[127]

He released her, after a long moment, and flung himself out of the office, and Glen dropped unsteadily into her chair. Presently, however, there came a distinct sense of relief. It was settled, then. On her twentieth birthday. It put a period to evasions and delays. On the day that she was twenty, she would marry Luke, keep her word, please her father.

Meanwhile, in her greater leisure, she went into the Tollivers’ home and others of its sort and tried faithfully to water where the doctor had planted, in spite of stony soil. Gloriana-Virginia was ailing, and Glen tried first to handle her case from the angle of the mill.

“Luke,” she said earnestly, waylaying the superintendent in the hall, “I think Glory should be laid off for a month. She’s so miserable——”

He nodded, frowning. “Looks no worse than she usually does—always was a pindling young one, but she’s pretty tough and wiry, and she’s a good hand. I’d hate to lay her off now, with these rush orders coming in—she keeps the other kids hustling, too.” Then, at the unhappiness in her face—“Just wait till I get the reins in my own hands, Glen! We’ll make a model mill out of the Altonia! You wait!”

“But Glory can’t wait,” the girl was mutinous. “Surely Mr. Carey——”

“You think you know old Carey, but you don’t,”[128] he cut in harshly. “Mighty soft and mealy-mouthed with you, because he liked your father, but with me, he’s always putting on the screws. No use your naming it to him. He’d say—‘Yes—lay her off! Give ’em all a month on full pay’—to you, and next day he’d give me the wink to put ’em back.”

[128]

And when Glen raged at the duplicity of the Altonia’s owner, again he urged patience. Let her trust him; he would soon be in a position to dictate. Why, that niece of the old man’s—the widow—Mrs. Bob Lee Tenafee, wasn’t that her name?—she’d been there with a bunch of club women, scolding about conditions in the mill, comparing it with others in the community, and he was soft as silk with her—but what did it amount to? Wait; wait!

Then Glen, with a twinge of treachery to Luke, went to the most responsible member of the Tolliver family, M’liss’, the maiden aunt.

M’liss’ Tolliver had been a tall woman, to begin with, but her shoulders sagged and her chest caved in and her stomach protruded until she had eliminated several inches from her 

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