The more she thought about it, the warmer she grew; and the higher her indignation arose, the more remote were her thoughts of Wally--Wally with his greatest adventure that was ever lived--Wally with his sweetest story ever told. She looked at the hands of the two women below her and saw three wedding rings.

"The roses and lilies didn't last long with them," thought Mary grimly.

"Oh, I'm sure it's all wrong, somehow.... I'm sure there's some way that things could be made happier for women...."

She interrupted the quartette, in her voice a note which Wally had never heard before and which made him exchange a glance with Helen.

"Now first of all," she said, "just how badly do you four women need your pay envelopes every week?"

They told her, especially the one who had been crying, and who now started crying again.

"Wait here a minute, please," said Mary, that note in her voice more marked than before. She arose and went in the house, and Wally guessed that she had gone to telephone the factory. For a while they couldn't hear her, except when she said "I want to speak to Mr. Burdon Woodward--yes--Mr. Burdon Woodward--"

They could faintly hear her talking then, but toward the end her voice came full and clear.

"I want you to set them to work again! They are coming right back! Yes, the four of them! I shall be at the office in the morning. That's all.

Good-bye."

She came out, then, like a young Aurora riding the storm.

"You're to go right back to your work," she said, and in a gentler voice, "Wally, can I speak to you, please?"

He followed her into the house and when he came out alone ten minutes later, he drew a deep sigh and sat down again by Helen, a picture of utter dejection.

"Never mind, Wally," she said, and patted his arm.

"I can't make her out at times," he sighed.

"No, and n.o.body else," she whispered.

"What do you think, Helen?" he asked. "Don't you think that love is the greatest thing in life?"

"Why, of course it is," she whispered, and patted his arm again.

CHAPTER XXIII

In spite of her brave words the day before, when Mary left the house for the office in the morning, a feeling of uncertainty and regret weighed upon her, and made her pensive. More than once she cast a backward look at the things she was leaving behind--love, the joys of youth, the pleasure places of the world to see, romance, heart's ease, and "skies for ever blue."

At the memory of Wally's phrase she grew more thoughtful than before.

"But would they be for ever blue?" she asked herself. "I guess every woman in the world expects them to be, when she marries. Yes, and they ought to be, too, an awful lot more than they are. Oh, I'm sure there's something wrong somewhere.... I'm, sure here's something wrong...."

She thought of the four women standing in the driveway by the side of the house, looking lost and bewildered, and the old sigh of pity arose in her heart.

"The poor women," she thought. "They didn't look as though the sweetest story ever told had lasted long with them--"

She had reached the crest of the hill and the factory came to her view. A breeze was rising from the river and as she looked down at the scene below, as her forbears had looked so many times before her, she felt as a sailor from the north might feel when after drifting around in drowsy tropic seas, he comes at last to his own home port and feels the clean wind whip his face and blow away his languor.

The old familiar office seemed to be waiting for her, the pictures regarding her as though they were saying "Where have you been, young lady? We began to think you had gone." Through the window sounded the old symphony, the roar of the falls above the hum of the shops, the choruses and variations of well-nigh countless tools, each having its own particular note or song.

Mary's eyes shone bright.

Gone, she found, were her feeling of uncertainty, her sighs of regret.

Here at last was something real, something definite, something n.o.ble and great in the work of the world.

"And all mine," she thought with an almost pa.s.sionate feeling of possession. "All mine--mine--mine--"

Archey was the first to come in, and it only needed a glance to see that Archey was unhappy.

"I'm afraid the men in the automatic room are shaping for trouble," he said, as soon as their greetings were over.

"What's the matter with them?"

"It's about those four women--the four who came back."

Mary's eyes opened wide.

"There has been quite a lot of feeling," he continued, "and when the four women turned up this morning again and started work, the men went out and held a meeting in the locker room. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the automatic hands went on strike."

"You mean to say they will go on strike before they will work with their own wives and sisters?"

"That's the funny part of it. As far as I can find out, the trouble wasn't started by our own men--but by strangers--men from New York and Boston--professional agitators, they look like to me--plenty of money and plenty of talk and clever workmen, too. I don't know just how far they've gone, but--"

The office boy appeared in the doorway and he, too, looked worried.

"There's a committee to see you, Miss Spencer," he said, "a bunch from the lathe shops."

"Have they seen Mr. Woodward?"

"No'm. He referred them to you."

"All right, Joe. Send them in, please."

The committee filed in and Archey noted that they were still wearing their street clothes. "Looks bad," he told himself.

There were three men, two of them strangers to Mary, but the third she recognized as one of the teachers in her old "school"--a thoughtful looking man well past middle age, with a long grey moustache and reflective eyes. "Mr. Edsol, isn't it?" she asked.

"Yes'm," he solemnly replied. "That's me."

She looked at the other two. The first had the alert glance and actions which generally mark the orator, the second was a dark, heavy man who never once stopped frowning.

"Miss Spencer," immediately began the spokesman--he who looked like the orator--"we have been appointed a committee by the automatic shop to tell you that we do not believe in the dilution of labour by women. Unless the four women who are working in our department are laid off at once, the men in our shop will quit."

"Just a moment, please," said Mary, ringing. "Joe, will you please tell Mr. Woodward, Sr., that I would like to see him?"