"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.