"I know," nodded Miss Patty. "Something you can't express—"
"The dear child," mused Miss Cordelia, looking out toward the west. "I wonder what she is doing this very moment!"
At that very moment, as it happened, Mary was in her room on the other side of the continent studying the manufacture of raisin fudge. Theretofore she had made it too soft, or too sugary, but this time she was determined to have it right. Long ago she had made all the friends that her room would hold, and most of them were there. Some were listening to a girl in spectacles who was talking socialism, while a more frivolous group, perched on the bed, was arguing the question whether the perfect lover had a moustache or a clean-shaven lip.
"Money is cruel; it ought to be abolished," said the earnest girl in the spectacles. "Money is a millstone which the rich use to grind the poor. You girls know it as well as I do."
Mary stirred away at the fudge.
"It's a good thing she doesn't know that I'm rich," she smiled to herself. "I wonder when I shall start grinding the poor!"
"And yet the world simply couldn't get along without the wage-earners," continued the young orator. "So all they have to do is strike—and strike—and keep on striking—and they can have everything they want—"
"So could the doctors," mused Mary to herself, stirring away at the fudge. "Imagine the doctors striking…. And so could the farmers. Imagine the farmers striking for eight hours a day, and no work Sundays and holidays, and every Saturday afternoon off…."
Dimly, vaguely, a troubled picture took shape in her mind. She stirred the fudge more reflectively than ever.
"I wonder if civil wars are started that way," she thought, "one class setting out to show its power over another and gradually coming to blows. Suppose—yes, suppose the women were to go on strike for eight hours a day, and as much money as the men, and Saturday afternoons and Sundays off, and all the rest of it…. The world certainly couldn't get along without women. As Becky says, they would only have to strike—and strike—and keep on striking—and they could get everything they wanted—"