“The finishers are getting ready to quit,” he announced.  “They had a vote this noon.  It was close, but the strikers won.”

They both knew what a blow this would be.  With each successive wave of the strike movement, it grew harder to fill the men’s places with women.

“If this keeps on, I don’t know what we shall do,” she thought.  “By the time we have filled these empty places, we shall have as many women working here as we had during the war.”

Outwardly, however, she gave no signs of misgivings, but calmly set in motion the machinery which had filled the gaps before.

“If you’re going to put that advertisement in again,” said Archey, “I think I’d add ‘Nursery, Restaurant, Rest-room, Music’”

She included the words in her copy, and after a moment’s reflection she added “Laundry.”

“But we have no laundry,” objected Archey, half laughing.  “Are you forgetting a little detail like that?”

“No, I’m not,” said Mary, her eyes dancing.  “You must do the same with the laundry as I did with the kindergarten.  Go to Boston this afternoon....  Take a laundryman with you if you like....  And bring the things back in the morning by motor truck.  We have steam and hot water and plenty of buildings, and I’m sure it won’t take long to get the machines set up when you once get them here—­”

At such moments there was something great in Mary.  To conceive a plan and put it through to an irresistible conclusion:  there was nothing in which she took a deeper delight.

That night, at home, she told them of her new plan.

“Just think,” she said, “if a woman lives seventy years, and the washing is done once a week, you might say she spent one-seventh of her life—­or ten whole years—­at the meanest hardest work that was ever invented—­”

“They don’t do the washing when they’re children,” said Helen.

“No, but they hate it just as much.  I used to see them on wash days when Aunt Patty took me around, and I always felt sorry for the children.”

Wally came in later and listened sadly to the news of the day.

“You’re only using yourself up,” he said, “for a lot of people who don’t care a snap of the finger for you.  It seems to me,” he added, “that you’d be doing better to make one man happy who loves you, than try to please a thousand women who never, never will.”

She thought that over, for this was an angle which hadn’t occurred to her before.

“No,” she said, “I’m not doing it to gain anything for myself, but to lift the poor women up—­to give them something to hope for, something to live for, something to make them happier than they are now.  Yes, and from everybody’s point of view, I think I’m doing something good.  Because when the woman is miserable, she can generally make her man miserable.  But when the woman is happy, she can nearly always make the man happy, too.”

“I wish you’d make me happy,” sighed poor Wally.