hill.
Not only that but she could have told you most of the processes through
which the bearings passed before they were ready for the shipping room.

To show you how her mind worked, one night she asked her father, "What
makes a machine squeak?"

"Needs oil," said Josiah, "generally speaking."

The next Saturday morning she not only kept her eyes open, but her ears
as well.

Presently her patience was rewarded.

"Squee-e-eak! Squee-e-eak!" complained a lathe which they were passing.
Mary stopped her father and looked her very old-fashionedest at the lathe
hand.

"Needs oil," said she, "gen'ly speaking."

It was one of the proud moments in Josiah's life, and yet when back of
him he heard a whisper, "Chip of the old block," he couldn't repress the
well nigh passionate yearning, "Oh, Lord, if she had only been a boy!"

That year an addition was being made to the factory and Mary liked to
watch the builders. She often noticed a boy and a dog sitting under the
trees and watching, too.

Once they smiled at each other, the boy blushing like a sunset. After
that they sometimes spoke while Josiah was talking to the foreman. His
name, she learned, was Archey Forbes, his father was the foreman, and
when he grew up he was going to be a builder, too. But no matter how
often they saw each other, Archey always blushed to the eyes whenever
Mary smiled at him.

Occasionally a man would be hurt at the factory. Whenever this happened,
Aunt Patty paid a weekly call to the injured man until he was well--an
old Spencer custom that had never died out.

Mary generally accompanied her aunts on these visits--which was a part of
the family training--and in this way she saw the inside of many a home.

"I wouldn't mind being a poor man," she said one Saturday morning,
breaking a long silence, "but I wouldn't be a poor woman for anything."

"Why not?" asked Miss Cordelia.

She couldn't tell them why but for the last half hour she had been
comparing the lives of the men in the factory with the lives of their
wives at home.

"A man can work in the factory," she tried to tell them, "and everything
is made nice for him. But his wife at home-now--nobody cares--nobody
cares what happens to her--"

"I never saw such a child," said Miss Cordelia, watching her start with
her father down the hill a few minutes later. "And the worst of it is, I
think we are partly to blame for it."

"Cordelia!" said Miss Patty. "How?"

"I mean in keepi