It sometimes seems to me that the old saying, "History repeats itself,"
is one of the truest ever written. At least history repeated itself in
the case of the grinders.
Before the week was over, the places left vacant by the men had been
filled by women, and the nursery and kindergarten had proved to be
unqualified successes.
Many of the details I will reserve till later, including the growth of
the canteen, the vanishing mirror, an improvement in overalls, to say
nothing of daffodils and daisies and Mrs. Kelly's drum. And though some
of these things may sound peculiar at first, you will soon see that they
were all repetitions of history. They followed closely after things that
had already been done by other women in other places, and were only
adopted by Mary first because they added human touches to a rather
serious business, and second because they had proved their worth
elsewhere.
Before going into these affairs, however, I must tell you about the
reporters.
The day the grinders went on strike, a local correspondent sent a story
to his New York paper. It wasn't a long story, but the editor saw
possibilities in it. He gave it a heading, "Good-bye, Man, Says She.
Woman Owner of Big Machine Shop Replaces Men With Women." He also sent a
special writer and an artist to New Bethel to get a story for the Sunday
edition.
Other editors saw the value of that "Good-bye, Man" idea and they also
sent reporters to the scene. They came; they saw; they interviewed; and
almost before Mary knew what was happening, New Bethel and Spencer & Son
were on their way to fame.
Some of the stories were written from a serious point of view, others in
a lighter vein, but all of them seemed to reflect the opinion that a
rather tremendous question was threatening--a question that was bound to
come up for settlement sooner or later, but which hadn't been expected so
soon.
"Is Woman Really Man's Equal?" That was the gist of the problem. Was her
equality theoretical--or real? Now that she had the ballot and could no
longer be legislated against, could she hold her own industrially on
equal terms with man? Or, putting it as briefly as possible, "Could she
make good?"
Some of these articles worried Mary at first, and some made her smile,
and after reading others she wanted to run away and hide. Judge Cutler
made a collection of them, and whenever he came to a good one, he showed
it to Mary.
"I wish they would leave us alone," she said one day.
"I don't," said the judge seriously. "I'm glad they have turned the
spotlight on."
"Why?"
"Because with so much publicity, there's very little chance of rough
work. Of course the men here at home wouldn't do anything against their
own women folks, but quite a few outsiders are coming in, and if they
could work in the dark, they might start a whisper, 'Anything to win!'"
Mary thought that over, and somehow the sun didn't shine so brightly for
the next few minutes. Ma'm Maynard's old saying arose to her mind:
"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!"
"No, sir, I don't believe it!" Mary told herself. "And I never shall
believe it, either!"
The next afternoon Judge Cutler brought her an editorial entitled, "We
Shall See."
"The women of New Bethel (it read) are trying an experiment which,
carried to its logical conclusion, may change industrial history.
"Perhaps industrial history needs a change. It has many dark pages where
none but man has written.
"If woman is the equal of man, industrially speaking, she is bound to
find her natural level. If she is not the equal of man, the New Bethel
experiment will help to mark her limitations.
"Whatever the outcome, the question needs an answer and those who claim
that she is unfitted for this new field should be the most willing to let
her prove it.
"By granting them the suffrage, we have given our women equal rights.
Unless for demonstrated incapacity, upon what grounds shall we now deny
them equal opportunities?
"The New Bethel experiment should be worked out without hard feeling or
rancour on either side.
"Can a woman do a man's work?
"Let us watch and we shall see."
Mary read it twice.
"I like that," she said. "I wish everybody in town could see that."
"Just what I thought," said the judge. "What do you say if we have it
printed in big type, and pasted on the bill-boards?"
They had it done.
The day after the bills were posted, Archey went around to see how they
were being received.
"It was a good idea," he told Mary the next morning, but she noticed that
he looked troubled and absent-minded, as though his thoughts weren't in
his words.
"What's the matter, Archey?" she quietly asked.
"Oh, I don't know," he said, and with the least possible touch of
irritation he added, "Sometimes I think it's because I don't like him.
Everything that counts against him sticks--and I may have been mistaken
anyway--"
"It's something about Burdon," thought Mary, and in the same quiet voice
as before she said,
"What is it, Archey?"
"Well," he said, hesitating, "I went out after dinner last night--to see
if they were reading the bill-boards. I thought I'd walk down Jay
Street--that's where the strikers have their headquarters. I was walking
along when all at once I thought I saw Burdon's old car turning a corner
ahead of me.
