“Why, the Church teaches—­” I began.

Laurence nodded.  “Yes, Padre, I know all that.  But it can’t teach away what’s always happening here and now.  At least not to the Butterfly Man and me, ... nor yet the mother-birds, Padre.  No.  We want to be shown how to head off the bluejays.”

We walked along in silence, his hand upon my arm.  His eyes were clouded with the vision that beckoned him.  As for me, I was wondering just where, and how far, that bluejay was going to lead John Flint.

It led him presently to my mother.  All men learn their great lessons from women and in stress the race instinctively goes back to be taught by the mothers of it.  There were long intimate talks between herself and the Butterfly Man, to which Laurence was also called.  In her quiet way Madame knew by heart the whole mill district, good, bad and indifferent, for she was a woman among the women.  She had supported wives parting from dying husbands; she had hushed the cries of frightened children, while I gave the last blessings to mothers whose feet were already on the confines of another world; she had taken dead children from frenzied women’s arms.  Just as the Butterfly Man had shown the country folks to Laurence, so now Madame showed them both the mill folks, the poor folks, the foreigners in a small town disdainful of them; and she did it with the added keenness of her woman’s eyes and the diviner kindness of her woman’s heart.

The little lady had enormous influence in the parish.  And as Laurence’s plans and hopes and ambitions unfolded before her, she threw this potent influence, with all it implied, in the scale of the young lawyer’s favor.  They began their work at the bottom, as all great movements should begin.  What struck me with astonishment was that so many quiet women seemed to be ready and waiting, as for a hoped for message, a bugle-call in the dawn, for just that which Laurence had to tell them.

“A fellow with pull behind him,” said John Flint, “is what you might call a pretty fair probability.  But a fellow with the women behind him is a steam-roller.  There’s nothing to do but clear the road and keep from under.”  And when he went on his rounds among the farm houses now it wasn’t only the men and children he talked to.  There was a message for the overworked women, the wives and daughters who had all the pains and none of the profits.  Westmoreland, who had been a rather lonesome evangelist for many years, of a sudden found himself backed and supported by younger and stronger forces.

The work was done very noiselessly; there was no outward disturbances, yet; but the women were in deadly earnest; there were far, far too many small graves in our cemetery, and they were being taught to ask why the children who filled them hadn’t had a fair chance?  The men might smile at many things, but fathers couldn’t smile when mothers of lost children wanted to know why Appleboro hadn’t better milk and sanitation.  And there, under their eyes bulked the huge red mills, and every day from the bosom of this Moloch went up the smoke of sacrifice.