om a predicament.

"Oh, yes, indeed," she replied happily, and beamed radiantly on her
astonished husband, in anticipatory enjoyment of her repartee. "They're
our bad brothers, whom we must spank--hard!"

"If there's any spanking to be done, I'll attend to it, myself,"
Hamilton declared, gruffly.

"Oh, very well," Cicily agreed. "But you don't seem to be doing it
effectively at present.... Tell me, why are they paying the men to stay
on strike?"

"It must be that they recognize the brotherhood claim of which you were
speaking so eloquently." The man's voice was vibrant with sarcastic
indignation.

"Now, see here, Charles," Cicily remonstrated, the flush in her cheeks
deepening under the rebuff in his flippant answer. "You know why they're
doing it just as well as I do. It's simply because they want to keep
you closed down, so that they can go on charging the independents
twenty-two cents a box."

"No," the husband declared, enticed despite his will into discussing
business for a moment with his wife, "they could charge them that
anyhow. I couldn't interfere, because they have me tied up with a
contract at eleven cents."

"Then, if I were you," Cicily argued with new animation, "I'd break that
contract. Yes, I'd open up right away, pay full wages, and sell to the
independents at fifteen cents a box. They'd come to you fast enough."

"Break a contract with a trust!" Hamilton jeered. He laughed aloud over
the folly of this idea as a means of escape from disaster.

"What are contracts when the men are starving?" The question came with
an earnestness that did more credit to the heart than to the head of the
wife.

"If that isn't like a woman!" The man's tone was surcharged with
disgust. "Cicily, I've had enough of this."

"Then, you won't fight?" An energetic shake of the head was the answer.
"You won't help the men?" Again, the gesture of refusal. "You won't make
any move at all?" A third time, the man silently denied her plea. "Then,
I will!" Cicily concluded, defiantly. She leaned back in her chair,
clasped her slender hands behind her head, and stared ceilingward, with
the air of one who has pleasantly solved all the perplexities of life.

"Good heavens, what do you mean to do next?" Hamilton questioned, in
frank alarm.

"Never mind: you'll see," came the nonchalant answer.

The contented air of the woman, coupled with her tone of assurance as
she spoke, goaded the man to an assertion of authority.

"