That year an addition was being made to the factory and Mary liked to
watch the builders. She often noticed a boy and a dog sitting under the
trees and watching, too.

Once they smiled at each other, the boy blushing like a sunset. After
that they sometimes spoke while Josiah was talking to the foreman. His
name, she learned, was Archey Forbes, his father was the foreman, and
when he grew up he was going to be a builder, too. But no matter how
often they saw each other, Archey always blushed to the eyes whenever
Mary smiled at him.

Occasionally a man would be hurt at the factory. Whenever this happened,
Aunt Patty paid a weekly call to the injured man until he was well--an
old Spencer custom that had never died out.

Mary generally accompanied her aunts on these visits--which was a part of
the family training--and in this way she saw the inside of many a home.

"I wouldn't mind being a poor man," she said one Saturday morning,
breaking a long silence, "but I wouldn't be a poor woman for anything."

"Why not?" asked Miss Cordelia.

She couldn't tell them why but for the last half hour she had been
comparing the lives of the men in the factory with the lives of their
wives at home.

"A man can work in the factory," she tried to tell them, "and everything
is made nice for him. But his wife at home-now--nobody cares--nobody