She was still looking out of the window in troubled meditation when the arrival of the afternoon mail turned her thoughts into another track.  As Helen had said, the New Bethel experiment had become fashionable.  Taking it as their text, the women’s clubs throughout the country were giving much of their time to a discussion of the changed industrial relations due to the war.  Increasingly often, visitors appeared at the factory, asking if they could see for themselves—­well-known, even famous figures among them.  But on the afternoon when Helen Cabot made her first call, Mary received a letter which took her breath away, so distinguished, so illustrious were the names of those who were asking if they could pay a visit on the following day.

Mary sent a telegram and then, her cheeks coloured with pride, she made a tour through the factory to make sure that everything would be in order, whispering the news here and there, and knowing that every woman would hear it as unmistakably as though it had been pealed from the heavens in tones of thunder.

The visitors arrived at ten o’clock the next morning.

There were four in the party—­two men and two women.  Mary recognized three of them at the first glance and felt a glow of pride warm her as they seated themselves in her office.

“Not even you,” she thought with a glance at the attentive figures on the walls, “not even you ever had visitors like these.”  And in some subtle manner which I simply cannot describe to you, she felt that the portrayed figures were proud of the visitors, too—­and prouder yet of the dreamy-eyed girl who had brought it about, flesh of their flesh, blood of their blood, who was looking so queenly and chatting so quietly to the elect of the earth.

The fourth caller was introduced as Professor Marsh, and Mary soon perceived that he was a hostile critic.

“I shall have to be careful of him,” she thought, “or I shall be giving him some good, hard bouncers before I know it—­and that would never do today.”  So putting the temptation behind her she presently said, “We’ll start at the nursery, if you like—­any time you’re ready.”

You have already seen something of that nursery, its long row of windows facing the south, its awnings, toys, sand-piles and white-robed nurses.  Since then Mary had had time to elaborate the original theme with a kitchen for preparing their majesties’ food, linen closets and a rest-room for the nurses.

The chief glory of the nursery, however, was its noble line of play-rooms, each in charge of two nurses.

“Let’s look in here,” said Mary, opening a door.

They came upon an interesting scene.  In this room were twelve children, about two years old.  The nurses were feeding them.  Each nurse sat on the inside of a kidney shaped table, large enough to accommodate six children, but low enough to avoid the necessity for high chairs with the consequent dangling between earth and heaven.