en who had gone on strike.

"Didn't you say you expected trouble?" Mary asked Archey one morning just
after the big strike was declared.

"Yes," he told her. "They were talking that way. But they are so sure now
that we'll have to give in, that they are quite good natured about it."

Mary said nothing, but her back grew stiff, something like Mrs. Ridge's;
and when she saw Uncle Stanley in the outer office a few minutes later
and he smiled without looking at her--smiled and shook his head to
himself as though he were thinking of something droll--Mary went back to
her room in a hurry, and stayed there until she felt tranquil again.

"What are the men saying now?" she asked Archey the following week.

"They are still taking it as a sort of a joke," he told her, "but here
and there you catch a few who are looking thoughtful--especially those
who have wives or daughters working here."

That pleased her.

The next time the subject was mentioned, Archey brought it up himself.

"There was quite a fight on Jay Street yesterday," he said.

As Mary knew, Jay Street was the headquarters of the strikers, and
suddenly she became all attention.

"Those out-of-town agitators are beginning to feel anxious, I guess. Two
of them went around yesterday whispering that the women at the factory
needed a few good scares, so they'd stay home where they belonged. They
tackled Jimmy Kelly, not knowing his wife works here. 'What do you mean:
good scares?' he asked. 'Rough stuff,' they told him, on the quiet.
'What do you mean, rough stuff?' he asked them. They whispered
something--nobody knows what it was--but they say Jimmy fell on them both
like a ton of bricks on two bad eggs. 'Try a little rough stuff,
yourself,' he said, 'and maybe you'll stay home where you belong.'"

Mary's eyes shone. It may be that blood called to blood, for if you
remember one of those Josiah Spencers on the walls had married a Mary
McMillan.

"It's things like that," she said, "that sometimes make me wish I was a
man," and straightway went and interviewed Mrs. James Kelly, and gave her
a message of thanks to be conveyed to her double-fisted husband.

The next week Mary didn't have to ask Archey what the men were doing,
because one of the Sunday papers had made a special story of the subject.

Some of the men were getting work elsewhere, she read.

Others were on holidays, or visiting friends out of town.

Some were grumpy, some were merry, one had been