"What did he want?" demanded her brother quickly.
"He wanted me to go with him to a dance next Tuesday," she answered demurely.
"Huh," came in a tone of disgust from Charlie.
The father asked, quietly, "And what did you say to him, Mary?"
"I told him that I went to dances only with my friends."
"Then," she hesitated, "then he said something about my being careful that I had the right sort of friends and referred to Charlie and John."
"He said that the only use John Ward had for Charlie was to get a line on the union and the plans of the men--that his friendship was only a pretext in order that he might use Charlie as a sort of spy and that the union men wouldn't stand for it."
Captain Charlie muttered something under his breath that he could not speak aloud in the presence of his sister.
Pete Martin deliberately knocked the ashes from his pipe.
"Then," continued Mary, "he talked about how everybody knew that John was nothing but a"--she laughed mockingly at her brother--"a silk-hatted swell who couldn't hold his job an hour if it wasn't that his father owned the Mill, and that Charlie was a hundred times more competent to manage the business. He said that anybody could see how Charlie's promotion in the army proved him superior to John, who was never anything but a common private."
Captain Charlie laughed aloud. "John and I understand all about that superiority business. I was lucky, that's all--our captain just happened to be looking in my direction. Believe me, good old John was just as busy as I ever dared to be, only it was his luck to be busy at some other point that the captain didn't see."
"No," answered the young woman, slowly. "I--I am afraid I was angry at what he called John--I mean at what he said about Charlie and John's friendship--and so I told him what I thought about him and Sam Whaley and their crowd, and asked him to go and not come back again except to see you or Charlie."
"Good for you, Mary!" exclaimed her brother.
"And how did Jake take his dismissal?" asked Charlie, presently.
"He went, of course," she answered. "But he said that he would show me what the friendship of a man of John Ward's class meant to a working man; that the union men would find out who the loyal members were and when the time came they would know whom to reward and whom to treat as traitors to the Cause."