Salome Shepard never looked handsomer, or smiled more sweetly, than she did when she uttered the last sentence, and closed the door behind her, leaving her two completely astonished hearers standing in the middle of the office.
“Whe-e-w!” ejaculated Geoffrey Burnham, after a little. “How does that strike you? The Shawsheen Mills run by a ‘female woman,’ as A. Ward would put it! And, by George! we are expected to stay and work,—under a woman!”
John Villard broke into a peal of laughter. “It’s awfully funny at first,” he said, calming down again. “But, after all, why not? She isn’t the empty-headed, aimless creature we thought her. She’s read and studied, and has some very sound notions.”
“But, Villard—a woman-agent!” gasped Burnham. “We shall be the laughing-stock of the whole state.”
“Let them laugh,” answered Villard. “They laugh best who laugh last. And with her notions, her thirst for further knowledge, her enthusiasm, and, above all, her money, the Shawsheen Mills will be in a position at the end of a few years to do the laughing, while those who laugh at us now will set to studying our methods and come to us for advice.”
“But she knows nothing of the practical part of mill-economy,” objected Burnham. “The mills will go to rack and ruin. Jove! Old Mr. Greenough would turn over in his grave if he could have heard her as she stopped in the door and said: ‘I propose to be my own agent.’ A woman!”
“I know,” replied Villard, “that it will seem odd, and perhaps uncomfortably so, at first, to acknowledge her as head. But, after all, she does not propose to dictate as to the business itself.”
“She will,” interrupted Burnham. “Women always do. She will jump at conclusions, mistake her inferences for logical deductions and the wisdom which comes only with experience, and, after the first month, will know more than we do. I know women. They are impulsive and illogical; and they can’t subvert nature and become good business men.”
“No; but they may prove good business women,” was Villard’s answer. “We do not know, yet, what she can or what she will do. I believe she will be willing to leave the details of the business to us yet, for a long time. She is not a conceited woman; and although she has the faculty common to her sex of making some surprising jumps at conclusions, I do not believe her to be obstinate about them. She proposes to make a study of the business, and realizes that this is a work of years. And, besides, what will save the mills is this: she has an extended plan in manuscript of her grandfather’s scheme for making this an ideal institution. If she is willing to leave the business to us for the present, and is capable of adapting Newbern Shepard’s theories of years ago to the needs of to-day, we are all right, Jeff; and a new era is about to begin for the Shawsheen Mills.”
“I only hope we may like it,” assented Burnham doubtfully. “And now for the conference with the Labor Union.”