passed through the pulley and fastened to the chains below.

"All right, boys?"

"All right!"

The young man raised his hand. "Let her go!" he shouted. "Tweet-tweet!" sounded a whistle. The engine throbbed. The cable tightened. The little beauty began to stir uneasily in its hammock of chains. Then slowly and steadily the rock arose, and nearly as quickly as I can write the words, it was lying on the side of the trench and the derrick was being dismantled.

As the young man hurried away he passed Mary's car.

"Why, it's Archey!" she thought. Whether or not it was due to telepathy, the young man looked up and his colour deepened under his tan. "It is Archey; isn't it?" asked Mary, leaning forward and smiling.

"Yes'm," he said, awkwardly enough, and grammar deserting him in his confusion he added: "It's me all right, Miss Spencer."

"I've been watching you get that rock out," she began, looking at him with frank admiration, and then they talked for a few minutes. I need not tell you what they said—it would only sound trivial—but as they talked a bond of sympathy, of mutual interest, seemed gradually to wind itself around them. They smiled, nodded, looking approvingly at each other; and each felt that feeling of warmth and satisfaction which comes to the heart when instinct whispers, "Make no mistake. You've found a friend."

"But what are you doing here?" she finally asked.

"Working," he grinned. "I graduated last year—construction engineer—and this is my second job. This winter I was down in old Mexico on bridge work—"

"You must tell me about it some time," she said, as one of the workmen came to take him away; and driving off in her car she couldn't help thinking with a smile of amusement, "'Woman's natural enemy'—how silly it sounds in the open air …!"

CHAPTER IX

Meanwhile the matter of Mary's education was receiving the attention of her aunts.

"Patty," said Miss Cordelia one day, "do you know that child of ours is seventeen?"

The years had dealt kindly with the Misses Spencer and as they looked at each other, with thoughtful benignity, their faces were like two studies in silver and pink.

"Although I say it myself," continued Miss Cordelia, "I doubt if we could have improved her studies. Indeed she is unusually advanced in French, English and music. But I do think she ought to go to a good finishing school now for a year or two—Miss Parsons', of course—where she would not only be welcomed because of her family, but where she would form suitable friendships and learn those lessons of modern deportment which we ourselves, I fear, would never be able to teach her."

But if you had been there when the subject of Miss Parsons' School for Young Ladies was broached to Mary, I think it would have reminded you of that famous recipe for rabbit pie which so wisely begins "First catch your rabbit."

Mary listened to all that was said and then, quietly but unmistakably, she put her foot down on Miss Parsons' fashionable institution of learning.

I doubt if she herself could have given you all her reasons.

For one thing, the older she grew, the more democratic, the more American she was becoming.

Deep in her heart she thought the old original Spencers had done more for the world than any leaders of fashion who ever lived; and when she read or thought of those who had made America, her mind never went to smart society and its doings, but to those great, simple souls who had braved the wilderness in search of liberty and adventure—who had toiled, and fought, and given their lives, unknown, unsung, but never in Mary's mind to be forgotten. And whenever she thought of travel, she found she would rather see the Rockies than the Alps, rather go to New Orleans than Old Orleans, rather visit the Grand Canyon than the Nile, and would infinitely rather cross the American continent and see three thousand miles of her own country, than cross the Atlantic and see three thousand miles of water that belonged to every one in general and no one in particular.

"But, my dear," said Miss Cordelia, altogether taken aback, "you ought to go somewhere, you know. Let me tell you about Miss Parsons' school—"

"It's no use, Aunty. I don't want to go to Miss Parsons' school—"

"Where do you want to go then?"

Like most inspirations, it came like a flash.

"If I'm going anywhere, I want to go to college—"

To college! A Spencer girl—or a Spicer—going to college! Miss Cordelia gasped. If Mary had been noticing, she might not have pursued her inspiration further, but her mind was running along a breathless panorama of Niagara Falls, Great Lakes, Chicago, the farms of the Middle West, Yellowstone Park, geysers, the Old Man of the Mountain, Aztec ruins, redwood forests, orange groves and at the end of the vista—like a statue at the end of a garden walk—she imagined a great democratic institution of learning where one might conceivably be prepared to solve some of those problems which life seems to take such deep delight in presenting to us, with the grim command, "Not one step farther shall you go until you have answered this!"

"To college?" gasped Miss Cordelia.

"Yes," said Mary, still intent upon her panorama, "there's a good one in
California. I'll look it up."

The more Mary thought of it, the fonder she grew of her idea—which is, I think, a human trait and true of nearly every one. It was in vain that her aunts argued with her, pointing out the social advantages which she would enjoy from attending Miss Parsons' School. Mary's objection was fundamental. She simply didn't care for those advantages. Indeed, she didn't regard them as advantages at all.

Helen did, though.

In her heart Helen had always longed to tread the stage of society—to her mind, a fairyland of wit and gallantry, masquerades and music, to say nothing of handsome young polo players and titled admirers from foreign shores—"big fools," all of them, as you can guess, when dazzled by the smiles of Youth and Beauty.

"Mary can go to California if she likes," said Helen at last, "but give me Miss Parsons' School."

And Mary did go to California, although I doubt if she would have gained her point if her father hadn't taken her part. For four years she attended the university by the Golden Gate, and every time she made the journey between the two oceans, sometimes accompanied by Miss Cordelia and sometimes by Miss Patty, she seemed to be a little more serene of glance, a little more tranquil of brow, as though one by one she were solving some of those problems which I have mentioned above.

Meanwhile Helen was in her glory at Miss Parsons'; and though the two aunts didn't confess it, they liked to sit and listen to her chatter of the girls whose friendship she was making, and to whose houses she was invited for the holidays.

When she was home, she sang snatches from the operas, danced with imaginary partners, rehearsed parts of private theatricals and dreamed of conquests. She had also learned the knack of dressing her hair which, when done in the grand manner, isn't far from being a talent. Pulled down on one side, with a pin or two adjusted, she was a dashing young duchess who rode to hounds and made the old duke's eyes pop out. Or she could dip it over her ears, change a few pins again and—lo!—she was St. Cecilia seated at the organ, and butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

"She is quite pretty and very clever," said Miss Cordelia one day. "I think she will marry well."

"Do you think she's as pretty as Mary?" asked Miss Patty.

"My dear!" said Miss Cordelia with a look that said 'What a question you are asking!' "—is pretty in a way, of course," she said, "but there is something about our Mary—"

"I know," nodded Miss Patty. "Something you can't express—"

"The dear child," mused Miss Cordelia, looking out toward the west. "I wonder what she is doing this very moment!"

At that very moment, as it happened, Mary was in her room on the other side of the continent studying the manufacture of raisin fudge. Theretofore she had made it too soft, or too sugary, but this time she was determined to have it right. Long ago she had made all the friends that her room would hold, and most of them were there. Some were listening to a girl in spectacles who was talking socialism, while a more frivolous group, perched on the bed, was arguing the question whether the perfect lover had a moustache or a clean-shaven lip.

"Money is cruel; it ought to be abolished," said the earnest girl in the spectacles. "Money is a millstone which the rich use to grind the poor. You girls know it as well as I do."

Mary stirred away at the fudge.

"It's a good thing she doesn't know that I'm rich," she smiled to herself. "I wonder when I shall start grinding the poor!"

"And yet the world simply couldn't get along without the wage-earners," continued the young orator. "So all they have to do is strike—and strike—and keep on striking—and they can have everything they want—"

"So could the doctors," mused Mary to herself, stirring away at the fudge. "Imagine the doctors striking…. And so could the farmers. Imagine the farmers striking for eight hours a day, and no work Sundays and holidays, and every Saturday afternoon off…."

Dimly, vaguely, a troubled picture took shape in her mind. She stirred the fudge more reflectively than ever.

"I wonder if civil wars are started that way," she thought, "one class setting out to show its power over another and gradually coming to blows. Suppose—yes, suppose the women were to go on strike for eight hours a day, and as much money as the men, and Saturday afternoons and Sundays off, and all the rest of it…. The world certainly couldn't get along without women. As Becky says, they would only have to strike—and strike—and keep on striking—and they could get everything they wanted—"

Although she didn't suspect it, she was so close to her destiny at that moment that she could have reached out her hand and touched it. But all unconsciously she continued to stir the fudge.

"I've always thought that women have a poor time of it compared with men," she nodded to herself. "Still, perhaps it's the way of the world, like … like children have the measles … and old folks have to wear glasses."

She put the pan on the sill to cool and stood there for a time, looking out at the campus, dreamy-eyed, half occupied with her own thoughts and half listening to the conversation behind her.

"There oughtn't to be any such thing as private property—"

"Why, Vera, if he kissed you in the dark, you couldn't tell whether he was a man or a girl—"

"—Everything should belong to the state—"

"—No, listen. Kiss me both ways, and then tell me which you think is the nicest—"

A squeal of laughter arose from the bed and, turning, Mary saw that one of the girls was holding the back of a toothbrush against her upper lip.

"Now," she mumbled, "this is with the moustache … Kiss me hard …"

"The greatest book in the world," continued the girl with the spectacles, "is Marx's book on Capital—"

Mary turned to the window again, more dreamy-eyed than ever.

"The greatest book in the world," she thought, "is the book of life….
Oh, if I could only write a few pages in it … myself …!"

CHAPTER X

Mary "came out" the winter after her graduation.

If she had been left to herself she would have dispensed with the ceremony quite as cheerfully as she had dispensed with Miss Parsons' School for Young Ladies. But in the first place her aunts were adamant, and in the second place they were assisted by Helen. Helen hadn't been going to finishing school for nothing. She knew the value of a proper social introduction.

Indeed it was her secret ambition to outshine her cousin—an ambition which was at once divined by her two aunts. Whereupon they groomed Mary to such good purpose that I doubt if Society ever looked upon a lovelier debutante.

She was dressed in chiffon, wore the Spencer pearls, and carried herself with such unconscious charm that more than one who danced with her that night felt a rapping on the door of his heart and heard the voice of love exclaiming "Let me in!"

There was one young man in particular who showed her such attention that the matrons either smiled or frowned at each other. Even Miss Cordelia and Miss Patty were pleased, although of course they didn't show it for a moment. He was a handsome, lazy-looking young rascal when he first appeared on the scene, lounging against the doorway, drawling a little as he talked to his friends—evidently a lion, bored in advance with the whole proceeding and meaning to slip away as soon as he could. But when his eye fell on Mary, he stared at her unobserved for nearly a minute and his ennui disappeared into thin air.

"What's the matter, Wally?" asked one of his friends.

"James," he solemnly replied, "I'm afraid it's something serious. I only hope it's catching." The next minute he was being introduced to Mary and was studying her card.

"Some of these I can't dance," she warned him.

"Will you mark them with a tick, please—those you can't dance?"

