Still, as you can see, I am running ahead of my story, and so that you may better understand Mary’s two reflections and the events which led to them, I will now return to the morning when she received Archey’s message that every man in the factory had gone on strike as a protest against the employment of women.

As soon as she reached the office she sent a facsimile letter to the skilled women workers who had applied from out of town.

“If we only get a third of them,” she thought, “we’ll pull through somehow.”

But Mary was reckoning without her book.  For one thing, she was unaware of the publicity which her experiment was receiving, and for another thing perhaps it didn’t occur to her that the same yearnings, the same longings, the same stirrings which moved her own heart and mind so often—­the same vague feeling of imprisonment, the same vague groping for a way out—­might also be moving the hearts and minds of countless other women, and especially those who had for the first time in their lives achieved economic independence by means of their labour in the war.

Whatever the reason, so many skilled women journeyed to New Bethel that week, coming with the glow of crusaders, eager to write their names on this momentous page of woman’s history, that Mary’s worry turned into a source of embarrassment.  However, by straining every effort, accommodations were found for the visitors and the work of re-organization was at once begun.

The next six weeks were the busiest, I had almost said the most feverish, in Mary’s life.

The day after the big strike was declared, not a single bearing was made at Spencer & Son’s great plant.  For a factory is like a road of many bridges, and when half of these bridges are suddenly swept away, traffic is out of the question.

So the first problem was to bridge the gaps.

From the new arrivals, fixers, case-hardeners and temperers were set to work—­women who had learned their trades during the war.

Also a call was issued for local workers and the “school” was opened, larger than ever.  For the first few weeks it might be said that half the factory was a school of intensive instruction; and then, one day which Mary will never forget, a few lonely looking bearings made laborious progress through the plant—­only a few, but each one embodying a secret which I will tell you about later.

The missing bridges weren’t completed yet, you understand—­not by any manner of means—­but at least the foundations had been laid, and every day the roadway became a little wider and a little firmer—­and the progress of the bearings became a little thicker and a little quicker.

And, oh, the enthusiasm of the women—­their shining eyes, their breathless attention—­as they felt the roadway growing solid beneath their feet and knew it was all their work!

“If we keep on at this rate,” said Archey, looking at the reports in Mary’s office one morning, “it won’t be long before we’re doing something big.”