"It stopped in front of Repetti's pool-room. Two men came out and got in.
"A little while later I was speaking to one of our men and he said some
rough actors were drifting in town and he didn't like the way they were
talking. I asked him where these men were making their headquarters and
he said, 'Repetti's Pool Room.'"
Mary thought that over.
"Mind you, I wouldn't swear it was Burdon's old car," said Archey, more
troubled than before. "I can only tell you I'm sure of it--and I might be
mistaken at that. And even if it was Burdon, he'd only say that he had
gone there to try to keep the strike from spreading--yes, and he might be
right at that," he added, desperately trying to be fair, "but--well, he
worries me--that's all."
He was worrying Mary, too, although for a different reason.
With increasing frequency, Helen was coming home from the Country Club
unconsciously scented with that combination of cigarette smoke and
raspberry jam. Burdon had a new car, a swift, piratical craft which had
been built to his order, and sometimes when he called at the house on the
hill for Helen, Mary amused herself by thinking that he only needed a
little flag-pole and a Jolly Roger--a skirted coat and a feathered
hat--and he would be the typical younger son of romance, scouring the
main in search of Spanish gold.
Occasionally when he rolled to the door, Wally's car was already there,
for Wally--after an absence--was again coming around, pale and in need of
sympathy, singing his tenor songs to Helen's accompaniment and with
greater power of pathos than ever, especially when he sang the sad ones
at Mary's head--
"There in the churchyard, crying, a grave I se-ee-ee
Nina, that sweet dove flying was thee-ee-ee, was thee--"
"Ah, I have sighed for rest--"
"--And if she willeth to destroy me
I can die.... I can die...."
After Wally had moved them all to a feeling of imminent tears, he would
hover around Helen with a vague ambition of making her cousin jealous--a
proceeding which didn't bother Mary at all.
But she did worry about the growing intimacy between Helen and Burdon
and, one evening when Helen was driving her up to the house from the
factory, Mary tried to talk to her.
"If I were you, Helen," she said, "I don't think I'd go around with
Burdon Woodward quite so much--or come to the office to see him quite so
often."
Helen blew the horn, once, twice and again.
"No, really, dear, I wouldn't," continued Mary. "Of course you know he's
a terrible flirt. Why he can't even leave the girls at the office alone."
Quite unconsciously Helen adopted the immemorial formula.
"Burdon Woodward has always acted to me like a perfect gentleman," said
she.
"Of course he has, dear. If he hadn't, I know you wouldn't have gone out
with him last night, for instance. But he has such a reckless, headstrong
way with him. Suppose last night, instead of coming home, he had turned
the car toward Boston or New York, what would you have done then?"
"Don't worry. I could have stopped him."
"Stopped him? How could you, if he were driving very fast?"
"Oh, it's easy enough to stop a car," said Helen. "One of the girls at
school showed me." Leaning over, she ran her free hand under the
instrument board.
"Feel these wires back of the switch," she said. "All you have to do is
to reach under quick and pull one loose--just a little tug like this--and
you can stop the wildest man, and the wildest car on earth.... See?"
In the excitement of her demonstration she tugged the wire too hard. It
came loose in her hand and the engine stopped as though by magic.
"It's a good thing we are up to the house," she laughed. "You needn't
look worried. Robert can fix it in a minute."
It wasn't that, though, which troubled Mary.
"Think of her knowing such a thing!" she was saying to herself. "How her
mind must run at times!"
But of course she couldn't voice a thought like that.
"All the same, Helen," she said aloud, "I wouldn't go out with him so
much, if I were you. People will begin to notice it, and you know the way
they talk."
Helen tossed her head, but in her heart she knew that her cousin was
right--a knowledge which only made her the more defiant. Yes ...people
were beginning to notice it....
The Saturday afternoon before, when Burdon was taking her to the club in
his gallant new car, they had stopped at the station to let a train pass.
A girl on the sidewalk had smiled at Burdon and stared at Helen with
equal intensity and equal significance.
"Who was that?" asked Helen, when the train had passed.
"Oh, one of the girls at the office. She's in my department--sort of a
bookkeeper." Noticing Helen's silence he added more carelessly than
before, "You know how some girls act if you are any way pleasant to
them."