Unsuspectingly she marked them.

"Good!" said he, writing his name against each tick. "We'll sit those out. The next waltz, though, we will dance that."

"But that's engaged—'Chester A. Bradford,'" she read.

"Poor Brad—didn't I tell you?" asked Wally. "He fell downstairs a moment ago and broke his leg."

That was the beginning of it.

The first dance they sat out Wally said to himself, "I shall kiss her, if it's the last thing I ever do."

But he didn't.

The next dance they sat out he said to himself, "I shall kiss her if I never do another thing as long as I live—"

But he didn't.

The last dance they sat out he said to himself, "I shall kiss her if I hang for it."

He didn't kiss her, even then, but felt himself tremble a little as he looked in her eyes. Then it was that the truth began to dawn upon him. "I'm a gone coon," he told himself, and dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief …

"You've got him, all right," said Helen later, going to Mary's room ostensibly to undress, but really to exchange those confidences without which no party is complete.

"Got who?" asked Mary. And she a Bachelor of Arts!

"Oh, aren't you innocent! Wally Cabot, of course. Did he kiss you?"

"No, he did not!"

"Of course, if you don't want to tell—!"

"There's nothing to tell."

"There isn't? … Oh, well, don't worry…. There soon will be."

Helen was right.

From that time forward Mary's own shadow was hardly less attentive than Master Wally Cabot. His high-powered roadster was generally doing one of three things. It was either going to Mary's, or coming from Mary's, or taking a needed rest under Mary's porte cochère.

One day Mary suddenly said to her father, "Who was Paul?"

Fortunately for Josiah the light was on his back.

"Last night at the dance," she continued, "I heard a woman saying that I didn't look the least bit like Paul, and I wondered who he was."

"Perhaps some one in her own family," said Josiah at last.

"Must have been," Mary carelessly nodded. They went on chatting and presently Josiah was himself again.

"What are you going to do about Walter Cabot?" he asked, looking at her with love in his sombre eyes.

Mary made a helpless gesture.

"Has he asked you yet?"

"Yes," she said in a muffled voice, "—often."

"Why don't you take him?"

Again Mary made her helpless gesture and, for a long moment she too was on the point of opening her heart. But again heredity, training and age-old tradition stood between them, finger on lip.

"I sometimes have such a feeling that I want to do something in the world," she nearly told him. "And if I married Wally, it would spoil it all. I sometimes have such dreams—such wonderful dreams of doing something—of being somebody—and I know that if I married Wally I should never be able to dream like that again—"

As you can see, that isn't the sort of a thing which a girl can very well say to her father—or to any one else for that matter, except in fear and hesitation.

"The way I am now," she nearly told him, "there are ever so many things in life that I can do—ever so many doors that I can open. But if I marry Wally, every door is locked but one. I can be his wife; that's all."

Obviously again, you couldn't expect a girl to speak like that, especially a girl with dreamy eyes and shy. Nevertheless those were the thoughts which often came to her at night, after she had said her prayers and popped into bed and lay there in the dark turning things over in her mind.

One night, for instance, after Wally had left earlier than usual, she lay with her head snuggled on the pillow, full of vague dreams and visions—vague dreams of greatness born of the sunsets and stars and flowers—vague visions of proving herself worthy of the heritage of life.

"I don't think it's a bit fair," she thought. "As soon as a woman marries—well, somehow, she's through. But it doesn't seem to make any difference to the man. He can go right on doing the big things—the great things—"

She stopped, arrested by the sound of a mandolin under her window. The next moment the strains of Wally's tenor entered the room, mingled with the moonlight and the scent of the syringa bush. A murmuring, deep-toned trio accompanied him.

"Soft o'er the fountain
Ling'ring falls the southern moon—"

The beauty of it brought a thrill to the roots of Mary's hair—brought quick tears to her eyes—and she was wondering if Wally was right, after all—if love (as he often told her) was indeed the one great thing of life and nothing else mattered, when her door opened and Helen came twittering in.

"A serenade!" she whispered excitedly. "Im-a-gine!"

She tip-toed to the window and, kneeling on the floor, watched the singers through the curtain—knowing well it wasn't for her, but drinking deep of the moment.

Slowly, sweetly, the chorus grew fainter—fainter—

"Nita—Juanita
Ask thy soul if we should part—"

"What do you think of that!" said Helen, leaning over and giving her cousin a squeeze and a kiss. "He had the two Garde boys and Will Thompson with him. I thought he was leaving earlier than usual tonight; didn't you? But a serenade! I wonder if the others heard it, too!"

Miss Patty and Miss Cordelia had both heard it, and Helen had hardly gone when they came pattering in—each as proud as Punch of Mary for having caused such miracles to perform—and gleeful, too, that they had lived in the land long enough to hear a real, live serenade. And after they had kissed her and gone, Ma'm Maynard came in with a pretty little speech in French. So that altogether Mary held quite a reception in bed. As one result, her feeling toward Wally melted into something like tenderness, and if it hadn't been for the tragic event next morning, the things which I have to tell you might never have taken place.

"I wonder if your father heard it," said Miss Patty at the breakfast table next morning.

"I wonder!" laughed Mary. "I think I'll run in and see."

According to his custom Josiah breakfasted early and had gone to his den to look over his mail. Mary passed gaily through the library, but it wasn't long before she was back at the dining room door, looking as though she had seen a ghost.

"Come—come and look," she choked. "Something—something terrible—"

Josiah sat, half collapsed, in his chair. Before him, on the desk, lay his mail. Some he had read. Some he would never, never read.

"He must have had a stroke," said Miss Cordelia, her arms around Mary; and looking at her brother she whispered, "I think something upset him."

When they had sent for the doctor and had taken Mary away, they returned to look over the letters which Josiah had opened as his last mortal act.

"I don't see anything in these that could have bothered him," said Miss
Cordelia, fearfully looking.

"What's this?" asked Miss Patty, picking up an empty envelope from the floor.

It was post-marked "Rio de Janeiro" and the date showed that it had taken three weeks to make the journey.

"I have some recollection of that writing," said Miss Cordelia.

"So have I," said Miss Patty in a low voice, "but where's the letter?"

Again it was she who made the discovery.

"That must be it," she said. "His ash tray is cleaned out every morning."

It was a large, brass tray and in it was the char of a paper that had been burned. This ash still lay in its folds and across its surface, black on black, could be seen a few lines which resembled the close of a letter.

"Can you read it?" she asked.

Miss Cordelia bent over, and as a new angle of light struck the tray, the words became as legible as though they had just been written.

"I thought I knew the writing," whispered Miss Cordelia, and lowering her voice until her sister had to hang breathless upon the movement of her lips, she added "Oh, Patty … We all thought he was dead … No wonder it killed poor Josiah …"

Their arms went around each other. Their glances met.

"I know," whispered Miss Patty, her lips suddenly gone dry, "….It was from Paul…!"

CHAPTER XI

For the first few months after her father's death, Mary's dreams seemed to fade into mist.

Between her and Josiah a bond of love had existed, stronger than either had suspected—and now that he was gone the world seemed unaccountably empty—and unaccountably cruel. As her father had gone, so must Aunt Cordelia and Aunt Patty some day surely go … Yes, and even Mary herself must just as surely follow.

The immemorial doubt assailed her—that doubt which begins in helplessness and ends in despair. "What's the use?" she asked herself. "We plan and work so hard—like children making things in the sand—and then Death comes along with a big wave and flattens everything out … like that …"

But gradually her sense of balance began to return. One day she stood on the brink of the hill looking at the great factory below, and a calmer, surer feeling slowly swept over her.

"That's it," she thought. "The real things of life go on, no matter who dies, just as though nothing had happened. Take the first Josiah Spencer and look down there what he left behind him. Why, you might even say that he was alive today! And see what Washington left behind him—and Fulton, who invented the steamboat—and Morse who invented the telegraph. So it's silly to say 'What's the use?' Suppose Columbus had said it—or any of the others who have done great things in the world—"

It slowly came to her then, her doubts still lingering, how many are called, how few are chosen.

"That's the trouble," she said. "We can't all be Washingtons. We can't all do great things. And yet—an awful lot of people had to live so that Washington could be born when he was….

"His parents: that was two. And his grand-parents: he must have had four.
And his great grand-parents: eight of them….

"Why, it's like the problem of the horse-shoe nails," she continued in growing excitement. "In twenty-eight generations there must have been millions and millions of people who lived—just so George Washington could be born one day at Mt. Vernon—and grow up to make America free! Yes, and every one of them was just as necessary as Washington himself, because if it hadn't been for every single one of them—we would never have had him!"

For a moment she seemed to be in touch with the infinite plan. Down the hill she saw a woman in a black dress, crossing the street.

"Mrs. Ridge going out for the day," thought Mary, recognizing the figure below. "Yes, and who knows? She may be a link in a chain which is leading straight down to some one who will be greater than Washington—greater than Shakespeare—greater than any man who ever lived…!" And her old dreams, her old visions beginning to return, she added with a sigh, "Oh, dear! I wish I could do something big and noble—so if all those millions who are back of me are watching, they'll feel proud of what I'm doing and nudge each other as if they were saying, 'You see? She's come at last. That's us!'"

As you will realize, this last thought of Mary's suggested more than it told—as I believe great thoughts often do—but at least I think you'll be able to grasp the idea which she herself was groping after. At the same time you mustn't suppose that she was constantly going around dreaming, and trying to find expression for those vague strivings and yearnings which come to us all at different times in our lives, especially in the golden days of youth when the flood of ambition is rising high within us—or again in later years when we feel the tide will soon begin to turn, and we must make haste or it will be too late.

No, Mary had plenty of practical matters, too, to engage her attention and keep her feet on the earth.

For one thing there was Wally Cabot—he who had so lately serenaded Mary in the moonlight. But I'll tell you about him later.

Then the settlement of her father's estate kept coming up for action. Judge Cutler and Mary's two aunts were the trustees—an arrangement which didn't please Uncle Stanley any too well, although he was careful not to show it. And the more Mary saw of the silvery haired judge with his hawk's eyes and gentle smile, the more she liked him.

One of the first things they discovered was that Mary's heritage consisted of the factory by the river—but little else. Practically all the bonds and investments that Josiah had ever owned had been sold for the greater glory of Spencer & Son—to buy in other firms and patents—to increase the factory by the river. As her father had once confided to Mary this had taken money—"a dreadful lot of money"—she remembered the wince with which he had spoken—and a safe deposit box which was nearly empty bore evidence to the truth of what he had said.

"High and low," mused the judge when the inventory was at last completed, "it's always the same. The millionaire and the mill-hand—somehow they always manage to leave less than every one expected—"

"Why is that?" asked Mary. "Is it because the heirs expect too much?"

