took an effort. Wally and Helen were still looking at each other.

"Tired, dear?" he asked.

Helen nodded and glanced at Mary with a look that said, "Did you hear him
call me 'Dear'?"

"I think if I were you, I'd go to bed," continued Wally, all gentle
solicitude. She took an impulsive step toward him. He kissed her.

"We're engaged," he said to Mary.

What Mary said in answer, she couldn't remember herself when she tried to
recall it later, for a strange thought had leaped into her mind, driving
out everything else.

"I almost hate to ask," she thought. "It would be too dreadful to know."

But curiosity has always been one of mankind's fateful gifts, and at the
breakfast table next morning, Mary had Wally to herself.

"Oh, Wally," she said. "What did the garage man find was the trouble with
your car?"

"The simplest thing imaginable," he said. "One of the wires leading to
the switch on the instrument board had worked loose--that awful road, you
know."

"I knew it," Mary quietly told herself, and in her mind she again saw
Helen demonstrating how to quell the wildest car on earth. Mary ought to
have stopped there, but a wicked imp seemed to have taken possession of
her.

"Did Helen cry, when she saw how late it was getting?"

"She did at first," he said, looking very solemn, "but when I told her--"

His confessions were interrupted by Hutchins, who whispered to Mary that
she was wanted on the telephone.

"It's Mr. Forbes," he said.

Archey's voice was ringing with excitement when he greeted Mary over the
wire.

"Can you come down to the office early this morning?" he asked.

"What's the matter?"

"I just found out that the rest of the men had a meeting last night--and
they voted to strike. There won't be a man on the place this morning ...
and I think there may be trouble...."

CHAPTER XXVI

Afterwards, when Mary looked back at the leading incidents of the big
strike it wasn't the epic note which interested her the most, although
the contest had for her its moments of exaltation.

Nor did her thoughts revert the oftenest to those strange things which
might have engrossed the chance observer--work and happiness walking hand
in hand, for instance, to the accompaniment of Mrs. Kelly's drum--or
woman showing that she can acquire the same dexterity on a drilling
machine as on a sewing machine, the same skill at a tempering oven as at
a cook stove, the same competence and neatness in a factor