It was one of those trifling incidents which occasionally seem to have
the deepest effect upon life. That very afternoon, when Mary had tried to
warn her cousin, Helen had gone to the factory apparently to bring Mary
home, but in reality to see Burdon. She had been in his private office,
perched on the edge of his desk and swinging her foot, when the same girl
came in--the girl who had smiled and stared near the station.
"All right, Fanny," said Burdon without looking around. "Leave the
checks. I'll attend to them."
It seemed to Helen that the girl went out slowly, a sudden spot of colour
on each of her cheeks.
"You call her Fanny!" Helen asked, when, the door shut again.
"Yes," he said, busy with the checks. "They do more for you, when you are
decent with them."
"You think so?"
He caught the meaning in her voice and sighed a little as he sprawled his
signature on the next check. "I often wish I was a sour, old crab," he
said, half to Helen and half to himself. "I'd get through life a whole
lot better than I do."
Mary had come to the door then, ready to start for home. When Helen
passed through the outer office she saw the girl again, her cheek on her
palm, her head bent over her desk, dipping her pen in the red ink and
then pushing the point through her blotter pad. None of this was lost on
Helen, nor the girl's frown, nor the row of crimson blotches that
stretched across the blotter.
"She'll go in now to get those checks," thought Helen, as the car started
up the hill, and it was just then that Mary started to warn her about
going out so much with Burdon.
Once in the night Helen awoke and lay for a long time looking at the
silhouette of the windows. "...I wonder what they said to each other...."
she thought.
The next morning Mary was going through her mail at the office when she
came to an envelope with a newspaper clipping in it. This had been cut
from the society notes of the New Bethel _Herald_.
"Burdon Woodward has a specially designed new car which is attracting
much attention."
The clipping had been pasted upon a sheet of paper, and underneath it,
the following two questions were typewritten:
"How can a man buy $8,000 cars on a $10,000 salary?
"Why don't you audit his books and see who paid for that car?"
Mary's cheeks stung with the brutality of it.
"What a horrible thing to do!" she thought. "If any one paid attention to
things like this--why, no one would be safe!"
She was on the point of tearing it to shreds when another thought struck
her.
"Perhaps I ought to show it to him," she uneasily thought. "If a thing
like this is being whispered around, I think he ought to get to the
bottom of it, and stop it.... I know I don't like him for some things,"
she continued, more undecided than ever, "but that's all the more reason
why I should be fair to him--in things like this, for instance."
She compromised by tucking the letter in her pocket, and when Judge
Cutler dropped in that afternoon, she first made him promise secrecy, and
then she showed it to him.
"I feel like you," he said at last. "An anonymous attack like this is
usually beneath contempt. And I feel all the more like ignoring it
because it raises a question which I have been asking myself lately: How
_can_ a man on a ten thousand dollar salary afford to buy an eight
thousand dollar car?"
Mary couldn't follow that line of reasoning at all.
"Why do you feel like ignoring it, if it's such a natural question?" she
asked.
"Because it's a question that might have occurred to anybody."
That puzzled Mary, too.
"Perhaps Burdon has money beside his salary," she suggested.
"He hasn't. I know he hasn't. He's in debt right now."
They thought it over in silence.
"I think if I were you, I'd tear it up," he said at last.
She promptly tore it into shreds.
"Now we'll forget that," he said. "I must confess, however, that it has
raised another question to my mind. How long is it since your bookkeeping
system was overhauled here?"
She couldn't remember.
"Just what I thought. It must need expert attention. Modern conditions
call for modern methods, even in bookkeeping. I think I'll get a good
firm of accountants to go over our present system, and make such changes
as will keep you in closer touch with everything that is going on."
Mary hardly knew what to think.
"You're sure it has nothing to do with this?" she asked, indicating the
fragments in the waste-basket.
"Not the least connection! Besides," he argued, "you and I know very
well--don't we?--that with all his faults, Burdon would never do anything
like that--"
"Of course he wouldn't!"
"Very well. I think we ought to forget that part of it, and never refer
to it again--or it might be said that we were fearing for him."
This masculine logic took Mary's breath away, but though she thought it
over many a time that day, she couldn't find the flaw in it.
"Men are queer," she finally concluded. "But then I suppose they think
women are queer, too. To me," she thought, "it almost seems insulting to
Burdon to call accountants in now; but according to the judge it would be
insulting to Burdon not to call them in--"
She was still puzzling over it when Archey, that stormy petrel of bad
news, came in and very soon took her mind from anonymous letters.