"No, child. I think it's the result of pride. As a rule, man is a proud animal and he doesn't like to tell anything which doesn't redound to his credit. If a man buys bonds, for instance, he is very apt to mention it to his family. But if for any reason he has to sell those bonds, he will nearly always do it quietly and say nothing about it, hoping to buy them back again later, or something better yet—

"I've seen so many estates," he continued, "shrink into next to nothing—so many widows who thought they were well off, suddenly waking up and finding themselves at the mercy of the world—the little they have often being taken away from them by the first glib sharper who comes long—that I sometimes think every man should give his family a show-down once a year. It would surely save a lot of worries and heartaches later on—

"Still," he smiled, looking down at the inventory, with its noble line of figures at the bottom of the column, "I don't think you'll have much trouble in keeping the wolf from the door."

Mary turned the pages in a helpless sort of way.

"You'll have to explain some of this," she said at last. But before giving it back to him she looked out of the window for a time—one of her slow, thoughtful glances—and added, "I wonder why girls aren't brought up to know something about business—the way boys are."

"Perhaps it's because they have no head for business."

She thought that over.

"Can you speak French?" she suddenly asked.

"No."

"…I can. I can speak it, and read it, and write it, and think it…. Now don't you think that if a girl can do that—if she can learn thousands and thousands of new words, how to pronounce them, and spell them, and parse them, and inflect them—how to supply hundreds of rules of grammar—and if she can learn to do this so well that she can chat away in French without giving it a thought—don't you think she might be able to learn something about the language and rules of business, too, if they were only taught to her? Then perhaps there wouldn't be so many helpless widows in the world, as you said just now, at the mercy of the first glib sharper who comes along."

This time it was the judge's turn to think it over.

"You're an exceptional girl, Mary," he said at last.

"No, really I'm not," she earnestly told him. "Any girl can learn anything that a boy can learn—if she is only given a chance. Where boys and girls go to school together—at the grammar schools and high schools—the girls are just as quick as the boys, and their average marks are quite as high. It was true at college, too. The girls could learn anything that the men could learn—and do it just as well."

As one result of this, Judge Cutler began giving Mary lessons in business, using the inventory as a text and explaining each item in the settlement of the estate. He also taught her some of the simpler maxims, beginning with that grand old caution, "Never sign a paper for a stranger—"

It wasn't long after this that Uncle Stanley called at the house on the hill. He talked for a time about some of the improvements which were being made at the factory and then arose as if to go.

"Oh, I nearly forgot," he said, turning back and smiling at his oversight. "We need a new director to take your father's place. When I'm away Burdon looks after things, so I suppose he may as well take the responsibility. It's a thankless position, but some one has to fill it."

"Yes," murmured Mary, "I suppose they do."

"They do," said Uncle Stanley. "So I'll call a stockholders' meeting right away. Meanwhile if you will sign this proxy—"

But just as quietly Mary murmured, "I'd like to think it over."

They looked at each other then—those two—with that careful, yet careless-appearing glance which two duellists might employ when some common instinct warns them that sooner or later they will cross their swords.

Uncle Stanley was the first to lower his eye.

"The law requires three directors," he said in his more usual grumpy voice, "or I wouldn't have bothered you. I'll leave it and you can sign it and send it down this afternoon."

But Mary did neither. Instead she went to see Judge Cutler and when the stockholders' meeting was finally called, she attended it in person—holding practically all the stock—and Judge Cutler was elected to fill the vacancy.

Uncle Stanley just managed to control himself. It took an effort, but he did it.

"We've got to elect a president next," he said, trying to make a joke of it, but unable to keep the tremor of testiness out of his voice. "Of course I've been here all my life—if that counts for anything—and I am now serving in the more or less humble capacity of vice-president—but if the judge would like to throw up his law business and try the manufacturing end instead—"

"No," smiled the judge, lighting a bombshell—though Uncle Stanley little guessed it—"I think the position calls for some one younger than I am. Besides, my name is Cutler, whereas for eight generations this concern has been headed by a Spencer.

"You know, Mr. Woodward, lawyers are sticklers for precedent, and it seems to me that as long as there is a Spencer left in the family, that good old name should stand at the head.

"For the office of president I therefore cast my vote in favour of the last of the Spencers—Miss Mary—"

That was the bombshell, and oh, but didn't it rock Uncle Stanley back on his heels!

"Of course, if you want to make a joke of the company," he said at last, sticking out his lower lip till it made a little shelf, although it wasn't a very steady little shelf because it trembled as though from emotion. "'President, Mary Spencer'—you know as well as I do what people will think when they see that on the letterhead—"

"Unfortunately, yes," said the judge, flashing him one of his hawk's glances but still speaking in his gentle voice. "Still, we can easily get around that difficulty. We can have the letter-heads lithographed 'President, M. Spencer.' Then if our correspondents have imaginations, they will think that the M stands for Matthew or Mark or Michael or Malachi. One thing sure," he smiled at the new president, "they'll never think of Mary."

As in the case of the factory, Uncle Stanley had also been vice-president of the First National Bank. A few days after the proceedings above recorded, the stockholders of the bank met to choose a new president. There was only one vote and when it was counted, Stanley Woodward was found to be elected.

"I wonder what he'll be doing next," said Mary uneasily when she heard the news.

"My dear girl," gently protested the judge, "you mustn't be so suspicious. It will poison your whole life and lead you nowhere."

Mary thought that over.

"You know the old saying, don't you?" he continued. "'Suspicion is the seed of discord.'"

"Yes," nodded Mary, trying to smile, though she still looked troubled. "I know the old saying—but—the trouble is—I know Uncle Stanley, too, and that's what bothers me…"

CHAPTER XII

At this point I had meant to tell you more of Wally Cabot—most perfect, most charming of lovers—but first I find that I must describe a passage which took place one morning between Mary and Uncle Stanley's son Burdon.

Perhaps you remember Burdon, the tall, dark young man who "smelled nice" and wore a white edging on the V of his waistcoat.

As far back as Mary could remember him, he had appealed to her imagination.

His Norfolk jackets, his gold cigarette case and match box, his air of distinction, his wealth of black hair which grew to a point on his forehead, even the walking stick which he sometimes carried; to Mary's mind these had always been properties in a human drama—a drama breathless with possibilities, written by Destiny and entitled Burdon Woodward.

It is hard to express some things, and this is one of them. But among your own acquaintances there are probably one or two figures which stand out above the others as though they had been selected by Fate to play strenuous parts—whether Columbine, clown or star. Something is always happening to them. Wherever they appear, they seem to hold the centre of the stage, and when they disappear a dullness falls and life seems flat for a time. You think of them more often than you realize, perhaps with a smile, perhaps with a frown, and generally you dismiss them from your mind with some such thought as this—"He'll get in trouble yet," or "I wouldn't be surprised if he makes a great man some day"—or "Something will happen to that girl yet, if she isn't careful!"

That, in short, was the sort of a character that Burdon Woodward had always been to Mary. For as long as she could remember him, she had associated him with romance and drama.

To her he had been Raffles, the amateur cracksman. He had also been Steerforth in David Copperfield—and time after time she had drowned him in the wreck. In stories of buccaneers he was the captain—sometimes Captain Morgan, sometimes Captain Kidd—or else he was Black Jack with Dora in his power and trembling in the balance whether to become a hero or a villain. As Mary grew older these associations not only lingered; they strengthened.

Not long before her father died she read in the paper of a young desperado, handsome and well-dressed, who held up a New York jeweller at the point of a gun and relieved him of five thousand dollars' worth of diamond rings. The story was made remarkable by a detail. An old woman was sitting at the corner, grinding a hand-organ, and as the robber ran past her, he dropped one of the rings into her cup.

"Oh, dad," Mary had said, looking up and speaking on impulse, "did I hear you say last night that Burdon Woodward was in New York?"

"No, dear. Boston."

"Mm," thought Mary. "He'd say he was going to Boston for a blind." And for many a week after that she slyly watched his fingers, to see if she could catch him red-handed so to speak, wearing one of those rings! Yet even while she glanced she had the grace to smile at her fancies.

"All the same," she told herself, "it sounded an awful lot like him."

The encounter which I am now going to tell you about took place one morning after Mary had been elected to the presidency of the company. She had just finished breakfast when Burdon telephoned.

"Your father had some private papers in his desk down here," he said. "I was wondering if you'd like to come down and look them over."

"Thank you," she said. "I will."

Josiah's private room in the factory office building had been an impressive one, high-ceiled and flanked with a fire-place which was, however, never lighted. Ancestral paintings and leather chairs had added their notes of distinction. The office of any executive will generally reflect not only his own personality, but the character of the enterprise of which he stands at the head. Looking in Josiah's room, I think you would have been impressed, either consciously or not, that Spencer & Son had dignity, wealth and a history behind it. And regarding then the dark colouring of the appointments, devoid of either beauty or warmth, and feeling yourself impressed by a certain chilliness of atmosphere, I can very well imagine you saying to yourself "Not very cheerful!"

But you wouldn't have thought this on the morning when Mary entered it in response to Burdon's suggestion.

A fire was glowing on the andirons. New rugs gave colour and life to the floor. The mantel had been swept clear of annual reports and technical books, and graced with a friendly clock and a still more friendly pair of vases filled with flowers. The monumental swivel chair had disappeared, and in its place was one of wicker, upholstered in cretonne. On the desk was another vase of flowers, a writing set of charming design and a triple photograph frame, containing pictures of Miss Cordelia, Miss Patty and old Josiah himself.

Mary was still marvelling when she caught sight of Burdon Woodward in the doorway.

"Who—who did this?" she asked.

He bowed low—as d'Artagnan might have bowed to the queen of France—but came up smiling.

"Your humble, obedient servant," said he. "Can I come in?"

It had been some time since Mary had seen him so closely, and as he approached she noticed the faultlessness of his dress, the lily of the valley in his buttonhole, and that slightly ironic but smiling manner which is generally attributed to men of the world, especially to those who have travelled far on adventurous and forbidden paths. In another age he might have worn lace cuffs and a sword, and have just returned from a gambling house where he had lost or won a fortune with equal nonchalance.

"He still smells nice," thought Mary to herself, "and I think he's handsomer than ever—if it wasn't for that dark look around his eyes—and even that becomes him." She motioned to a chair and seated herself at the desk.

"I thought you'd like to have a place down here to call your own," he said in his lazy voice. "I didn't make much of a hit with the governor, but then you know I seldom do—"

"Where did you get the pictures?"

"From the photographers'. Of course it required influence, but I am full of that—being connected, as you may know, with Spencer & Son. When I told him why I wanted them, he seemed to be as anxious as I was to find the old plates."

"And the fire and the rugs and everything—you don't know how I appreciate it all. I had no idea—"

"I like surprises, myself," he said. "I suppose that's why I like to surprise others. The keys of the desk are in the top drawer, and I have set aside the brightest boy in the office to answer your buzzer. If you want anybody or anything—to write a letter—to see the governor—or even to see your humble servant—all you have to do is to press this button."

