d to the family prosperity, Justine shone with
enjoyment and sympathy. She had always taken an interest in the lives
and thoughts of working-people: not so much the constructive interest of
the sociological mind as the vivid imaginative concern of a heart open
to every human appeal. She liked to hear about their hard struggles and
small pathetic successes: the children's sicknesses, the father's lucky
job, the little sum they had been able to put by, the plans they had
formed for Tommy's advancement, and how Sue's good marks at school were
still ahead of Mrs. Hagan's Mary's.

"What I really like is to gossip with them, and give them advice about
the baby's cough, and the cheapest way to do their marketing," she said
laughing, as she and Amherst emerged once more into the street. "It's
the same kind of interest I used to feel in my dolls and guinea pigs--a
managing, interfering old maid's interest. I don't believe I should care
a straw for them if I couldn't dose them and order them about."

Amherst laughed too: he recalled the time when he had dreamed that just
such warm personal sympathy was her sex's destined contribution to the
broad work of human beneficence. Well, it had not been a dream: here was
a woman whose deeds spoke for her. And suddenly the thought came to him:
what might they not do at Westmore together! The brightness of it was
blinding--like the dazzle of sunlight which faced them as they walked
toward the mills. But it left him speechless, confused--glad to have a
pretext for routing Duplain out of the office, introducing him to Miss
Brent, and asking him for the keys of the buildings....

It was wonderful, again, how she grasped what he was doing in the mills,
and saw how his whole scheme hung together, harmonizing the work and
leisure of the operatives, instead of treating them as half machine,
half man, and neglecting the man for the machine. Nor was she content
with Utopian generalities: she wanted to know the how and why of each
case, to hear what conclusions he drew from his results, to what
solutions his experiments pointed.

In explaining the mill work he forgot his constraint and returned to the
free comradery of mind that had always marked their relation. He turned
the key reluctantly in the last door, and paused a moment on the
threshold.

"Anything more?" he said, with a laugh meant to hide his desire to
prolong their tour.

She glanced up at the sun, which still swung free of the tall