Beyond Pomantic, the next one or two stations took off a good many passengers, so that they had their part of the car almost to themselves.  Frank Sunderline had come in and taken a place upon the other side; now he moved over into the seat behind them, accosting them pleasantly, but not interrupting the conversation which had been busily going on between them all the way.  Ray was really interested in some things Marion had brought up to notice; her face was intent and thoughtful; perhaps she was not quite so pretty when she was set thinking; her dimples were hidden; but Marion was beaming, exhilarated partly by her own talk, somewhat by an honest, if half mischievous earnestness in her subject, and very much also by the consciousness of the young mechanic opposite, within observing and listening distance.  Marion could not help talking over her shoulders, more or less, always.

“Men take the world in the rough, and do the work; women help, and come in for the finishing off,” said Rachel, just as Frank Sunderline changed his place and joined them. “We could not handle those, for instance,” she said, with a shy, quiet sign toward the carpenter’s tools, and lowering her already gentle voice.

“Men break in the fields, and plough, and sow, and mow; and women ride home on the loads,—­is that it?” said Marion, laughing, and snatching her simile from a hay-field with toppling wagons, that the train was at that moment skimming by.  “Well, may be!  All is, I shall look out for my ride.  After things are broken in, I don’t see why we shouldn’t get the good of it.”

“Value is what things stand for, or might procure, isn’t it?” said Ray, turning to Sunderline, and taking him frankly and friendlily into the conversation.

“No fair!” cried Marion.  “He doesn’t understand the drift of it.  Do you, see, Mr. Sunderline, why a man should be paid any more than a woman, for standing behind a counter and measuring off the same goods, or at a desk and keeping the same accounts?  I don’t!  That’s what I’m complaining of.”

“That’s the complaint of the day, I know,” said Sunderline.  “And no doubt there’s a good deal of special unfairness that needs righting, and will get it.  But things don’t come to be as they are quite without a reason, either.  There’s a principle in it, you’ve got to look back to that.”

“Well?” said Marion, gleefully interrogatory, and settling herself with an air of attention, and of demurely giving up the floor.  She was satisfied to listen, if only Frank Sunderline would talk.

“I believe I see what you meant,” he said to Ray.  “About the values that things stand for.  A man represents a certain amount of power in the world.”

“O, does he?” put in Marion, with an indescribable inflection.  “I’m glad to know.”

“He could be doing some things that a woman could not do at all—­was never meant to do.  He stands for so much force.  You may apply things as you please, but if you don’t use them according to their relative capacity, the unused value has to be paid for—­somewhere.”