The ancient loyalty reared its head, in spite of embarrassment and chagrin. “He is not like that, usually,” said the girl. “He has never spoken to me like that in all my life. It is just that he is under a dreadful strain. I don’t know how much you understand about this situation, Mrs. Parker, but the mill is in a very bad way. Mr. Carey is--not efficient, and the old superintendent, a man who’d been here forever and was absolutely trusted, had been systematically robbing the Altonia for years.” “My word!” said the lady, impressed. “Yes. It was a dreadful blow to Mr. Carey. It caused his stroke, the doctors thought. And you can imagine what a state things were in when Luke Manders took charge!” “And my husband, and later my son, as absentee owners, shirking their share of responsibility,” the Federation President admitted sturdily. “Yes,” Glen was honest about it, “that has made it much harder, of course. I don’t know the details; Luke has never really had time to explain to me, and he insists on carrying all the burdens himself.” Pride warmed in her voice again. “You can’t picture how hard he works--harder than any other three people under this roof!” “I fancy,” the older woman was cordially approving, “you do not waste many moments yourself.” “Well, I work as hard as I can, but Luke doesn’t let me help him as much as I wish he would.” “I always consider,” said Mrs. Parker firmly, not to be lured into commendation of a person she disliked as much as she did the splendid-looking, saturnine superintendent, “that the test of a good executive is his ability to surround himself with capable assistants, and then delegate a reasonable amount of work and responsibility to them. When people lose poise and become irritable----” “Oh, but he doesn’t, ordinarily!” Glen insisted quickly. “I have never seen him like this before. Why, he had no intention of running the mill to-night, when I saw him, early this evening--he must simply have worried and worried about it until he couldn’t bear the inaction. He had to be _doing_ something, even though he’d decided we were too short handed to run night shifts at present.” She looked earnestly into the other’s face, expecting understanding. “Some one, Masefield, I believe,” said Mrs. Parker rather grudgingly, “has said that ‘energy is agony expelled.’ Ah--” she had looked over her shoulder at a sound--“there is Peter now, with Nancy Carey and the Jennings girl from the hotel!” They made a pleasing group, the three modish young persons in evening clothes, if rather out of drawing in the dingy Altonia, and Nancy was an excellent foil for Janice Jennings’s hard-finished smartness.