rouble in keeping the wolf from the door."

Mary turned the pages in a helpless sort of way.

"You'll have to explain some of this," she said at last. But before
giving it back to him she looked out of the window for a time--one of her
slow, thoughtful glances--and added, "I wonder why girls aren't brought
up to know something about business--the way boys are."

"Perhaps it's because they have no head for business."

She thought that over.

"Can you speak French?" she suddenly asked.

"No."

"...I can. I can speak it, and read it, and write it, and think it....
Now don't you think that if a girl can do that--if she can learn
thousands and thousands of new words, how to pronounce them, and spell
them, and parse them, and inflect them--how to supply hundreds of rules
of grammar--and if she can learn to do this so well that she can chat
away in French without giving it a thought--don't you think she might be
able to learn something about the language and rules of business, too, if
they were only taught to her? Then perhaps there wouldn't be so many
helpless widows in the world, as you said just now, at the mercy of the
first glib sharper who comes along."

This time it was the judge's turn to think it over.

"You're an exceptional girl, Mary," he said at last.

"No, really I'm not," she earnestly told him. "Any girl can learn
anything that a boy can learn--if she is only given a chance. Where
boys and girls go to school together--at the grammar schools and high
schools--the girls are just as quick as the boys, and their average marks
are quite as high. It was true at college, too. The girls could learn
anything that the men could learn--and do it just as well."

As one result of this, Judge Cutler began giving Mary lessons in
business, using the inventory as a text and explaining each item in the
settlement of the estate. He also taught her some of the simpler maxims,
beginning with that grand old caution, "Never sign a paper for a
stranger--"

It wasn't long after this that Uncle Stanley called at the house on the
hill. He talked for a time about some of the improvements which were
being made at the factory and then arose as if to go.

"Oh, I nearly forgot," he said, turning back and smiling at his
oversight. "We need a new director to take your father's place. When I'm
away Burdon looks after things, so I suppose he may as well take the
responsibility. It's a thankless position, but some one has to fill it