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As Mrs. Kilpatrick went home holding little Maggie by the hand that windy noon, the agent was sitting in the company’s counting-room with one of the directors and largest stockholders, and they were just ending a long talk about the mill affairs. The agent was about forty years old now and looked fifty. He had a pleasant smile, but one saw it rarely enough, and just now he looked more serious than usual.

“I am very glad to have had this long talk with you,” said the old director. “You do not think of any other recommendations to be made at the meeting next week?”

The agent grew a trifle paler and glanced behind him to be sure that the clerks had gone to dinner.

“Not in regard to details,” he answered gravely. “There is one thing which I see to be very important. You have seen the books, and are clear that nine per cent. dividend can easily be declared?”

“Very creditable, very creditable,” agreed the director; he had recognized the agent’s ability from the first and always upheld him generously. “I mean to propose a special vote of thanks for your management. There isn’t a minor corporation in New England that stands so well to-day.”

The agent listened. “We had some advantages, partly by accident and partly by lucky foresight,” he acknowledged. “I am going to ask your backing in something that seems to me not only just but important. I hope that you will not declare above a six per cent. dividend at that directors’ meeting; at the most, seven per cent.,” he said.

“What, what!” exclaimed the listener. “No, sir!”

The agent left his desk-chair and stood before the old director as if he were pleading for himself. A look of protest and disappointment changed the elder man’s face and hardened it a little, and the agent saw it.

“You know the general condition of the people here,” he explained humbly. “I have taken great pains to keep hold of the best that have come here; we can depend upon them now and upon the quality of their work. They made no resistance when we had to cut down wages two years ago; on the contrary, they were surprisingly reasonable, and you know that we shut down for several weeks at the time of the alterations. We have never put their wages back as we might easily have done, and I happen to know that a good many families have been able to save little or nothing. Some of them have been working here for three generations. They know as well as you and I and the books do when the mills are making money. Now I wish that we could give them the ten per cent. back again, but in view of the general depression perhaps we can’t do that except in the way I mean. I think that next year we’re going to have a very hard pull to get along, but if we can keep back three per cent., or even two, of this dividend we can not only manage to get on without a shut-down or touching our surplus, which is quite small enough, but I can have some painting and repairing done in the tenements. They’ve needed it for a long time–“

The old director sprang to his feet. “Aren’t the stockholders going to have any rights then?” he demanded. “Within fifteen years we have had three years when we have passed our dividends, but the operatives never can lose a single day’s pay!”

“That was before my time,” said the agent, quietly. “We have averaged nearly six and a half per cent. a year taking the last twenty years together, and if you go back farther the average is even larger. This has always been a paying property; we’ve got our new machinery now, and everything in the mills themselves is just where we want it. I look for far better times after this next year, but the market is glutted with goods of our kind, and nothing is going to be gained by cut-downs and forcing lower-cost goods into it. Still, I can keep things going one way and another, making yarn and so on,” he said pleadingly. “I should like to feel that we had this extra surplus. I believe that we owe it to our operatives.”