A wave of gratitude swept over her.

"He's nice," she thought, as Burdon continued his agreeable drawl. "But Helen says he's wicked. I wonder if he is…. Imagine him thinking of the pictures: I'm sure that doesn't sound wicked, and… Oh, dear!….Yes, he did it again, then!… He—he's making eyes at me as much as he dares!…"

She turned and opened a drawer of the desk.

"I think I'll take the papers home and sort them there," she said.

"You're sure there's nothing more I can do?" he asked, rising.

"Nothing more; thank you."

"That window behind you is open at the top. You may feel a draft; I'll shut it."

In his voice she caught the note which a woman never misses, and her mind went back to her room at college where the girls used to gather in the evenings and hold classes which were strictly outside the regular course.

"It's simply pathetic," one of the girls had once remarked, "but nearly every man you meet makes love the same way. Talk about sausage for breakfast every morning in the year. It's worse than that!

"First you catch it in their eye and in their voice: 'Are you sure you're comfortable?' 'Are you sure you're warm enough?' 'Are you sure you don't feel a draft?' That's Chapter One.

"Then they try to touch you—absent-mindedly putting their arms along the back of your chair, or taking your elbow to keep you from falling when you have to cross a doorsill or a curb-stone or some dangerous place like that. That's always Chapter Two.

"And then they try to get you into a nice, secluded place, and kiss you. Honestly, the sameness of it is enough to drive a girl wild. Sometimes I say to myself, 'The next time a man looks at me that way and asks me if I feel a draft, I'm going to say, 'Oh, please let's dispense with Chapter Two and pass directly to the nice, secluded place. It will be such a change from the usual routine!'"

Mary laughed to herself at the recollection.

"If Vera's right," she thought, "he'll try to touch me next—perhaps the next time I come."

It happened sooner than that.

After she had tied up the papers and carried them to the car, and had made a tour of the new buildings—Archey Forbes blushing like a sunset the moment he saw her—she returned to her motor which was waiting outside the office building. Burdon must have been waiting for her. He suddenly appeared and opened the door of the car.

"Allow me," he said. When she stepped up, she felt the support of his hand beneath her elbow.

She slipped into her place at the wheel and looked ahead as dreamy-eyed as ever.

"Chapter Two…" she thought to herself as the car began to roll away, and taking a hasty mental review of Wally Cabot, and Burdon Woodward and Archey Forbes, she couldn't help adding, "If a girl's thoughts started to run that way, oh, wouldn't they keep her busy!"

It relieved her feelings to make the car roar up the incline that led from the river, but when she turned into the driveway at the house on the hill, she made a motion of comic despair.

Wally Cabot's car was parked by the side of the house. Inside she heard the phonograph playing a waltz.

CHAPTER XIII

Wally stayed for lunch, looking sheepish at first for having been caught dancing with Helen. But he soon recovered and became his charming self. Miss Cordelia and Miss Patty always made him particularly welcome, listening with approval to his chatter of Boston society, and feeling themselves refreshed as at some Hebian spring at hearing the broad a's and the brilliant names he uttered.

"If I were you, Helen," said Mary when lunch was over, "I think I'd go on teaching Wally that dance." Which may have shown that it rankled a little, even if she were unconscious that it did. "I have some papers that I want to look over and I don't feel very trippy this afternoon."

She went to Josiah's old study, but had hardly untied the papers when she heard the knock of penitence on the door.

"Come in!" she smiled.

The door opened and in came Master Wally, looking ready to weep.

"Wally! Don't!" she laughed. "You'll give yourself the blues!"

"Not when I hear you laugh like that. I know I'm forgiven." He drew a chair to the fire and sat down with an air of luxury. "I can almost imagine that we're an old married couple, sitting in here like this—can't you?"

"No; I can't. And you've got to be quiet and let me work, or I shall send you back to Helen."

"She asked me to dance with her—of course, you know that—or I never would have done it—"

"Oh, fie, for shame," said Mary absently, "blaming the woman. You know you liked to do it."

"Mary—!"

"Hush!"

He watched her for a time and, in truth, she was worth it. He looked at the colour of her cheeks, her dreamy eyes like pools of mystery, the crease in her chin (which he always wanted to kiss), the rise and fall of the pendant on her breast. He looked until he could look no longer and then he arose and leaned over the desk.

"Mary—!" he breathed, taking her hand.

"Now, please don't start that, Wally. We'll shake hands if you want to…
There! How are you? Now go back to your chair and be good."

"'Be good!'" he savagely echoed.

"Why, you want to be good; don't you?" she asked in surprise.

"I want you to love me. Mary; tell me you love me just a little bit; won't you?"

"I like you a whole lot—but when it comes to love—the way you mean—"

"It's the only thing in life that's worth a hang," he eagerly interrupted her. "The trouble is: you won't try it. You won't allow yourself to let go. I was like that once—thought it was nothing. But after I met you—! Oh, girl, it's all roses and lilies—the only thing in the world, and don't you forget it! Come on in and give it a try!"

"It's not the only thing in the world," said Mary, shaking her head. "That's the reason I don't want to come in: When a man marries, he goes right on with his life as though nothing had happened. That shows it's not the only thing with him. But when a woman marries—well, she simply surrenders her future and her independence. It may be right that she should, too, for all I know—but I'm going to try the other way first. I'm going right on with my life, the same as a man does—and see what I get by it."

"How long are you going to try it, do you think?"

"Until I've found out whether love is the only thing in a woman's life. If I find that I can't do anything else—if I find that a girl can only be as bright as a man until she reaches the marrying age, and then she just naturally stands still while he just naturally goes forward—why, then, I'll put an advertisement in the paper 'Husband Wanted. Mary Spencer. Please apply.'"

"They'll apply over my dead body."

"You're a dear, good boy to say it. No, please, Wally, don't or I shall go upstairs. Now sit by the fire again—that's better—and smoke if you want to, and let me finish these papers."

They were for the greater part the odds and ends which accumulate in every desk. There were receipted bills, old insurance policies, letters that had once seemed worth prizing, catalogues of things that had never been bought, prospectuses, newspaper clippings, copies of old contracts. And yet they had an interest, too—an interest partly historical, partly personal.

This merry letter, for instance, which Mary read and smiled over—who was the "Jack" who had written it? "Dead, perhaps, like dad," thought Mary. Yes, dead perhaps, and all his fun and drollery suddenly fallen into silence and buried with him.

"Isn't life queer!" she thought. "Now why did he save this clipping?"

She read the clipping and enjoyed it. Wally, watching from his chair, saw the smile which passed over her face.

"She'll warm up some day," he confidently told himself, with that bluntness of thought which comes to us all at times. "See how she flared up because I danced with Helen. Maybe if I made her jealous…"

At the desk Mary picked up another paper—an old cable. She read it, re-read it, and quietly folded it again; but for all her calmness the colour slowly mounted to her cheeks, as the recollection of odd words and phrases arose to her mind.

"Wally," she said in her quietest voice, "I'm going to ask you a question, but first you must promise to answer me truly."

"Cross my heart and hope to die!"

"Are you ready?"

"Quite ready."

"Then did you ever hear of any one in our family named Paul?"

"Y-yes—"

"Who was he?"

It was some time before he told the story, but trust a girl to make a man speak when she wishes it! He softened the recital in every possible way, but trust a girl again to read between the lines when she wants to!

"And didn't he ever come back?" she asked.

"No; you see he couldn't very well. There was an accident out West—somebody killed—anyhow, he was blamed for it. Queer, isn't it?" he broke off, trying to relieve the subject. "The Kaiser can start a war and kill millions. That's glory. But if some poor devil loses his head—"

Mary wasn't through yet.

"You say he's dead!" she asked.

"Oh, yes, years ago. He must have been dead—oh, let me see—about fifteen or twenty years, I guess."

"Poor dad!" thought Mary that night. "What he must have gone through! I'll bet he didn't think that love was the only thing in life. And—that other one," she hesitated, "who was 'wild after the girls,' Wally says, and finally ran off with one—I'll bet he didn't think so, either—before he got through—to say nothing of the poor thing who went with him. But dead fifteen or twenty years—that's the queerest part."

She found the cable again. It was dated Rio Janeiro—

"Gods sake cable two hundred dollars wife children sick desperate next week too late."

It was signed "Paul" and—the point to which Mary's attention was constantly returning—it wasn't fifteen or twenty years ago that this appeal had been received by her father.

The date of the cable was scarcely three years old.

CHAPTER XIV

For days Mary could think of little else, but as week followed week, her thoughts merged into memories—memories that were stored away and stirred in their hiding places less and less often.

"Dad knew best," she finally told herself. "He bore it in silence all those years, so it wouldn't worry me, and I'm not going to start now. Perhaps—he's dead, too. Anyhow," she sternly repeated, "I'm not going to worry. I've seen enough of worry to start doing that."

Besides, she had too much else on her mind—"to start doing that."

As the war in Europe had progressed—America drawing nearer the crimson whirlpool with every passing month—a Red Cross chapter was organized at New Bethel. Mary took active part in the work, and whenever visitors came to speak at the meetings, they seldom went away without being entertained at the house on the hill.

"I love to think of it," she told Aunt Patty one day. "The greatest organization of mercy ever known—and practically all women's work! Doesn't that mean a lot to you, Aunt Patty? If women can do such wonderful things for the Red Cross, why can't they do wonderful things in other ways?"

Her own question set her thinking, and something seemed to tell her that now or never she must watch her chance to make old dreams come true. Surely never before in the history of the world had woman come to the front with such a splendid arrival.

"We'll get things yet, Aunt Delia," she whispered in confidence, "so that folks will be just as proud of a girl baby as a boy baby." Whereupon she wagged her finger as though to say, "You mark my words!" and went rolling away to hear a distinguished lecturer who had just returned from Europe with a message to the women in America of what their sisters were doing across the seas.

The address was given at the Red Cross rooms, and as Mary listened she sewed upon a flannel swaddling robe that was later to go to Siberia lest a new-born babe might perish. At first she listened conscientiously enough to the speaker—"What our European sisters have done in agriculture—"

"I do believe at times that it's the women more than the men who make a country great," she thought as she heard of the women ploughing, planting, reaping. To Mary's mind each stoical figure glowed with the light of heroism, and she nodded her head as she worked.

"Just as I've always said," she mused; "there's nothing a man can do that a woman can't do."

From her chair by the window she chanced to look out at an old circus poster across the street.

"Now that's funny, too," she thought, her needle suspended; "I never thought of that before—but even in such things as lion taming and trapeze performing—where you would think a woman would really be at a disadvantage—she isn't at all. She's just as good as a man!"

The voice of the speaker broke in upon her thoughts.