"The finishers are getting ready to quit," he announced. "They had a vote
this noon. It was close, but the strikers won."
They both knew what a blow this would be. With each successive wave of
the strike movement, it grew harder to fill the men's places with women.
"If this keeps on, I don't know what we shall do," she thought. "By the
time we have filled these empty places, we shall have as many women
working here as we had during the war."
Outwardly, however, she gave no signs of misgivings, but calmly set in
motion the machinery which had filled the gaps before.
"If you're going to put that advertisement in again," said Archey, "I
think I'd add 'Nursery, Restaurant, Rest-room, Music'"
She included the words in her copy, and after a moment's reflection she
added "Laundry."
"But we have no laundry," objected Archey, half laughing. "Are you
forgetting a little detail like that?"
"No, I'm not," said Mary, her eyes dancing. "You must do the same with
the laundry as I did with the kindergarten. Go to Boston this
afternoon.... Take a laundryman with you if you like.... And bring the
things back in the morning by motor truck. We have steam and hot water
and plenty of buildings, and I'm sure it won't take long to get the
machines set up when you once get them here--"
At such moments there was something great in Mary. To conceive a plan and
put it through to an irresistible conclusion: there was nothing in which
she took a deeper delight.
That night, at home, she told them of her new plan.
"Just think," she said, "if a woman lives seventy years, and the washing
is done once a week, you might say she spent one-seventh of her life--or
ten whole years--at the meanest hardest work that was ever invented--"
"They don't do the washing when they're children," said Helen.
"No, but they hate it just as much. I used to see them on wash days when
Aunt Patty took me around, and I always felt sorry for the children."
Wally came in later and listened sadly to the news of the day.
"You're only using yourself up," he said, "for a lot of people who don't
care a snap of the finger for you. It seems to me," he added, "that you'd
be doing better to make one man happy who loves you, than try to please a
thousand women who never, never will."
She thought that over, for this was an angle which hadn't occurred to her
before.
"No," she said, "I'm not doing it to gain anything for myself, but to
lift the poor women up--to give them something to hope for, something to
live for, something to make them happier than they are now. Yes, and from
everybody's point of view, I think I'm doing something good. Because when
the woman is miserable, she can generally make her man miserable. But
when the woman is happy, she can nearly always make the man happy, too."
"I wish you'd make me happy," sighed poor Wally.
"Here comes Helen," said Mary with just the least trace of wickedness in
her voice. "She'll do her best, I'm sure."
Helen was dressed for the evening, her arms and shoulders gleaming, her
coiffure like a golden turban.
"Mary hardly ever dresses any more," she said as she came down the
stairs, "so I feel I have to do double duty."
On the bottom landing she stopped and with extravagant motions of her
body sang the opening lines of the Bedouin's Love Song, Wally joining in
at last with his plaintive, passionate tenor.
"If you ever lose your money, Wally," she said, coming down the remaining
stairs, "we'll take up comic opera." Curtseying low she simpered, "My
lord!" and gave him her hand to kiss.
"She knows how to handle men," thought Mary watching, "just as the women
at the factory know how to handle metal. I wonder if it comes natural to
her, or if she studies it by herself, or if she learned any of it at Miss
Parsons'."
She was interrupted by a message from Hutchins, the butler. The spread of
the strike had been flashed out by the news association early in the
afternoon, and the eight-ten train had brought a company of reporters.
"There are half a dozen of them," said Hutchins, noble in voice and
deportment. "Knowing your kindness to them before, I took the liberty of
showing them into the library. Do you care to see them, or shall I tell
them you are out?"
Mary saw them and they greeted her like old friends. It didn't take long
to confirm the news of the strike's extension.
"How many men are out now?" one of them asked.
"About fifteen hundred."
"What are you going to do when you have used up all your local women?"
asked another.
"What would you do?" she asked.
"I don't know," he replied. "I guess I'd advertise for women in other
cities-cities where they did this sort of thing during the war."
"Bridgeport, for instance," suggested another.
"Pittsburgh--there were a lot of women doing machine work there--"
"St. Louis," said a fourth. "Some of the shops in St. Louis were half
full of women--" With the help they gave her, Mary made up a list.
"Even if you could fill the places locally," said the first, "I think
I'd get a few women from as many places as possible. It spreads the
idea--makes a bigger story--rounds out the whole scheme."
