She thought this was one of the things women might be able to do
better than men; one of the bits of world business that women forced
to work outside of homes might accomplish. Once, men had been
necessary for the big, heavy, multiplied labor; now, there was
machinery to help, for kneading, for rolling; there was steam for
baking, even; there were no longer the great caverns to be filled
with fire-wood, and cleared by brawny, seasoned arms, when the
breath of them was like the breath of the furnace seven times
heated, in which walked Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Ray had often thoughts to herself; thoughts here and there, that
touched from fresh sides the great agitations of the day, which she
felt instinctively were beginning wrong and foremost. "I _will_
work; I _will_ speak," cry the women. Very well; what hinders, if
you have anything really to do, really to say? Opportunities are
widening in the very nature and development of things; they are
showing themselves at many a turn; but they give definite business,
here and there; they quiet down those who take real hold. Outcry is
no business; that is why the idle women take to it, and will do
nothing else. It is not they who are moving the world forward to the
clear sun-rising of the good day that must shine. People whose
shoulders are at steady, small, unnoticed wheels are doing that.

Dot stayed in the house and helped her mother. She had a
sewing-machine also, and she took in work from the neighbors, and
from ladies like Miss Euphrasia Kirkbright, and Mrs. Greenleaf, and
Mrs. Farland, who drove over to bring it from Roxeter, and East
Mills, and River Point.

"Why don't you call and see me?" Sylvie Argenter asked one day, when