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 pa.s.sed 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.