Mary Minds Her Business Part 6

Just as Master McAllister reached them, raising his hat and bowing to Mary and her friend--Helen's eyes and Helen's smile unconsciously lingered on him for a second or two until, apparently recollecting that she was looking at another, she lowered her glance and peeped at him through her eyelashes instead.

Mary meanwhile was calmly continuing her conversation, never even suspecting the comedy which was going on by her side, but when Helen shot a glance over her shoulder and whispered with satisfaction "He turned to look!" even Mary began to have some slight idea of what was going on.

"Helen," she demurred, "you should never turn around to look at a young man."

"Why not?" laughed Helen, her arm going around her cousin's waist. And speaking in the voice of one who has just achieved a triumph, she added, "They're all such fo-oo-ools!"

Mary thought that over.

Helen's correspondents continued active, and as each letter arrived she read parts of it to her cousin. She was a mimic, and two of the letters she read in character one afternoon when Mary was changing her dress for dinner.

"Oh, Helen, you shouldn't," said Mary, laughing in spite of herself and feeling ashamed of it the same moment. "I think it's awful to make fun of people who write you like that."

"Pooh!" laughed Helen. "They're all such fo-oo-ools!"

"You don't think that of all men, do you!"

"Why not?" laughed Helen again, and tucking the letters into her waist she started humming. Un.o.bserved Ma'm Maynard had entered to straighten the room and, through the mirror, Mary saw her grimly nodding her head.

"Why, Ma'm Maynard," said Mary, "you don't think that all men are fools, too, do you?"

"Eet is not halways safe to say what one believes," said Ma'm, pursing her lips with mystery. "Eef mademoiselles, your aunts, should get to hear--"

"Oh, I won't tell."

"Then, yes, ma cherie, I think at times all men are fools ... and I think it is also good at times to make a fool of man. For why? Because it is revenge.

"Ah, ma cherie, I who have been three times wed--I tell you I often think the old-world view is right. Man is the natural enemy of a woman.

"He is not to be trus'.

"I have heard it discuss' by great minds--things I cannot tell you yet--but you will learn them as you live. And halways the same conclusion arrives: Man is the natural enemy of a woman, and the one best way to keep him from making a fool of you, is to turn 'round queeck and make it a fool of him!"

"Oh, Ma'm Maynard, no!" protested Mary, who had turned from the mirror and was staring with wide eyes. "I can't believe it--never!"

"What is it, ma cherie, which you cannot believe?"

"That man is woman's natural enemy."

"But I tell you, yes, yes.... It has halways been so and it halways will.

Everything that lives has its own natural enemy--and a woman's natural enemy--it is man!

"Think just for a moment, ma cherie," she continued. "Why are parents so careful? Mon Dieu, you would think it at times that a tiger is out in the streets at night--such precautions are made if the girl she is out after dark. And yes, but the parents are right. There is truly a tiger who roams in the black, but his name--eet is Man!

"Think just for a moment, ma cherie. Why are chaperons require'--even in the highest, most culture' society? Why is marriage require'? Is it not because all the world knows well that a man cannot be left to his own promise, but has to be bound by the law as a lion is held in a cage?"

"No," said Mary, shaking her head, "I'm sure it isn't that way. You're simply turning things around and making everything seem horrid."

"You think so, ma cherie? Eh, bien. Three husbands I've had. I am not without experience."

"But you might as well say that woman is man's natural enemy--"

"And some say that," said Ma'm nodding darkly. "Left to himself, they say, man might aspire to be as the G.o.ds; but halways at his helbow is a woman like a figure of fate--and she--she keeps him down where he belongs--"

"I hate all that," said Mary quietly. "Every once in a while I read something like it in a book or a magazine, and whenever I do, I put the book down and open the window and breathe the fresh air. Of course I know some married people aren't happy. But it isn't always because they are married. Single people are unhappy, too. Aunt Patty has indigestion sometimes, and I suppose a lot of people do. But you wouldn't call food a natural enemy; would you? And some children are just as bad as they can be. But you wouldn't call children natural enemies, would you--or try to get along without them?"

But Ma'm Maynard would only shrug her shoulders.

"Eh, bien," she said. "When you have live' as long as me--"

Through the open window a clock could be heard.

"Six o'clock!" squealed Helen, "and I'm not changed yet." As she hurried to the door she said, "I heard Aunt Patty say that Uncle Stanley was coming to dinner again tonight. I hope he brings his handsome son again--don't you?"

CHAPTER VII

Uncle Stanley of late had been a frequent visitor on the hill, occasionally bringing his son Burdon with him, but generally coming alone. After dinner he and Josiah would sit in the den till well past midnight, going over papers and figures, and drafting out instructions for Judge Cutler, the firm's lawyer.

Mary was never able to overcome her aversion to Uncle Stanley.

"I wish he'd stay away," she ruefully remarked to her father one night.

"Three evenings this week I haven't been able to come in the den."

"Never mind, dear," said Josiah, looking at her with love in his sombre eyes. "What we're doing: it's all for you."

"All for me? How?"

He explained to her that whereas Josiah Spencer & Son had always been a firm, it was now being changed to a corporation.

"As long as there was a son," he said, "the partners.h.i.+p arrangement was all right. But the way things are now--Well, when I'm gone, Mary, you'll own the stock of the company, and draw your dividends, and have no responsibilities to bother you."

"But who'll run the factory?"

"I suppose Stanley will, as long as he lives. You'll be the owner, of course, but I don't think you'll ever find anybody to beat Uncle Stanley as a general manager."

"And when Uncle Stanley dies--what then?"

"I think you'll find his son Burdon the next best man."

Mary felt her heart grow heavy. It may have been presentiment, or it may have been the thought of her father's possible death.

"Don't let's talk any more about dying," she said. "But tell me: Is that why you are making so many additions to the factory--because we are changing to a corporation?"

Josiah hesitated, struggling to speak to his daughter as though she were a young man instead of a young woman. But heredity, training and world-old custom restrained him. What would a girl know about mergers, combinations, fundamental patents, the differences between common and preferred stock, and all that? "It would only confuse her," he thought, looking at her with love in his eyes. "She would nod her pretty head to be polite, but I might as well be talking Greek to her."