"I am now going to tell you," she said, "what the women of Europe are doing in the factories—"

And oh, how Mary listened, then!

It was a long talk—I cannot begin to give it here—but she drank in every word, and hungered and thirsted for more.

"There is not an operation in factory, foundry or laboratory," began the speaker, "where women are not employed—"

As in a dream Mary seemed to see the factory of Spencer & Son. The long lines of men had vanished, and in their places were women, clear-eyed, dexterous and happy at escaping from the unpaid drudgery of housework. "It may come to that, too," she thought, "if we go into war."

"In aeroplane construction," the speaker continued, "where an undetected flaw in her work might mean an aviator's life, woman is doing the carpentry work, building the frame work, making the propellers. They are welding metals, drilling, boring, grinding, milling, even working on the engines and magnetos—"

A quiver ran up and down Mary's back and her eyes felt wet. "Just what
I've always said," she thought. "Ah, the poor women—"

"They are making telescopes, periscopes, binoculars, cameras—cutting and grinding the lenses—work so fine that the deviation of a hair's breadth would cause rejection—some of the lenses as small as a split pea. They make the metal parts that hold those lenses, assemble them, adjust them, test them. These are the eyes of the army and navy—surely no small part for the woman to supply."

Mary's thoughts turned to some of the homes she had seen—the surroundings—the expression of the housewife. "All her life and no help for it," she thought. And again, "Ah, the poor women…."

"To tell you the things she is making would be to give you a list of everything used in modern warfare. They are making ships, tanks, cannon, rifles, cartridges. They are operating the most wonderful trip hammers that were ever conceived by the mind of man, and under the same roof they are doing hand work so delicate that the least extra pressure of a file would spoil a week's labour. More! There isn't a process in which she has been employed where woman has failed to show that she is man's equal in speed and skill. In many operations she has shown that she is man's superior—doing this by the simple method of turning out more work in a day than the man whose place she took—"

Mary invited the speaker to go home with her, and if you had gone past the house on the hill that night, you would have seen lights burning downstairs until after one o 'clock.

How did they train the women?

How did they find time to do their washing and ironing?

What about the children? And the babies? And the home?

As the visitor explained, stopping now and then to tell her young hostess where to write for government reports giving facts and figures on the subject which they were discussing, Mary's eyes grew dreamier and dreamier as one fancy after another passed through her mind. And when the clock struck one and she couldn't for shame keep her guest up any longer, she went to her room at last and undressed in a sort of a reverie, her glance inward turned, her head slightly on one side, and with such a look of thoughtful exaltation that I wish I could paint it for you, because I know I can never put it into words.

Still, if you can picture Betsey Ross, it was thus perhaps that Betsey looked when first she saw the flag.

Or Joan of Arc might once have gazed that way in Orleans' woods.

CHAPTER XV

It was in December that Mary's great idea began to assume form. She wrote to the American Ambassadors in Great Britain and France for any documents which they could send her relating to the subject so close to her heart. In due time two formidable packages arrived at the house on the hill.

Mary carried them into the den and opened them with fingers that trembled with eagerness.

Yes, it was all true…. All true…. Here it was in black and white, with photographs and statistics set down by impartial observers and printed by government. Generally a state report is dry reading, but to Mary at least these were more exciting than any romances—more beautiful than any poem she had ever read.

At last woman had been given a chance to show what she could do. And how she had shown them!

Without one single straining effort, without the least thought of doing anything spectacular, she had gently and calmly taken up men's tools and had done men's work—not indifferently well—not in any makeshift manner—but "in all cases, even the most technical, her work has equalled that previously done exclusively by man. In a number of instances, owing to her natural dexterity and colour sense, her work, indeed, has been superior."

How Mary studied those papers!

Never even at college had she applied herself more closely. She memorized, compared, read, thought, held arguments with herself. And finally, when she was able to pass any examination that might be set before her, she went down to the office one day and sent for Mr. MacPherson, the master mechanic.

He came—grey haired, grim faced, a man who seemed to keep his mouth buttoned-and Mary asked him to shut the door behind him. Whereat Mac buttoned his mouth more tightly than before, and looked grimmer, too, if that were possible.

"You don't look a day older," Mary told him with a smile. "I remember you from the days when my father used to carry me around—"

"He was a grand man, Miss Mary; it's a pity he's gone," said Mac and promptly buttoned his mouth again.

"I want to talk to you about something," she said, "but first I want you to promise to keep it a secret."

He blinked his eyes at that, and as much as a grim faced man can look troubled, he looked troubled.

"There are vera few secrets that can be kept around this place," was his strange reply. "Might I ask, Miss Mary, of what nature is the subject?" And seeing that she hesitated he added, first looking cautiously over his shoulder, "Is it anything, for instance, to do wi' Mr. Woodward? Or, say, the conduct of the business?"

"No, no," said Mary, "it—it's about women—" Mac stared at her, but when she added "—about women working in the factory," he drew a breath of relief.

"Aye," he said, "I think I can promise to keep quiet about that."

"Isn't it true," she began, "that most of the machinery we use doesn't require a great deal of skill to run it?"

"We've a lot of automatics," acknowledged Mac. "Your grandfather's idea, Miss Mary. A grand man. He was one of the first to make the machine think instead of the operator."

"How long does it take to break in an ordinary man?"

"A few weeks is generally enough. It depends on the man and the tool."

Mary told him then what she had in her mind, and Mac didn't think much of it until she showed him the photographs. Even then he was "michty cautious" until he happened to turn to the picture of a munition factory in Glasgow where row after row of overalled women were doing the lathe work.

"Think of that now," said he; "in Glasga'!" As he looked, the frost left his eye. "A grand lot of lasses," he said and cleared his throat.

"If they can do it, we can do it, too—don't you think so?"

"Why not?" he asked. "For let me tell you this, Miss Mary. Those old countries are all grand countries—to somebody's way of thinking. But America is the grandest of them all, or they wouldn't keep coming here as fast as ships can bring them! What they can do, yes, we can do—and add something for good measure, if need be!"

"Well, that's it," said Mary, eagerly. "If we go into the war, we shall have to do the same as they are doing in Europe—let women do the factory work. And if it comes to that, I want Spencer & Son to be ready—to be the first to do it—to show the others the way!"

Mac nodded. "A bit of your grandfather, that," he thought with approval.

"So what I want you to do," she concluded, "is to make me up a list of machines that women can be taught to handle the easiest, and let me have it as soon as you can."

"I'll do that," he grimly nodded. "There's far too many vacant now."

"And remember, please, you are not to say anything. Because, you know, people would only laugh at the idea of a woman being able to do a man's work."

"I'm mute," he nodded again, and started for the door, his mouth buttoned very tightly indeed. But even while his hand was stretched out to reach the knob, he paused and then returned to the desk.

"Miss Mary," he said, "I'm an old man, and you're a young girl. I know nothing, mind you, but sometimes there are funny things going on in the world. And a man's not a fool. What I'm going to tell you now, I want you to remember it, but forget who told it to you. Trust nobody. Be careful. I can say no more."

"He means Uncle Stanley," thought Mary, uneasily, and a shadow fell upon the day. She was still troubled when another disturbing incident arose.

"I'll leave these papers in the desk here," she thought, taking her keys from her handbag. She unlocked the top drawer and was about to place the papers on top of those which already lay there, when suddenly she paused and her eyes opened wide.

On the top letter in her drawer—a grey tinted sheet—was a scattered mound of cigarette ash.

"Somebody's been here—snooping," she thought. "Somebody with a key to the desk. He must have had a cigarette in his hand when he shut the drawer, and the ashes jarred off without being noticed—"

Irresistibly her thoughts turned to Burdon Woodward, with his gold cigarette case and match box.

"It was he who gave me the keys," she thought.

She sighed. A sense of walking among pitfalls took possession of her. As you have probably often noticed, suspicion feeds upon suspicion, and as Mary walked through the outer office she felt that more than one pair of eyes were avoiding her. The old cashier kept his head buried in his ledger and nearly all the men were busy with their papers and books.

"Perhaps it's because I'm a woman," she thought. Ma'm Maynard's words arose with a new significance, "I tell you, Miss Mary, it has halways been so, and it halways will. Everything that lives has its own natural enemy—and a woman's natural enemy: eet is man!"

But Mary could still smile at that.

"Take Mr. MacPherson," she thought; "how is he my natural enemy? Or Judge Cutler? Or Archey Forbes? Or Wally Cabot?" She felt more normal then, but when these reflections had died away, she still occasionally felt her thoughts reverting to Mac's warning, the cigarette ash, the averted glances in the office.

The nest morning, though, she thought she had found the answer to the latter puzzle. She had hardly finished breakfast when Judge Cutler was announced, his hawk's eyes frowning and never a trace of his smile.

"Did you get your copy of the annual report?" he asked.

"Not yet," said Mary, somehow guessing what he meant. "Why?"

"I got mine in the mail this morning." He drew it from his pocket and his frown grew deeper. "Let's go in the den," he said; "we've got to talk this out."

It was the annual report of Spencer & Son's business and briefly stated, it showed an alarming loss for the preceding twelve months.

"Ah-ha!" thought Mary, "that's the reason they didn't look up yesterday.
They had seen this, and they felt ashamed."

"As nearly as I can make it out," said the judge, "there's too many improvements going on, and not enough business. We must do something to stop these big expenses, and find a way to get more bearings sold—"

He checked himself then and looked at Mary, much as Mac had looked the previous day, just before issuing his warning.

"Perhaps he's thinking of Uncle Stanley, too," thought Mary.

"Another bad feature is this," continued the judge, "the bank is getting too strong a hold on the company. We must stop that before it gets any worse."

"Why?" asked Mary, looking very innocent.

"Because it isn't good business."

"But Uncle Stanley is president of the bank. You don't think he'd do anything to hurt Spencer & Son; do you?"

The judge tapped his foot on the floor for a time, and then made a noise like a groan—as though he had teeth in his mind and one of them was being pulled.

"Many a time," he said, "I have tried to talk you out of your suspicions. But—if it was any other man than Stanley Woodward, I would say today that he was doing his best to—to—"

"To 'do' me?" suggested Mary, more innocent than ever.

"Yes, my dear—to do you! And another year's work like this wouldn't be far from having that result."

Curiously enough it was Mary's great idea that comforted her. Instead of feeling worried or apprehensive, she felt eager for action, her eyes shining at the thoughts which came to her.

"All right," she said, "we'll have a meeting in a day or two. I'll wait till I get my copy of the report."

Wally came that afternoon, and Mary danced with him—that is to say she danced with him until a freckle-faced apprentice came up from the factory with an envelope addressed in MacPherson's crabbed hand. Mary took one peep inside and danced no more.

