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—­Well, when I’m gone, Mary, you’ll own the stock of the company, and draw your dividends, and have no responsibilities to bother you.”

“But who’ll run the factory?”

“I suppose Stanley will, as long as he lives.  You’ll be the owner, of course, but I don’t think you’ll ever find anybody to beat Uncle Stanley as a general manager.”

“And when Uncle Stanley dies—­what then?”

“I think you’ll find his son Burdon the next best man.”

Mary felt her heart grow heavy.  It may have been presentiment, or it may have been the thought of her father’s possible death.

“Don’t let’s talk any more about dying,” she said.  “But tell me:  Is that why you are making so many additions to the factory—­because we are changing to a corporation?”

Josiah hesitated, struggling to speak to his daughter as though she were a young man instead of a young woman.  But heredity, training and world-old custom restrained him.  What would a girl know about mergers, combinations, fundamental patents, the differences between common and preferred stock, and all that?  “It would only confuse her,” he thought, looking at her with love in his eyes.  “She would nod her pretty head to be polite, but I might as well be talking Greek to her.”

“No, dear,” he said, at last.  “I’ll tell you why we are making those additions.  I have bought options on some of the biggest bearing factories in the country—­so you won’t have so much competition when I’m gone.  And instead of running those other factories, I’m going to move their machinery down here.  When the changes are once made, it’s more economical to run one big factory than half a dozen little ones.  And of course it will make it better for New Bethel.”