Meanwhile the school was adding new courses of study. The cleverest operators were brought back to learn how to run more complicated machines. Turret lathe hands, oscillating grinders, inspectors were graduated. In short, by the end of March, Mary was able to report to another special meeting of the board of directors that where Spencer & Son had been 371 men short on the first of the year, every empty place was now taken and a waiting list was not only willing but eager to start upon work which was easier than washing, ironing, scrubbing or sewing, and was guaranteed to pay $21 a week—and up!
This declaration might be said to mark an epoch in the Spencer factory.
Its exact date was March 31st, 1917.
On April 2nd of the same year, another declaration was made, never to be forgotten by mankind.
Upon that date, as you will recall, the Sixty-fifth Congress of the
United States of America declared war upon the Imperial German
Government.
CHAPTER XVIII
Wally was the first to go.
On a wonderful moonlight night in May he called to bid Mary good-bye. He had received a commission in the aviation department and was already in uniform—as charming and romantic a figure as the eyes of love could ever wish to see.
But Mary couldn't see him that way—not even when she tried—making a bold little experiment with herself and feeling rather sorry, if anything, that her heart beat no quicker and not a thrill ran over her, when her hand rested for a moment on Wally's shoulder.
"I wonder if I'm different from other girls," she thought. "Or is it because I have other things to think about? Perhaps if I had nothing else on my mind, I'd dream of love as much as anybody, until it amounted to—what do they call it?—a fixed idea?—that thing which comes to people when they keep turning the same thing over and over in their minds, till they can't get it out of their thoughts?"
But you mustn't think that Mary didn't care that Wally was going—perhaps never to return. She knew that she liked him—she knew she would miss him. And when, just before he left, he sang The Spanish Cavalier in that stirring tenor which always made her scalp tingle and her breast feel full, she turned her face to the moonlit scene outside and lived one of those minutes which are so filled with beauty and the stirring of the spirit that pleasure becomes poignant and brings a feeling which isn't far from pain.