"If the women can pick it up as quick as the men," she read, "I have counted 1653 places in this factory where they could be working in a few weeks time—that is, if the places were vacant. List enclosed. Respectfully. James O. MacPherson."

It was a long list beginning "346 automatics, 407 grinders—"

Mary studied it carefully, and then after telephoning to the factory, she called up Judge Cutler.

"I wish you would come down to the office in about half an hour," she said, "…. Directors' meeting. All right. Thank you."

"What was it dad used to call me sometimes—his 'Little Hustler'?" she thought. "If he could see, I'll bet that's what he would call me now."

As she passed through the hall she looked in the drawing room to tell Helen where she was going. Helen was sitting on a chaise lounge and Wally was bending over her, as though trying to get something out of her eye with the corner of a handkerchief.

"I don't see anything," Mary heard him saying.

"There must be something. It hurts dreadfully," said Helen.

Looking again, he lightly dabbed at the eye. "Oh!" breathed Helen.
"Don't, Wally!"

She took hold of his hand as though to stop him. Mary passed on without saying anything, her nose rather high in the air.

Half way down the hill she laughed at nothing in particular.

"Yes," she told herself. "Helen—in her own way—I guess that she's a little Hustler … too …!"

CHAPTER XVI

The meeting was held in Mary's office—the first conference of directors she had ever attended. By common consent, Uncle Stanley was chosen chairman of the board. Judge Cutler was appointed secretary.

Mary sat in her chair at the desk, her face nearly hidden by the flowers in the vase.

It didn't take the meeting long to get down to business.

"From last year's report," began the judge, "it is evident that we must have a change of policy."

"In what way?" demanded Uncle Stanley.

Whereupon they joined issue—the man of business and the man of law. If Mary had been paying attention she would have seen that the judge was slowly but surely getting the worst of it.

To stop improvements now would be inviting ruin—They had their hands on the top rung of the ladder now; why let go and fall to the bottom—? What would everybody think if those new buildings stayed empty—?

Uncle Stanley piled fact on fact, argument on argument.

Faint heart never won great fortune—As soon as the war was over, and it wouldn't be long now—Before long he began to dominate the conference, the judge growing more and more silent, looking more and more indecisive.

Through it all Mary sat back in her chair at the desk and said nothing, her face nearly hidden by the roses, but woman-like, she never forgot for a moment the things she had come there to do.

"What do you think, Mary?" asked the judge at last. "Do you think we had better try it a little longer and see how it works out?"

"No," said Mary quietly, "I move that we stop everything else but making bearings."

In vain Uncle Stanley arose to his feet, and argued, and reasoned, and sat down again, and brought his fist down on his knee, and turned a rich, brown colour. After a particularly eloquent period he caught a sight of Mary's face among the roses—calm, cool and altogether unmoved—and he stopped almost on the word.

"That's having a woman, in business," he bitterly told himself. "Might as well talk to the wind. Never mind … It may take a little longer—but in the end…."

Judge Cutler made a minute in the director's book that all work on improvements was to stop at once.

"And now," he said, "the next thing is to speed up the manufacture of bearings."

"Easily said," Uncle Stanley shortly laughed.

"There must be some way of doing it," persisted the judge, taking the argument on himself again. "Why did our earnings fall down so low last year?"

"Because I can manufacture bearings, but I can't manufacture men," reported Uncle Stanley. "We are over three hundred men short, and it's getting worse every day. Let me tell you what munition factories are paying for good mechanics—"

Mary still sat in her wicker chair, back of the flowers, and looked around at the paintings on the walls—of the Josiah Spencers who had lived and laboured in the past. "They all look quiet, as though they never talked much," she thought. "It seems so silly to talk, anyhow, when you know what you are going to do."

But still the argument across the desk continued, and again Uncle Stanley began to gain his point.

"So you see," he finally concluded, "it's just as I said a few minutes ago. I can manufacture bearings, but I can't manufacture men!"

From behind the roses then a patient voice spoke.

"You don't have to manufacture men. We don't need them."

Uncle Stanley gave the judge a look that seemed to say, "Listen to the woman of it! Lord help us men when we have to deal with women!" And aloud in quite a humouring tone he said, "We don't need men? Then who's to do the work?"

Mary moved the vase so she could have a good look at him.

"Women," she replied. "They can do the work. Yes, women," said she.

Again they looked at each other, those two, with the careful glance with which you might expect two duellists to regard each other—two duellists who had a premonition that one day they would surely cross their swords. And again Uncle Stanley was the first to look away.

"Women!" he thought. "A fine muddle there'll he!"

In fancy he saw the company's organization breaking down, its output decreasing, its product rejected for imperfections. Of course he knew that women were employed in textile mills and match-box factories and gum-and-glue places like that where they couldn't afford to employ men, and had no need for accuracy. But women at Spencer & Sons! Whose boast had always been its accuracy! Where every inch was divided into a thousand parts!

"She's hanging herself with her own rope," he concluded. "I'll say no more."

Mary turned to the judge.

"You might make a minute of that," she said.

Half turning, she chanced to catch a glimpse of Uncle Stanley's satisfaction.

"And you might say this," she quietly added, "that Miss Spencer was placed in charge of the women's department, with full authority to settle all questions that might arise."

"That's all?" asked Uncle Stanley.

"I think that's all this afternoon," she said.

He turned to the judge as one man to another, and made a sweeping gesture toward the portraits on the walls, now half buried in the shadows of approaching evening.

"I wonder what they would think of women working here?" he said in a significant tone.

Mary thought that over.

"I wonder what they would think of this?" she suddenly asked.

She switched on the electric light and as though by magic a soft white radiance flooded the room.

"Would they want to go back to candles?" she asked.

CHAPTER XVII

Later, the thing which Mary always thought of first was the ease with which the change was accomplished.

First of all she called in Archey Forbes and told him her plan.

"I'm going to make you chief of staff," she said; "that is—if you'd care for the place."

He coloured with pleasure—not quite as gorgeously as he once did—but quite enough to be noticeable.

"Anything I can do for you, Miss Mary?" he said.

"Then first we must find a place to train the women workers. One of those empty buildings would be best, I think. I'll give you a list of machines to be set in place."

The "school" was ready the following Monday morning. For "teachers" Mary had selected a number of elderly men whom she had picked for their quiet voices and obvious good nature. They were all expert machinists and had families.

On Saturday the following advertisement had appeared in the local paper:

A CALL FOR WOMEN

Women wanted in machine-shop to do men's work at men's wages for the duration of the war.

No experience necessary. Easier than washing, ironing, scrubbing or sewing. $21 a week and up.

Apply Monday morning, 8 o'clock.

JOSIAH SPENCER & SON, INC.

As you have guessed, Mary composed that advertisement. It hadn't passed without criticism.

"I don't think it's necessary to pay them as much as the men," Mac had suggested. "To say the least it's vera generous and vera unusual."

"Why shouldn't they get as much as the men if they are going to do men's work?" asked Mary. "Besides, I'm doing it for the men's sake, even more than for the women's."

Mac stared at that and buttoned his mouth very tightly.

"They have been all through that in Europe," she explained. "Don't you see? If a woman can do a man's work, and do it for less money, it brings down men's wages. Because who would hire a man at $21 a week after the war if they could get a woman to do the same work for $15?"

"You're richt," said Mac after a thoughtful pause. "I must pass that along. I know from myself that the men will grumble when they think the women are going to make as much money as themselves. But when they richtly understand it's for their own sake, too, they'll hush their noise."

Mary was one of the first at the factory on Monday.

"Won't I look silly, if nobody comes!" she had thought every time she woke in the night. But she needn't have worried. There was an argument in that advertisement, "Easier than washing, ironing, scrubbing or sewing," that appealed to many a feminine imagination, and when the fancy, thus awakened, played around the promising phrase "$21 a week—and up," hope presently turned to desire—and desire to resolution.

"We'll have to set up more machines," said Mary to Archey when she saw the size of her first class. And looking them over with a proudly beating heart she called out, "Good morning, everybody! Will you please follow me?"

From this point on, particularly, I like to imagine the eight Josiah Spencers who had gone before following the proceedings with ghostly steps and eyes that missed not a move—invisible themselves, but hearing all and saying nothing. And how they must have stared at each other as they followed that procession over the factory grounds, the last of the Spencers followed by a silent, winding train of women, like a new type of Moses leading her sisters into the promised land!

As Mary had never doubted for a moment, the women of New Bethel proved themselves capable of doing anything that the women of Europe had done; and it wasn't long before lines of feminine figures in Turkish overalls were bending over the repetition tools in the Spencer shops—starting, stopping, reversing gears, oiling bearings—and doing it all with that deftness and assurance which is the mark of the finished workman.

Indeed, if you had been near-sighted, and watching from a distance, you might have been pardoned for thinking that they were men—but if you looked closer you would have seen that each woman had a stool to sit on, when her work permitted, and if you had been there at half past ten and again at half past three, you would have seen a hand-cart going up and down the aisles, serving tea, coffee, cake and sandwiches.

Again at noon you would have seen that the women had a rest room of their own where they could eat their lunch in comfort—a rest room with couches, and easy chairs, and palms and flowers, and a piano, and a talking machine, and a floor that you could dance on, if you felt like dancing immediately before or after lunch. And how the eight Josiahs would have stared at that happy, swaying throng in its Turkish overalls—especially on Friday noon just after the pay envelopes had been handed around!

Meanwhile the school was adding new courses of study. The cleverest operators were brought back to learn how to run more complicated machines. Turret lathe hands, oscillating grinders, inspectors were graduated. In short, by the end of March, Mary was able to report to another special meeting of the board of directors that where Spencer & Son had been 371 men short on the first of the year, every empty place was now taken and a waiting list was not only willing but eager to start upon work which was easier than washing, ironing, scrubbing or sewing, and was guaranteed to pay $21 a week—and up!

This declaration might be said to mark an epoch in the Spencer factory.
Its exact date was March 31st, 1917.

On April 2nd of the same year, another declaration was made, never to be forgotten by mankind.

Upon that date, as you will recall, the Sixty-fifth Congress of the
United States of America declared war upon the Imperial German
Government.

CHAPTER XVIII

Wally was the first to go.

On a wonderful moonlight night in May he called to bid Mary good-bye. He had received a commission in the aviation department and was already in uniform—as charming and romantic a figure as the eyes of love could ever wish to see.

But Mary couldn't see him that way—not even when she tried—making a bold little experiment with herself and feeling rather sorry, if anything, that her heart beat no quicker and not a thrill ran over her, when her hand rested for a moment on Wally's shoulder.

"I wonder if I'm different from other girls," she thought. "Or is it because I have other things to think about? Perhaps if I had nothing else on my mind, I'd dream of love as much as anybody, until it amounted to—what do they call it?—a fixed idea?—that thing which comes to people when they keep turning the same thing over and over in their minds, till they can't get it out of their thoughts?"

