“‘Advanced’ is hardly the word,” said Madelene.  “They used to be her ideas—­always have been, underneath.  If it weren’t that she is afraid of hurting your feelings, she’d not hesitate an instant.  She’d take the small house across the way and give herself the happiness of helping with the hospital she’d install in the big house.  You know she always had a passion for waiting on people.  Here’s her chance to gratify it to good purpose.  Why should she let the fact that she has money enough not to have to work stand between her and happy usefulness?”

“What does Arthur think?” asked Del.  Her resentment was subsiding in spite of her determined efforts to keep it glowing; Madelene knew the secret of manner that enables one to be habitually right without giving others the sense of being put irritatingly in the wrong.  “But,” smiling, “I needn’t inquire.  Of course he assents to whatever you say.”

“You know Arthur better than that,” replied Madelene, with no trace of resentment.  She had realized from the beginning of the conversation that Del’s nerves were on edge; her color, alternately rising and fading, and her eyes, now sparkling now dull, could only mean fever from a tempest of secret emotion.  “He and I usually agree simply because we see things in about the same light.”

“You furnish the light,” teased Adelaide.

“That was in part so at first,” admitted her sister-in-law.  “Arthur had got many foolish notions in his head through accepting thoughtlessly the ideas of the people he traveled with.  But, once he let his good sense get the upper hand—­He helps me now far more than I help him.”

“Has he consented to let them give him a salary yet?” asked Adelaide, not because she was interested, but because she desperately felt that the conversation must be kept alive.  Perhaps Ross was even now on his way to Saint X.

“He still gets what he fixed on at first—­ten dollars a week more than the foreman.”

“Honestly, Madelene,” said Adelaide, in a flush and flash of irritation, “don’t you think that’s absurd?  With the responsibility of the whole business on his shoulders, you know he ought to have more than a common workman.”

“In the first place you must not forget that everyone is paid very high wages at the university works now.”

“And he’s the cause of that—­of the mills doing so well,” said Del.  She could see Ross entering the gates—­at the house—­inquiring—­What was she talking to Madelene about?  Yes, about Arthur and the mills.  “Even the men that criticise him—­Arthur, I mean—­most severely for ’sowing discontent in the working class,’ as they call it,” she went on, “concede that he has wonderful business ability.  So he ought to have a huge salary.”