Part 38 (1/2)

”Oh, Archey--don't you think a woman has pride, too?”

”Well, you know what I mean. He feels he ought to be doing the work, instead of the woman.”

”Oh, Archey,” she said again. ”Can't you begin to see that the average woman has always worked harder than the average man? You ask any of the women at the factory which is the easiest--the work they are doing now--or the work they used to do.”

”I keep forgetting that. But how about this--I hear it all the time.

Suppose the idea spreads and after a while there are millions of women doing work that used to be done by men--what are the men going to do?”

”That's a secret,” she laughed. ”But I'll tell you some day--if you're good--”

The friendly words slipped out unconsciously, but for some reason her tone and manner made his heart hammer away like that powerful downward pa.s.sage of the Anvil Chorus. ”I'll be good,” he managed to say.

Mary hardly heard him.

”I wonder what made me speak like that,” she was thinking. ”I must be more dignified--or he'll think I'm bold....” And in a very dignified voice indeed, she said, ”I must be getting back now. I wish you'd find the contractor and ask him when he'll be through.”

She went down the hill alone. On the way a queer thought came to her. I sha'n't attempt to explain it--only to report it.

”Of course it isn't the only thing in life--that's ridiculous,” she thought. ”But sooner or later ... I guess it becomes quite important....”

CHAPTER x.x.x

A few hours later, Mary was sitting in her office, thinking of this and that (as the old phrase goes) when a knock sounded on the door and the elderly accountant entered.

”We have finished the first part of our work,” he said, ”that dealing with factory costs. I will leave this with you and when you have read it, I would like to go over it with you in detail.”

It was a formidable doc.u.ment, nearly three hundred typewritten pages, neatly bound in hard covers. Mary hadn't looked in it far when she knew she was examining a work of art.

”How he must love his work!” she thought, and couldn't help wondering what accidental turn of life had guided his career into the field of figures.

”How interesting he makes it!” she thought again. ”Why, it's almost like a novel.”

Brilliant sentences illuminated nearly every page. ”This system, admirable in its way, is probably a legacy from the past, when the bookkeepers of Spencer & Son powdered their hair and used quill pens.--”

”Under these conditions, a stock clerk must become a prodigy and depend upon his memory. When memory fails he must become a poet, for he has nothing but imagination to guide him.” ”Thus one department would corroborate another, like two witnesses independently sworn and each examined in private--”

The back of the volume, she noticed, was filled with tables of figures.

”This won't be so interesting,” she told herself, turning the leaves. But suddenly she stopped at one of the open pages--and read it again--and again--

”Comparative Efficiency of Men's Labour and Women's Labour,” the sheet was headed. And there it was in black and white, line after line, just how much it had cost to make each Spencer bearing when the men did the work, and just how much it was costing under the new conditions.

”There!” said Mary, ”I always knew we could do it, if the women in Europe could! There! No wonder we've been making so much money lately--!”

She took the report home in triumph to show to her aunts, and when dinner was over she carried the volume to her den, and never a young lady in bye-gone days sat down to Don Juan with any more pleasurable antic.i.p.ation than Mary felt when she buried herself in her easy chair and opened that report again.

She was still gloating over the table of women's efficiency when Hutchins appeared.

”Mr. Archibald Forbes is calling.”