"Needs oil," said she, "gen'ly speaking."
It was one of the proud moments in Josiah's life, and yet when back of him he heard a whisper, "Chip of the old block," he couldn't repress the well nigh passionate yearning, "Oh, Lord, if she had only been a boy!"
That year an addition was being made to the factory and Mary liked to watch the builders. She often noticed a boy and a dog sitting under the trees and watching, too.
Once they smiled at each other, the boy blushing like a sunset. After that they sometimes spoke while Josiah was talking to the foreman. His name, she learned, was Archey Forbes, his father was the foreman, and when he grew up he was going to be a builder, too. But no matter how often they saw each other, Archey always blushed to the eyes whenever Mary smiled at him.
Occasionally a man would be hurt at the factory. Whenever this happened, Aunt Patty paid a weekly call to the injured man until he was well—an old Spencer custom that had never died out.
Mary generally accompanied her aunts on these visits—which was a part of the family training—and in this way she saw the inside of many a home.
"I wouldn't mind being a poor man," she said one Saturday morning, breaking a long silence, "but I wouldn't be a poor woman for anything."
"Why not?" asked Miss Cordelia.
She couldn't tell them why but for the last half hour she had been comparing the lives of the men in the factory with the lives of their wives at home.
"A man can work in the factory," she tried to tell them, "and everything is made nice for him. But his wife at home-now—nobody cares—nobody cares what happens to her—"