sed as though for the day.

"Where's Burdon?" she asked.

"He wasn't feeling very well," said Uncle Stanley after a long look at
his son's desk, "--a sort of headache. I told him he had better go home."

And every morning for the rest of the week, when she saw Uncle Stanley,
she gave him such an innocent look and said, "How's Burdon's head this
morning? Any better?"

Uncle Stanley began to have the irritable feelings of an old mouse in the
hands of a young kitten.

"That's the worst of having women around,"--he scowled to himself--"they
are worse than--worse than--worse than--"

Searching for a simile, he thought of a flash of lightning, a steel hoop
lying on its side, a hornet's nest--but none of these quite suited him.
He made a helpless gesture.

"Hang 'em, you never know what they're up to next!" said he.

CHAPTER XIX

For that matter, there were times in the next two years when Mary herself
hardly knew what she was up to next, for if ever a girl suddenly found
herself in deep waters, it was the last of the Spencers. Strangely
enough--although I think it is true of many of life's undertakings--it
wasn't the big things which bothered her the most.

She soon demonstrated--if it needed any demonstration--that what the
women of France and Britain had done, the women of New Bethel could do.
At each call of the draft, more and more men from Spencer & Son obeyed
the beckoning finger of Mars, and more and more women presently took
their places in the workshops. That was simply a matter of enlarging the
training school, of expanding the courses of instruction.

No; it wasn't the big things which ultimately took the bloom from Mary's
cheeks and the smile from her eyes.

It was the small things that worried her--things so trifling in
themselves that it would sound foolish to mention them--the daily nagging
details, the gathering load of responsibility upon her shoulders, the
indifference which she had to dispel, the inertia that had to be
overcome, the ruffled feelings to be soothed, the squabbles to be
settled, the hidden hostilities which she had to contend against in her
own office--and yet pretend she never noticed them.

Indeed, if it hadn't been for the recompensing features, Mary's
enthusiasm would probably have become chilled by experience, and dreams
have come to nothing. But now and then she seemed to sense in the factory
a gathering impetus of efficient organization, the human gears working
s