“My dear young lady,” was the answer in patronizing tones, “don’t bother your brains with such things. You cannot understand them. Why try?”
“Imagine our Salome posing as a philanthropist or a social economist,” interrupted Mrs. Soule’s mellifluous tones. “We had a great laugh over the idea this afternoon.”
Salome bit her lip and said nothing.
“I think,” continued her aunt in the same smooth accents, “that we have talked business long enough. I am sure, Mr. Greenough, that Salome is, and will be perfectly satisfied with any course you may see fit to adopt with regard to the strikers. Women, you know, ladies at least, have no heads for business, and we, certainly,” with an indescribable turn of voice on the “we”—“we, certainly, have had no training to fit us for reformers. And now shall we not have some music? Salome, dear, will you play that delightful little suite of Moscowzki’s that I like so well?”
The young woman rose and, going to the piano, did as she was bid, although somewhat mechanically. Then Mr. Greenough proposed a song from Mr. Burnham, who possessed a fine baritone voice, and the evening wore away with music and light conversation.
When the three men went home, the elder was in fine spirits, in spite of having been shocked and discomfited to an unusual degree, by the unexpected disclosure of views which he termed “strong-minded” on the part of the fair owner of the Shawsheen Mills.
“If there should come to be hard times and perhaps destitution among the operatives before this difficulty is settled,” Salome said to John Villard as he was preparing to go, “such destitution as we read of in foreign countries in times of labor disturbances, I hope you will let me do something to relieve it. Strange as it may seem, I have a much better idea of such a state of affairs there than here—among my own mills.”
“There will be no such state of affairs, I trust,” was his reply, “as is pictured in English novels.”
“You have guessed accurately as to the sources of my information,” she laughed.
He smiled too, and continued,