it dad used to call me sometimes--his 'Little Hustler'?" she
thought. "If he could see, I'll bet that's what he would call me now."

As she passed through the hall she looked in the drawing room to tell
Helen where she was going. Helen was sitting on a chaise lounge and Wally
was bending over her, as though trying to get something out of her eye
with the corner of a handkerchief.

"I don't see anything," Mary heard him saying.

"There must be something. It hurts dreadfully," said Helen.

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 passed 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
be