After they had gone Mary sat thoughtful for a few minutes and then
returned to the drawing room. When she entered, Helen and Wally were
seated on the music bench, and it seemed to Mary that they suddenly drew
apart--or if I may express a distinction, that Wally suddenly drew apart
while Helen played a chord upon the piano.
"Poor Wally," thought Mary a little later. "I wish he wouldn't look like
that when he sings.... Perhaps he feels like I felt this spring.... I
wonder if Ma'm was right.... I wonder if people do fall in love with
love...."
Her reflections took a strange turn, half serious, half humorous.
"It's like a trap, almost, when you think of it that way," she thought.
"When a man falls in love, he can climb out again and go on with his
work, and live his life, and do wonderful things if he has a chance. But
when a woman falls in the trap, she can never climb out and live her own
life again. I wonder if the world wouldn't be better off if the women had
been allowed to go right on and develop themselves, and do big things
like the men do....
"I'm sure they couldn't do worse....
"Look at the war--the awfullest thing that ever happened: that's a sample
of what men do, when they try to do everything themselves.... But they'll
have to let the women out of their traps, if they want them to help....
"I wonder if they ever will let them out....
"I wonder if they ought to come out....
"I wonder...."
To look at Mary as she sat there, tranquil of brow and dreamy-eyed, you
would never have guessed that thoughts like these were passing through
her mind, and later when Helen took Wally into the next room to show him
something, and returned with a smile that was close to ownership, you
would never have guessed that Mary's heart went heavy for a moment.
"Helen," she said, when their visitor had gone, "do you really love
Wally--or are you just amusing yourself?"
"I only wish that Burdon had half his money."
"Helen!"
"Oh, it's easy for you to say 'Helen'! You don't know what it is to be
poor.... Well, good-night, beloved--
"Good-night, good-night
My love, my own--"
she sang. "I've a busy day ahead of me tomorrow."
Mary had a busy day, too.
Nearly two hundred women responded to her new advertisement in the
morning, and as many more at noon. Fortunately some of these were
familiar with the work, and the most skilful were added to the corps of
teachers. In addition to this, new nurses were telephoned for to take
care of the rapidly growing nursery, temporary tables were improvised in
the canteen, another battery of ranges was ordered from the gas company,
and preparations were made for Archey's arrival with the laundry
equipment.
Yes, it was a busy day and a busy week for Mary; but somehow she felt a
glory in every minute of it--even, I think, as Molly Pitcher gloried in
her self-appointed task so many years ago. And when at the close of each
day, she locked her desk, she grew into the habit of glancing up and
nodding at the portraits on the walls--a glance and a nod that seemed to
say, "That's us!"
For myself, I like to think of that long line of Josiah Spencers, holding
ghostly consultations at night; and if the spirits of the dead can ever
return to the scenes of life which they loved the best, they must have
spent many an hour together over the things they saw and heard.
Steadily and surely the places left vacant by the men were filled with
women, naturally deft of hand and quick of eye; but the more apparent it
became that the third phase of the strike was being lost by the men, the
more worried Archey looked--the oftener he peeped into the future and
frowned at what he saw there.
"The next thing we know," he said to Mary one day, "every man on the
place will walk out, and what are we going to do then?"
She told him of the reporter's suggestion.
"A good idea, too," he said. "If I were you, I'd start advertising in
those other cities right away, and get as many applications on file as
you can. Don't just ask for women workers. Mention the kind you want:
machine tool hands, fixers, tool makers, temperers, finishers,
inspectors, packers--I'll make you up a list. And if you don't mind I'll
enlarge the canteen, and change the loft above it into a big dining room,
and have everything ready this time--"
A few days later Spencer & Son's advertisement appeared for the first
time outside of New Bethel, and soon a steady stream of applications
began to come in.
Although Mary didn't know it, her appeal had a stirring note like the
peal of a silver trumpet. It gripped attention and warmed imagination all
the way from its first line "A CALL TO WOMEN" to its signature, "Josiah
Spencer & Son, Inc. Mary Spencer, President."
"That's the best yet," said Archey, looking at the pile of applications
on the third day. "I sha'n't worry about the future half as much now."
"I don't worry at all any more," said Mary, serene in her faith. "Or at
least I don't worry about this," she added to herself.
She was thinking of Helen again.
The night before Helen had come in late, and Mary soon knew that she had
been with Burdon. Helen was quiet--for her--and rather pale as well.
