hole I think I'll take daddy's advice. Bye-bye, Zephyr."
She again picked up her scattered flowers and went dancing and skipping
down the trail. At the turn she paused for an instant, blew Zephyr a
saucy kiss from the tips of her fingers, then passed out of sight.

A voice floated back to the quiet figure by the fire.

"Don't feel too bad, Zephyr. I'll probably change my mind again."

CHAPTER IV

_The Watched Pot Begins to Boil_

Of all classes of people under the sun, the so-called labouring man has
best cause to pray for deliverance from his friends. His friends are, or
rather were, of three classes. The first, ardent but wingless angels of
mercy, who fail to comprehend the fact that the unlovely lot of their
would-be wards is the result of conditions imposed more largely from
within than from without; the second, those who care neither for lots
nor conditions, regarding the labourer as a senseless tool with which to
hew out his own designs; the third, those who adroitly knock together
the heads of the labourer and his employer and impartially pick the
pockets of each in the general _melee_ which is bound to follow.

The past _were_ is designedly contrasted with the present _are_, for it
is a fact that conditions all around are changing for the better;
slowly, perhaps, but nevertheless surely.

The philanthropic friend of the labourer is learning to develop
balancing tail-feathers of judgment wherewith to direct the flights of
wings of mercy. The employer is beginning to realise the beneficial
results of mutual understanding and of considerate co-operation, and the
industrious fomenter of strife is learning that bones with richer marrow
may be more safely cracked by sensible adjustment than with grievous
clubs wielded over broken heads.

Even so, the millennium is yet far away, and now, as in the past, the
path that leads to it is uphill and dim, and is beset with many
obstacles. There are no short cuts to the summit. In spite of
pessimistic clamours that the rich are growing richer and the poor
poorer, frothy yowls for free and unlimited coinage at sixteen to one,
or for fiat paper at infinity to nothing, the fact remains that, whereas
kings formerly used signets for the want of knowledge to write their
names, licked their greasy fingers for lack of knives and forks, and
starved in Ireland with plenty in France, the poorest to-day can, if
they will, indite readable words on well-sized paper, do things