But you mustn't think that Mary didn't care that Wally was going—perhaps never to return. She knew that she liked him—she knew she would miss him. And when, just before he left, he sang The Spanish Cavalier in that stirring tenor which always made her scalp tingle and her breast feel full, she turned her face to the moonlit scene outside and lived one of those minutes which are so filled with beauty and the stirring of the spirit that pleasure becomes poignant and brings a feeling which isn't far from pain.

"I'm off to the war—to the war I must go,
To fight for my country and you, dear;
But if I should fall, in vain I would call
The blessing of my country and you, dear—"

All their eyes were wet then, even Wally's—moved by the sadness of his own song. Aunt Patty, Aunt Cordelia and Helen wiped their tears away unashamed, but Mary tried to hide hers.

And when the time came for his departure, Aunt Cordelia kissed him and breathed in his ear a prayer, and Aunt Patty kissed him and prayed for him, and Helen kissed him, too, her arms tight around his neck. But when it came to Mary's turn, she looked troubled and gazed down at her hand which he was holding in both of his.

"Come on out for a minute," he whispered, gently leading her.

They went out under the moon.

"Aren't you going to kiss me, too?" he asked.

Mary thought it over.

"If I kissed you, I would love you," she said, and tried to hide her tears no more.

He soothed her then in the immemorial manner, and soon she was tranquil again.

"Good-bye, Wally," she said.

"Good-bye, dear. You'll promise to be here when I come back?"

"I shall be here."

"And you won't let anybody run away with you until I've had another chance?"

"Don't worry."

She watched the light of his car diminish until it vanished over the crest of the hill. A gathering sense of loneliness began to assail her, but with it was a feeling of freedom and purpose—the feeling that she was being left alone, clear of distraction, to fight her own fight and achieve her own destiny.

Archey Forbes was the next to go. His going marked a curious incident.

He had applied for a commission in the engineers, and his record and training being good, it wasn't long before he received the beckoning summons of Mars.

Upon the morning of the day when he was to leave New Bethel, he went to the factory to say good-bye. The one he wished to see the most, however, was the first one he missed.

"Miss Mary's around the factory somewhere," said a stenographer.

Another spoke up, a dark girl with a touch of passion in her smile. "I think Mr. Burdon is looking for her, too."

Archey missed neither the smile nor the tone—and liked neither of them.

"He'll get in trouble yet," he thought, "going out with those girls," and his frown grew as he thought of Burdon's daily contact with Mary.

"I'll see if I can find her," he told himself after he had waited a few minutes; and stepping out into the full beauty of the June morning, he crossed the lawn toward the factory buildings.

On one of the trees a robin sang and watched him with its head atilt. A bee hummed past him and settled on a trellis of roses. In the distance murmured the falls, with their soothing, drowsy note.

"These are the days, when I was a boy, that I used to dream of running away and seeing the world and having great adventures," thought Archey, his frown forgotten. He didn't consciously put it into words, but deep from his mind arose a feeling of the coming true of great dreams—of running away from the humdrum of life, of seeing the world, of taking a part in the greatest adventure ever staged by man.

"What a day!" he breathed, lifting his face to the sun. "Oh, Lord, what a day!"

It was indeed a day—one of those days which seem to have wine in the air—one of those days when old ambitions revive and new ones flower into splendour. Mary, for instance, on her way to the machine shop, was busy with thoughts of a nursery where mothers could bring their children who were too young to go to school.

"Plenty of sun," she thought, "and rompers for them all, and sand piles, and toys, and certified milk, and trained nurses—" And while she dreamed she hummed to herself in approval, and wasn't aware that the air she hummed was the Spanish Cavalier—and wasn't aware that Burdon Woodward was near until she suddenly awoke from her dream and found they were face to face.

He turned and walked with her.

The wine of the day might have been working in Burdon, too, for he hadn't walked far with Mary before he was reminding her more strongly than ever, of Steerforth in David Copperfield—Baffles in the Amateur Cracksman. Indeed, that morning, listening to his drawl and looking up at the dark handsome face with its touch of recklessness, the association of Mary's ideas widened.

M'sieur Beaucaire, just from the gaming table—Don Juan on the Nevski Prospekt—Buckingham on his way to the Tuileries—they all might have been talking to her, warming her thoughts not so much by what they said as by what they might say, appealing to her like a romance which must, however, be read to the end if you wish to know the full story.

They were going through an empty corridor when it happened. Burdon, drawling away as agreeably as ever, gently closed his fingers around Mary's hand.

"I might have known," she thought in a little panic. "It's my own fault."
But when she tried to pull her hand away, her panic grew.

"No, no," said Burdon, laughing low, his eyes more reckless than ever, "you might tell—if I stopped now. But you'll never tell a soul on earth—if I kiss you."

Even while Mary was struggling, her head held down, she couldn't help thinking, "So that's the way he does it," and felt, I think, as feels the fly who has walked into the parlour. The next moment she heard a sharp voice, "Here—stop that!" and running steps approaching.

"I think it was Archey," she thought, as she made her escape, her knees shaking, her breath coming fast. She knew it was, ten minutes later, when Archey found her in the office—knew it from the way he looked at her and the hesitation of his speech—but it wasn't until they were shaking hands in parting that she saw the cut on his knuckles.

"You've hurt yourself," she said. "Wait; I have some adhesive plaster."

Even then she didn't guess.

"How did you do it?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't know—"

Mary's glance suddenly deepened into tenderness, and when Archey left a few minutes later, he walked as one who trod the clouds, his head among the stars.

An hour passed, and Mary looked in Uncle Stanley's office. Burdon's desk was closed as though for the day.

"Where's Burdon?" she asked.

"He wasn't feeling very well," said Uncle Stanley after a long look at his son's desk, "—a sort of headache. I told him he had better go home."

And every morning for the rest of the week, when she saw Uncle Stanley, she gave him such an innocent look and said, "How's Burdon's head this morning? Any better?"

Uncle Stanley began to have the irritable feelings of an old mouse in the hands of a young kitten.

"That's the worst of having women around,"—he scowled to himself—"they are worse than—worse than—worse than—"

Searching for a simile, he thought of a flash of lightning, a steel hoop lying on its side, a hornet's nest—but none of these quite suited him. He made a helpless gesture.

"Hang 'em, you never know what they're up to next!" said he.

CHAPTER XIX

For that matter, there were times in the next two years when Mary herself hardly knew what she was up to next, for if ever a girl suddenly found herself in deep waters, it was the last of the Spencers. Strangely enough—although I think it is true of many of life's undertakings—it wasn't the big things which bothered her the most.

She soon demonstrated—if it needed any demonstration—that what the women of France and Britain had done, the women of New Bethel could do. At each call of the draft, more and more men from Spencer & Son obeyed the beckoning finger of Mars, and more and more women presently took their places in the workshops. That was simply a matter of enlarging the training school, of expanding the courses of instruction.

No; it wasn't the big things which ultimately took the bloom from Mary's cheeks and the smile from her eyes.

It was the small things that worried her—things so trifling in themselves that it would sound foolish to mention them—the daily nagging details, the gathering load of responsibility upon her shoulders, the indifference which she had to dispel, the inertia that had to be overcome, the ruffled feelings to be soothed, the squabbles to be settled, the hidden hostilities which she had to contend against in her own office—and yet pretend she never noticed them.

Indeed, if it hadn't been for the recompensing features, Mary's enthusiasm would probably have become chilled by experience, and dreams have come to nothing. But now and then she seemed to sense in the factory a gathering impetus of efficient organization, the human gears working smoothly for a time, the whole machine functioning with that beauty of precision which is the dream of every executive.

That always helped Mary whenever it happened.

And the second thing which kept her going was to see the evidences of prosperity and contentment which the women on the payroll began to show—their new clothes and shoes—the hopeful confidence of their smiles—the frequency with which the furniture dealers' wagons were seen in the streets around the factory, the sounds of pianos and phonographs in the evening and, better than all, the fact that on pay day at Spencer & Sons, the New Bethel Savings Bank stayed open till half past nine at night—and didn't stay open for nothing!

"If things could only keep going like this when the war ends, too," breathed Mary one day. "…I'm sure there must be some way … some way…."

For the second time in her life (as you will presently see) she was like a blind-folded player with arms outstretched, groping for her destiny and missing it by a hair.

"Still," she thought, "when the men come back, I suppose most of the women will have to go. Of course, the men must have their places back, but you'd think there was some way … some way…."

In fancy she saw the women going back to the kitchens, back to the old toil from which they had escaped.

"It's silly, of course," she thoughtfully added, "and wicked, too, to say that men and women are natural enemies. But—the way some of the men act—you'd almost think they believed it…."

She thought of Uncle Stanley and has son. At his own request, Burdon had been transferred to the New York office and Mary seldom saw him, but something told her that he would never forgive her for the morning when he had to go home—"with a sort of a headache."

"And Uncle Stanley, too," she thought, her lip quivering as a wave of loneliness swept over her and left her with a feeling of emptiness. "If I were a man, he wouldn't dare to act as he does. But because I'm a girl, I can almost see him hoping that something will happen to me—"

If that, indeed, was Uncle Stanley's hope, he didn't have to wait much longer.

The armistice was signed, you will remember, in the first week of November, 1918. Two months later Mary showed Judge Cutler the financial statement for the preceding year.

"Another year like this," said the judge, "and, barring strikes and accidents, Spencer & Son will be on its feet again, stronger than ever! My dear girl," he said, rising and holding out his hand, "I must congratulate you!"

Mary arose, too, her hand outstretched, but something in her manner caught the judge's attention.

"What's the matter, Mary?" he asked. "Don't you feel well?"

"Men—women," she said, unsteadily smiling and giving him her hand, "they ought to be—now—natural partners—not—not—"

With a sigh she lurched forward and fell—a tired little creature—into his arms.

CHAPTER XX

Mary had a bad time of it the next few weeks. More than once her face seemed turned toward the Valley of the Shadow. But gradually health and strength returned, although it wasn't until April that she was anything like herself again.

She liked to sit—sometimes for hours at a time—reading, thinking, dreaming—and when she was strong enough to go outside she would walk among the flowers, and look at the birds and the budding trees, and draw deep breaths as she watched the glory of the sunset appearing and disappearing in the western sky.

Helen occasionally walked and sat with her—but not often. Helen's time was being more and more taken up by the younger set at the Country Club. She came home late, humming snatches of the latest dances and talking of the conquests she had made, telling Mary of the men who would dance with no one else, of the compliments they had paid her, of the things they had told her, of the competition to bring her home. One night, it appears, they had an old-fashioned country party at the club, and Helen was in high glee at the number of letters she had received in the game of post office.

"You mean to say they all kissed you?" asked Mary.

"You bet they did! Good and hard! That's what they were there for!"

Mary thought that over.

