At the memory of Wally's phrase she grew more thoughtful than before.
"But would they be for ever blue?" she asked herself. "I guess every woman in the world expects them to be, when she marries. Yes, and they ought to be, too, an awful lot more than they are. Oh, I'm sure there's something wrong somewhere…. I'm, sure here's something wrong…."
She thought of the four women standing in the driveway by the side of the house, looking lost and bewildered, and the old sigh of pity arose in her heart.
"The poor women," she thought. "They didn't look as though the sweetest story ever told had lasted long with them—"
She had reached the crest of the hill and the factory came to her view. A breeze was rising from the river and as she looked down at the scene below, as her forbears had looked so many times before her, she felt as a sailor from the north might feel when after drifting around in drowsy tropic seas, he comes at last to his own home port and feels the clean wind whip his face and blow away his languor.
The old familiar office seemed to be waiting for her, the pictures regarding her as though they were saying "Where have you been, young lady? We began to think you had gone." Through the window sounded the old symphony, the roar of the falls above the hum of the shops, the choruses and variations of well-nigh countless tools, each having its own particular note or song.
Mary's eyes shone bright.
Gone, she found, were her feeling of uncertainty, her sighs of regret. Here at last was something real, something definite, something noble and great in the work of the world.
"And all mine," she thought with an almost passionate feeling of possession. "All mine—mine—mine—"
Archey was the first to come in, and it only needed a glance to see that
Archey was unhappy.