McMahon, too, would have made some comment; but Hamilton, who now perceived his blunder, which might have a disastrous effect on the att.i.tude of these men toward him, hastened to make a diversion on his own account.

"Now, men," he said, as affably as he could contrive, "I've made you acquainted with the difficulties and the necessities of the situation.

As I said before, I depend on your loyalty.... Will you let me hear from you later in the afternoon to-day?"

"You'll hear from us, all right," the Yankee a.s.sured his employer, with significant emphasis, before Schmidt had a chance to speak; and McMahon nodded agreement.

Once again, Cicily strove to lighten the mood of the men.

"If you're going away to think something over, be sure you come back in time to take your wives home, after they've joined the club. It's the Civitas Society, you know, for the up-lift of women."

No sooner were the members of the committee out of the room than Cicily turned anxiously to her husband.

"Oh, Charles," she exclaimed, "tell me! It's not true, is it, that there's to be a cut in wages at the factory?"

Hamilton turned away impatiently from the appealing face.

"Cicily," he said shortly, "Uncle Jim and I are very busy. We have business of the highest importance to discuss."

Delancy, who from long experience knew much concerning his niece's wilfulness, now read aright the resolute expression on her face. He tugged nervously at his tufts of whisker, and spoke in a tone of resignation:

"Oh, tell her, Charles, and have done with it.... Or, listen, Cicily.

It's this way: These men are getting more money than they ought to get.

Charles can't make a penny profit, running his business this way. That's all there is to it--he's got to cut them ten per cent. I've advised it, myself."

Cicily's charming nose was now distinctly tip-tilted, whatever might be its normal line.

"Yes, I'd expect you to advise it, Uncle Jim," she remarked, dryly. She turned to her husband, accusingly. "But, Charles, there is no reason why you should follow his advice. Why didn't you ask me? I'm your partner. I don't think you have treated me fairly in this."

Hamilton, overwrought and exasperated by the multiplication of his worries, began a sharp answer; but it was interrupted by the decisiveness with which his wife went on speaking:

"Charles, you have treated me like a child, like a fool.... And you said that you'd let me help you!"

This reproach appealed to Hamilton as grossly unfair.

"Why, Cicily," he exclaimed, "I did let you help. I've let you do everything that you wanted to do--no matter how--" In a sudden access of discretion, he choked back the "foolish."

Delancy, presuming on the right of criticism that had been his during the years of guardianship, spoke with a candor that was not flattering.

"He let you do more than I'd have let you do. He let you waste your money on bath-tubs and libraries, and such foolishness, to make the men dissatisfied. I wish somebody would tell me what a man working for two dollars a day can do with a bath-tub and a library at the works."

"If anybody were to tell you, you wouldn't listen," was Cicily's pert retort.

Delancy tugged at his wisp of whisker, and wagged his head dolefully.

"I don't know what young women these days are coming to," was his melancholy comment.

"What you men are driving us to, you mean!" Cicily fairly snapped. It was difficult enough to manage her husband, without having her position jeopardized by the interference of this meddlesome old man, who stood for that exclusion of her s.e.x against which she was fighting. She went to the chair in which Ferguson had been sitting, and reclined there in a posture of graceful ease that was far from expressing the turmoil of her spirit. As he watched her movements, and studied the loveliness of her, with her delicate face aglow and her amber eyes brilliant in this mood of excitement, Hamilton forgot his worriment for the moment in uxorious admiration. He was smiling fondly on his wife, even as Delancy uttered an exclamation of rebuke to him:

"And you're her husband!" His emphasis made it clear that a husband like himself would have suppressed such insubordination long ago.

"Well," Hamilton replied placidly, and with a hint of amus.e.m.e.nt in his voice, "you brought her up, you know."

"I did not--no such thing!" the old man spluttered. In his indignation, he pulled so viciously on a whisker that he winced from the pain, which by no means tended to soothe his ruffled temper.

"You're quite right, Uncle Jim," Cicily agreed, with dangerous sweetness in the musical voice. "Of course, you never had any time to pay attention to me, or to Aunt Emma either, for that matter. Oh, no, you were too much absorbed in that horrid business of yours. You drove Aunt Emma into working for the heathen, and incidentally, you did teach me one thing: you taught me what sort of a wife not to be. I learned from you never to be married after the fashion in which you and Aunt Emma are married."

Delancy was not blest with an overabundant sense of humor. Now, he forgot the general charge against him in shocked surprise over the final statement, which he took literally.

"Look here, Cicily," he remonstrated. "It took twenty-two minutes in the old First Presbyterian Church to marry your Aunt Emma and me. You couldn't possibly get a more binding ceremony."

Cicily laughed disdainfully.

"Well, it's my opinion that you've never been married at all, really,"

she persisted, with a bantering seriousness. "You wouldn't have been really married if you had spent two whole days in the church." Then, in answer to the pained amazement expressed on her uncle's face, she continued succinctly: "Yes, I mean it, Uncle Jim. Aunt Emma has been second wife ever since those twenty-two minutes in the old First Presbyterian Church, to which you referred so feelingly.... And she has my sympathy. You married business first, and Aunt Emma afterward.

Business had the first claim, and has always kept first place. That's why Aunt Emma has my sympathy."

Delancy rose from his chair, greatly offended, now that he perceived the manner in which he had been bamboozled by the wayward humor of his niece. He moved toward the door at a pace as hurried as dignity would permit. There, he turned to address his disrespectful former ward.

"Charles has my sympathy!" he growled; and stalked from the room.

"Don't forget that you are coming to dinner on Sunday--with your second wife!" the irrepressible Cicily called after him impertinently. But, if the reminder was heard, it was not answered; and husband and wife were left alone together.

Hamilton would have remonstrated with his bride over her wholly unnecessary irritating of her uncle, but he was not given an opportunity. Before the door was fairly shut behind her offended relation, Cicily took the war into the enemy's camp by a curt question:

"Now, Charles, why do you cut wages?"

"Because I have to," was the prompt response.

"And why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you? Nonsense!" The man's tone was expressive of extreme annoyance.

"But I'm your partner," Cicily persisted bravely, although her heart sank under the rebuff. "You yourself said that I was."

"Well, and so you are, since you want it so," Hamilton admitted; "and you're attending to your end, aren't you?"

"Yes, the little end," Cicily agreed, disparagingly.

At that, Hamilton was plainly exasperated.

"What end did you expect?" he demanded. "I tell you, Cicily," he continued, in the tone of one arguing with labored patience to convince a child of some truism, "that business is too big, too serious, too strong for a woman like you, my dear."

"Yes, that's just the fear that grips my heart sometimes, Charles," the wife admitted. With an ingenuity characteristic of her active intelligence, she had perceived a method whereby to twist his words to her own purpose. "Look here!" she went on in a caressing voice, utterly unlike the emphatic one in which she had spoken hitherto. "Do you for a moment imagine that I really like business? Well, then, I don't--not a little bit! For that matter, hardly any woman does, I fancy. As to myself, Charles, I'm afraid of it--that's the whole truth. I'm only in it to watch it--and you!"

The change in her manner had immediate effect on the husband. Again, he was surveying her with eyes in which admiration shone. For the ten-thousandth time, he was reveling in the beauty of that oval contour, in the tender curves of the scarlet lips.... But he forgot to voice his thoughts. Indeed, what need? He had told her so many times already!

"You talk as if business were a woman," he said, with a smile of conscious s.e.x superiority, "and as if you were jealous."