Mary Minds Her Business | Page 2

nearly ten miles long. He also developed an artillery wheel which has probably rolled along every important road in the civilized world.
Indeed he was so engaged in these enterprises that he didn't marry until he was well past forty-five. Then one spring, going to Charlestown to buy his season's supply of pine, he came back with a bride from one of the oldest, one of the most famous families in all America.
There were three children to this marriage--one son and two daughters.
I will tell you about the daughters in my first chapter--two delightful old maids who later had a baby between them--but first I must tell you about the seventh and last Josiah.
In his youth he was wild.
This may have been partly due to that irreducible minimum of Original Sin which (they say) is in all of us--and partly due to his cousin Stanley.
Now I don't mean to say for a moment that Stanley Woodward was a natural born villain. I don't think people are born that way at all. At first the idea probably struck him as a sort of a joke. "If anything happens to young Josiah," I can imagine him thinking to himself with a grin, "I may own this place myself some day.... Who knows?"
And from that day forward, he unconsciously borrowed from the spiders--if you can imagine a smiling spider--and began to spin.
Did young Josiah want to leave the office early? Stanley smilingly did his work for him.
Was young Josiah late the next morning? Stanley smilingly hid his absence.
Did young Josiah yearn for life and adventure? Stanley spun a few more webs and they met that night in Brigg's livery stable.
It didn't take much of this--unexpectedly little in fact--the last of the Spencers resembling one of those giant firecrackers of bygone days--the bigger the cracker, the shorter the fuse. Some say he married an actress, which was one of the things which were generally whispered when I was a boy. A Russian they said she was--which never failed to bring another gasp. Others say she was a beautiful bare-back rider in a circus and wore tights--which was another of the things which used to be whispered when I was a boy, and not even then unless the children had first been sent from the room and only bosom friends were present.
Whatever she was, young Josiah disappeared with her, and no one saw him again until his mother died in the mansion on the hill. Some say she died of a broken heart, but I never believed in that, for if sorrow could break the human heart I doubt if many of us would be alive to smile at next year's joys. However that may be, I do believe that young Josiah thought that he was partly responsible for his mother's death. He turned up at the funeral with a boy seven years old; and bit by bit we learned that he was separated from his wife and that the court had given him custody of their only child.
As you have probably noticed, there are few who can walk so straight as those who have once been saved from the crooked path. There are few so intolerant of fire as those poor, charred brands who have once been snatched from the burning.
After his mother's funeral young Spencer settled down to a life of atonement and toil, till first his father and then even his cousin Stanley were convinced of the change which had taken place in the one-time black sheep of the family.
By that time the patents on the artillery wheel had expired and a competition had set in which was cutting down the profits to zero. Young Josiah began experimenting on a new design which finally resulted in a patent upon a combination ball and roller bearing. This was such an improvement upon everything which had gone before, that gradually Spencer & Son withdrew from the manufacture of wagons and wheels and re-designed their whole factory to make bearings.
This wasn't done in a month or two, nor even in a year or two. Indeed the returned prodigal grew middle aged in the process. He also saw the possibilities of harnessing the water power above the factory to make electric current. This current was sold so cheaply that more and more factories were drawn to New Bethel until the fame of the city's products were known wherever the language of commerce was spoken.
At the height of his son's success, old Josiah died, joining those silent members of the firm who had gone before. I often like to imagine the whole seven of them, ghostly but inquisitive, following the subsequent strange proceedings with noiseless steps and eyes that missed nothing; and in particular keeping watch upon the last living Josiah Spencer--a heavy, powerfully built man with a