"Did you have a quarrel?" Mary had hopefully asked.
"Quarrel with Burdon Woodward?" asked Helen, and in a low voice she
answered herself, "I couldn't if I tried."
"... Do you love him, Helen?"
To which after a pause, Helen had answered, much as she had spoken
before, "I only wish he had half of Wally's money...." And would say no
more.
"I have warned her so often," said Mary. "What more can I say?" She
uneasily wondered whether she ought to speak to her aunts, but soon shook
her head at that. "It would only bother them," she told herself, "and
what good could it do?"
Next day at the factory she seemed to feel a shadow around her and a
weight upon her mind.
"What is it?" she thought more than once, pulling herself up short. The
answer was never far away. "Oh, yes--Helen and Burdon Woodward. Well, I'm
glad she's going out with Wally today. She's safe enough with him."
It had been arranged that Wally should drive Helen to Hartford to do some
shopping, and they were expected back about nine o'clock in the evening.
But nine o'clock, ten o'clock, eleven o'clock and midnight came--and
still no sign of Wally's car.
"They must have had an accident," thought Mary, and at first she pictured
this as a slight affair which simply called for a few hours' delay at a
local garage--perhaps the engine had overheated, or the battery had
failed.
But when one o'clock struck, and still no word from the absent pair,
Mary's fancies grew more tragic.
By two o'clock she imagined the car overturned at the bottom of some
embankment, and both of them badly hurt. At three o'clock she began to
have such dire forebodings that she went and woke up Aunt Cordelia, and
was on the point of telephoning Wally's mother when the welcome rumbling
of a car was heard under the porte cochère. It was Wally and Helen, and
though Helen looked pale she had that air of ownership over her
apologetic escort which every woman understands.
Mary already divined the end of the story.
"We were coming along all right," said Wally, "and would have been home
before ten. But when we were about nine miles from nowhere and going over
a bad road, I had a puncture.
"Of course that delayed me a little--to change the wheels--but when I
tried to start the car again, she wouldn't go.
"I fussed and fixed for a couple of hours, it seems to me, and then I
thought I'd better go to the nearest telephone and have a garage send a
car out for us. But Helen, poor girl, was tired and of course I couldn't
leave her there alone. So I tackled the engine again and just when I was
giving up hope, a car came along.
"They couldn't take us in--they were filled--but they promised to wake up
a garage man in the next town and send him to the rescue. It was half
past two when he turned up, but it didn't take him long to find the
trouble, and here we are at last."
He drew a full breath and turned to Helen.
"Of course I wouldn't have cared a snap," he said, "if it hadn't been for
poor Helen here."
"Oh, I don't mind--now," she said.
"I knew it!" thought Mary. "They're engaged..." And though she tried to
smile at them both, for some reason which I can never hope to explain, it
took an effort. Wally and Helen were still looking at each other.
"Tired, dear?" he asked.
Helen nodded and glanced at Mary with a look that said, "Did you hear him
call me 'Dear'?"
"I think if I were you, I'd go to bed," continued Wally, all gentle
solicitude. She took an impulsive step toward him. He kissed her.
"We're engaged," he said to Mary.
What Mary said in answer, she couldn't remember herself when she tried to
recall it later, for a strange thought had leaped into her mind, driving
out everything else.
"I almost hate to ask," she thought. "It would be too dreadful to know."
But curiosity has always been one of mankind's fateful gifts, and at the
breakfast table next morning, Mary had Wally to herself.
"Oh, Wally," she said. "What did the garage man find was the trouble with
your car?"
"The simplest thing imaginable," he said. "One of the wires leading to
the switch on the instrument board had worked loose--that awful road, you
know."
"I knew it," Mary quietly told herself, and in her mind she again saw
Helen demonstrating how to quell the wildest car on earth. Mary ought to
have stopped there, but a wicked imp seemed to have taken possession of
her.
"Did Helen cry, when she saw how late it was getting?"
"She did at first," he said, looking very solemn, "but when I told her--"
His confessions were interrupted by Hutchins, who whispered to Mary that
she was wanted on the telephone.
"It's Mr. Forbes," he said.
Archey's voice was ringing with excitement when he greeted Mary over the
wire.
"Can you come down to the office early this morning?" he asked.
"What's the matter?"
"I just found out that the rest of the men had a meeting last night--and
they voted to strike. There won't be a man on the place this morning ...
and I think there may be trouble...."