ught to do it."

I didn't think little Miss Van Arden could move old Mr. Gordon's
convictions; but it was true that she was the largest individual
stockholder in the works, and hence she might make trouble with the
wavering minds, certainly trouble enough to irritate the president, who
was a sterling, but not always a patient man.

"They want to run the works as a closed shop, don't they?" I asked.

"Jest that. Miss Mercy, if she _is_ a reforming lady, she ain't
arrergant like most sich; and she asked me what I thought about the
strike. She got my opinion of it cold. 'There's strikes and strikes,'
says I. 'Strikes for higher wages may be right or wrong, as depends, but
a strike for the right to keep every other man but your gang out of a
job is bound to be wrong. I ain't no sympathy with any kind of closed
shops, whether the bosses close 'em to union men, or the union men close
'em to everybody 'cept themselves.'"

The next day I saw the little Socialist's white, miserable face go by my
window with Katy's solid cheer at her elbow. She had agreed to see Mr.
Gordon first before she appeared at the board meetting, and (as Katy put
it) "poured coal oil on the fire to put it out." Of course, there was a
useless journey. Mr. Gordon felt moved to utter certain pet opinions of
his own regarding the ease of making mischief when ignorant people
interfered in business. If it was any comfort to her to know that she
was giving him an infernal lot of trouble she could take it all right;
but he had to do right according to his own conscience, and not hers,
and he wished her good-morning. Very limp and dejected she departed.

"'The worst of it is,' she says to me, Katy related, 'the worst of all
is, while I believe he ought to do what the men want rather than keep up
the strike, I don't really feel _sure_ they ought to want him to do it.
It's so hard on the outside men.' Oh, she's got some sense straying
about her, though it's mainly lost to view. But I do wish she could make
it up with her beau. He ain't been 'round for a week; and when folks
ain't got a meat diet they can't stand the strain of being crossed in
love!"

Even Katy's Celtic loyalty was staggered the next week. She came over on
a perfectly needless borrowing errand to tell me.

"Did you see it, ma'am? Being my afternoon out, I wasn't there. Did
_you_ see that woman tumble down on our grass and herself run out with
Amos and Mrs. Kane?" (Mrs. Kane was the laundress,