"It doesn't sound nice to me, somehow," she said at last. "It sounds—oh,
I don't know—common."

"That's what the girls thought who didn't get called," laughed Helen.

She arranged her hair in front of the mirror, pulling it down over her forehead till it looked like a golden turban. "Oh, who do you think was there tonight?" she suddenly interrupted herself.

Mary shook her head.

"Burdon Woodward—as handsome as ever. Yes, handsomer, I think, if he could be. He asked after you. I told him you were nearly better."

"Then he must be down at the factory every day," thought Mary. But the thought moved her only a little. Whether or not it was due to her illness, she seemed to have undergone a reaction in regard to the factory. Everything was going on well, Judge Cutler sometimes told her. As the men returned from service, the women were giving up their places.

"Whatever you do," he always concluded, "don't begin worrying about things down there. If you do, you'll never get well."

"I'm not worrying," she told him, and once she added, "It seems ever so long ago, somehow—that time we had down there."

As the spring advanced, her thoughts took her further than ever from their old paths. Instead of thinking of something else (as she used to do), when Helen was telling of her love affairs, Mary began to listen to them—and even to sit up till Helen returned from the club. One night, as Helen was chatting of a young an from Boston who had teased her by following her around until every one was calling him "Helen's little lamb," Mary gradually became aware of an elusive scent in the room.

"Cigarettes," she thought, "and—and raspberry jam—!" She waited until her cousin paused for breath and then, "Did Burdon Woodward ride home with you tonight?" she asked.

"With Doris and me," nodded Helen, smiling at herself in the mirror. "He told us he went over with some of the boys, but he wanted to go home civilized."

Nothing more was said, but a few mornings later, as Helen sat at breakfast reading her mail, Mary was sure she recognized Burdon's dashing handwriting. A vague sense of uneasiness passed over her, but this was soon forgotten when she went to the den to look at her own mail.

On the top of the pile was a letter addressed to her father.

"Rio de Janeiro," breathed Mary, reading the post-mark. "Why, that's where the cable came from!"

She opened the letter…. It was signed "Paul."

"Dear Sir (it began)

"This isn't begging. I am through with that. When you paid no attention to my cable, I said, 'Never again!' You might like to know that I buried my wife and two youngest that time. It hurt then, but I can see now that they were lucky.

"I have one daughter left—twelve years old. She's just at the age when she ought to be looked after. This is her picture. She's a pretty girl, and a good girl, but fond of fun and good times.

"I've done my best, but I'm down and out—tired—through. I guess it's up to you what sort of a granddaughter you want. There's a school near here where she could go and be brought up right. It won't cost much. You can send the money direct—if you want the right sort of a granddaughter.

"If you want the other kind, all you have to do is to forget it. The crowd I go with aren't good for her.

"Anyway I enclose the card and rates and references of the school. You see they give the consuls' names.

"If you decide yes, you want your granddaughter to have a chance, write a letter to the name and address below. That's me. Then write the school, sending check for one year and say it is for the daughter of the name and address below. That is the name I am known by here.

"I'm sorry for everything, but of course it's too late now. The truest thing in the world is this: As you make your bed, so you've got to lie in it. I made mine wrong, but you couldn't help it. I wouldn't bother you now except for Rosa's sake.

"Your prodigal son who is eating husks now,

"PAUL."

Mary looked at the photograph—a pretty child with her hair over her shoulders and a smile in her eyes.

"You poor little thing," she breathed, "and to think you're my niece—and I'm your aunt … Aunt Mary," she thoughtfully repeated, and for the first time she realized that youth is not eternal and that years go swiftly by.

"Life's the strangest thing," she thought. "It's only a sort of an accident that I'm not in her place, and she's not in mine…. Perhaps I sha'n't have any children of my own—ever—" she dreamed, "and if I don't—it will be nice to think that I did something—for this one—"

For a moment the chill of caution went over her.

"Suppose it isn't really Paul," she thought. "Suppose—it's some sharper.
Perhaps that's why dad never wrote him—"

But an instinct, deeper than anything which the mind can express, told her that the letter rang true and had no false metal in it.

"Or suppose," she thought, "if he knows dad is dead—suppose he turns up and makes trouble for everybody—"

Wally's story returned to her memory. "There was an accident out West—somebody killed. Anyhow he was blamed for it—so he could never come back or they'd get him—"

"That agrees with his living under this Russian name," nodded Mary. "Anyhow, I'm sure there's nothing to fear in doing a good action—for a child like this—"

She propped the picture on her desk and after a great deal of dipping her pen in the ink, she finally began—

"Dear Sir:

"I have opened your letter to my father, Josiah Spencer. He has been dead three years. I am his daughter.

"It doesn't seem right that such a nice girl as Rosa shouldn't have every chance to grow up good and happy. So I am writing the school you mentioned, and sending them the money as you suggest.

"She will probably need some clothes, as they always look at a girl's clothes so when she goes to school. I therefore enclose something for that.

"Trusting that everything will turn out well, I am

"Yours sincerely,

"MARY SPENCER.

"P.S. I would like Rosa to write and tell me how she gets on at school."

She wrote the school next and when that was done she sat back in her chair and looked out of the window at the birds and the flowers and the bees that flew among the flowers.

"What a queer thing it is—love, or whatever they call it," she thought. "The things it has done to people—right in this house! I guess it's like fire—a good servant but a bad master—"

She thought of what it had done to Josiah—and to Josiah's son. She thought of what it had done to Ma'm Maynard, what it was doing to Helen, how it had left Aunt Cordelia and Aunt Patty untouched.

"It's like some sort of a fever," she told herself. "You never know whether you're going to catch it or not—or when you're going to catch, it—or what it's going to do to you—"

She walked to the window and rather unsteadily her hand arose to her breast.

"I wonder if I shall ever catch it…." she thought. "I wonder what it will do to me…!"

CHAPTER XXI

Archey Forbes came back in the beginning of May and the first call he made was to the house on the hill. He had brought with him a collection of souvenirs—a trench-made ring, shrapnel fragments of curious shapes, the inevitable helmet and a sword handle with a piece of wire attached.

"It was part of our work once," he said, "to find booby traps and make them harmless. This was in a barn, looking as though some one had tried to hide his sword in the hay. It looked funny to me, so I went at it easy and found the wire connected to a fuse. There was enough explosive to blow up the barn and everybody around there, but it wouldn't blow up a hill of bears when we got through with it."

He coloured a little through his bronze. "I thought you might like these things," he awkwardly continued.

"Like them? I'd love them!" said Mary, her eyes sparkling.

"I brought them for you."

They were both silent for a time, looking at the souvenirs, but presently their glances met and they smiled at each other.

"Of course you're going back to the factory," she said; and when he hesitated she continued, "I shall rely on you to let me know how things are going on."

Again he coloured a little beneath his bronze and Mary found herself watching it with an indefinable feeling of satisfaction. And after he was gone and she was carrying the souvenirs to the den, she also found herself singing a few broken bars from the Blue Danube.

"Is that you singing!" shouted Helen from the library.

"Trying to."

Helen came hurrying as though to see a miracle, for Mary couldn't sing.
"Oh—oh!" she said, her eyes falling on the helmet. "Who sent it? Wally
Cabot?"

"No; Archey Forbes brought it."

"Oh-ho!" said Helen again. "Now I see-ee-ee!"

But if she did, she saw more than Mary.

"Perhaps she thinks I'm in love with him," she thought, and though the reflection brought a pleasant sense of disturbance with it, it wasn't long before she was shaking her head.

"I don't know what it is," she decided at last, "but I'm sure I'm not in love with him."

As nearly as I can express it, Mary was in love with love, and could no more help it than she could help the crease in her chin or the dreaminess of her eyes. If Archey had had the field to himself, her heart might soon have turned to him as unconsciously and innocently as a flower turns its petals to the sun. But the day after Archey returned, Wally Cabot came back and he, too, laid his souvenirs at Mary's feet.

It was the same Wally as ever.

He had also brought a piece of old lace for Aunt Cordelia, a jet necklace for Aunt Patty, a prison-camp brooch for Helen. All afternoon he held them with tales of his adventures in the air, rolling up his sleeve to show them a scar on his arm, and bending his head down so they could see where a German ace had nicked a bit of his hair out.

More than once Mary felt her breath come faster, and when Aunt Cordelia invited him to stay to dinner and he chanced to look at her, she gave a barely perceptible signal "Yes," and smiled to herself at the warmth of his acceptance.

"I'll telephone mother," he said, briskly rising. "Where's the phone,
Mary? I forget the way."

She arose to show him.

"Let's waltz out," he laughed. "Play something, Helen. Something lively and happy…."

It was a long time before Mary went to sleep that night. The moon was nearly full and shone in her windows, a stream of its rays falling on her bed and bringing to her those immortal waves of fancy which begin where the scent of flowers stop, and end where immortal and melancholy music begins. Unbidden tears came to her eyes, though she couldn't have told you why, and again a sense of the fleeting of time disturbed her.

"Aunt Mary …" In a few years she would be old, and her hair would be white like Aunt Patty's…. And in a few years more….

But even as Wally Cabot kept her from thinking too much of Archey Forbes, so now Archey unconsciously revenged himself and kept her thoughts from centring too closely around Wally Cabot.

Archey called the next afternoon and Mary sat on the veranda steps with him, while Helen made hay with Wally on a tête-à-tête above.

The few women who were left in the factory were having things made unpleasant for them: that was what Archey had come to tell her. Their canteen had been stopped; the day nursery discontinued; the nurses discharged.

"Of course they are not needed there any longer, so far as that is concerned," concluded Archey, "but they certainly helped us out of a hole when we did need them, and it doesn't seem right now to treat them rough."

At hearing this, a guilty feeling passed over Mary and left her cheeks warm. "They'll think I've deserted them," she thought.

"Well, haven't you?" something inside her asked.

Some of her old dreams returned to her mind, as though to mock her. She was going to be a new Moses once, leading her sisters out of the house of bondage. Woman was to have things different. Old drudgeries were to be lifted from her shoulders. The night was over. The dawn was at hand.

"Well, what can I do?" she thought uneasily.

"You can stop them from being treated roughly," something inside her answered.

"I can certainly do that," she nodded to herself. "I'll telephone Uncle
Stanley right away."

But Uncle Stanley was out, and Mary was going riding with Wally that afternoon. So she wrote a hurried note and left it at the factory as they passed by.

"Dear Uncle Stanley," it read,

"Please see that every courtesy and attention is shown, the women who are still working. We may need them again some day.

"Sincerely,

"MARY."

"Now!" she said to Wally, and they started on their ride. And, oh, but that was a ride!

The afternoon was perfect, the sun warm but not hot, the air crystal clear. It had showered the night before and the world, in its spring dress, looked as though it had been washed and spruced for their approval.