said Miss Cordelia with a look that said 'What a question you
are asking!' "--is pretty in a way, of course," she said, "but there is
something about our Mary--"

"I know," nodded Miss Patty. "Something you can't express--"

"The dear child," mused Miss Cordelia, looking out toward the west. "I
wonder what she is doing this very moment!"

At that very moment, as it happened, Mary was in her room on the other
side of the continent studying the manufacture of raisin fudge.
Theretofore she had made it too soft, or too sugary, but this time she
was determined to have it right. Long ago she had made all the friends
that her room would hold, and most of them were there. Some were
listening to a girl in spectacles who was talking socialism, while a more
frivolous group, perched on the bed, was arguing the question whether the
perfect lover had a moustache or a clean-shaven lip.

"Money is cruel; it ought to be abolished," said the earnest girl in the
spectacles. "Money is a millstone which the rich use to grind the poor.
You girls know it as well as I do."

Mary stirred away at the fudge.

"It's a good thing she doesn't know that I'm rich," she smiled to
herself. "I wonder when I shall start grinding the poor!"

"And yet the world simply couldn't get along without the wage-earners,"
continued the young orator. "So all they have to do is strike--and
strike--and keep on striking--and they can have everything they want--"

"So could the doctors," mused Mary to herself, stirring away at the
fudge. "Imagine the doctors striking.... And so could the farmers.
Imagine the farmers striking for eight hours a day, and no work Sundays
and holidays, and every Saturday afternoon off...."

Dimly, vaguely, a troubled picture took shape in her mind. She stirred
the fudge more reflectively than ever.

"I wonder if civil wars are started that way," she thought, "one class
setting out to show its power over another and gradually coming to blows.
Suppose--yes, suppose the women were to go on strike for eight hours a
day, and as much money as the men, and Saturday afternoons and Sundays
off, and all the rest of it.... The world certainly couldn't get along
without women. As Becky says, they would only have to strike--and
strike--and keep on striking--and they could get everything they
wanted--"

Although she didn't suspect it, she was so close to her destiny at that
moment that she could have reached out her hand and touched it. But all