aw as a lion is held in a cage?"

"No," said Mary, shaking her head, "I'm sure it isn't that way. You're
simply turning things around and making everything seem horrid."

"You think so, ma cherie? Eh, bien. Three husbands I've had. I am not
without experience."

"But you might as well say that woman is man's natural enemy--"

"And some say that," said Ma'm nodding darkly. "Left to himself, they
say, man might aspire to be as the gods; but halways at his helbow is a
woman like a figure of fate--and she--she keeps him down where he
belongs--"

"I hate all that," said Mary quietly. "Every once in a while I read
something like it in a book or a magazine, and whenever I do, I put the
book down and open the window and breathe the fresh air. Of course I know
some married people aren't happy. But it isn't always because they are
married. Single people are unhappy, too. Aunt Patty has indigestion
sometimes, and I suppose a lot of people do. But you wouldn't call food a
natural enemy; would you? And some children are just as bad as they can
be. But you wouldn't call children natural enemies, would you--or try to
get along without them?"

But Ma'm Maynard would only shrug her shoulders.

"Eh, bien," she said. "When you have live' as long as me--"

Through the open window a clock could be heard.

"Six o'clock!" squealed Helen, "and I'm not changed yet." As she hurried
to the door she said, "I heard Aunt Patty say that Uncle Stanley was
coming to dinner again tonight. I hope he brings his handsome son
again--don't you?"

CHAPTER VII

Uncle Stanley of late had been a frequent visitor on the hill,
occasionally bringing his son Burdon with him, but generally coming
alone. After dinner he and Josiah would sit in the den till well past
midnight, going over papers and figures, and drafting out instructions
for Judge Cutler, the firm's lawyer.

Mary was never able to overcome her aversion to Uncle Stanley.

"I wish he'd stay away," she ruefully remarked to her father one night.
"Three evenings this week I haven't been able to come in the den."

"Never mind, dear," said Josiah, looking at her with love in his sombre
eyes. "What we're doing: it's all for you."

"All for me? How?"

He explained to her that whereas Josiah Spencer & Son had always been a
firm, it was now being changed to a corporation.

"As long as there was a son," he said, "the partnership arrangement was
all right. But the way things are now--Wel