Rumor had it that the Powers Jackson trust was about to be fulfilled. It had become known among the friends of the trustees that during these prosperous times the fund for the educational project had grown apace, and was now estimated to be from five to six millions of dollars. It was understood that some of the trustees were in favor of handing over this munificent bequest to a large local university, with the stipulation that a part of the money should be devoted to maintaining a school on the West Side where some form of manual training or technology should be taught.

One morning, not long after Helen\'s confinement, Jackson read aloud from the newspaper an item to the effect that negotiations were under way with the university.

"So that\'s their game!" he exclaimed to Helen gloomily, seeing in this move an unexpected check to his ambition.

"How can they even think of it!" she responded warmly, unwontedly stirred at the thought that the old man\'s design had already become thus blurred in the minds of his nearest friends. "That wasn\'t in the least what uncle meant should be done. I wish I could see Everett, or Judge Phillips, and find out the truth in all this talk."

"Yes," Jackson assented. "I should like to know what they mean to do."

Then he went to the train, trying to recall the names of the influential trustees of the university, and wondering whether after all there would be any monumental building erected with his uncle\'s money. Fate seemed disposed to keep from his touch the smallest morsel of the coveted millions!

It was not long before Helen had the opportunity she desired of finding out from the trustees what was the truth beneath the newspaper gossip. Judge Phillips with Mr. Pemberton took the seat behind her in the car of the Chicago train one morning, and the judge leaning forward inquired about the children. Before he settled back into his newspaper, Helen ventured to mention the current report about the Powers Jackson bequest.

"I hope it isn\'t true," she protested warmly. "Mr. Jackson was not interested in universities, I know,—at least especially. He didn\'t believe very much in theoretical education; I don\'t think he would have wanted his money used that way."

"What is that?" Pemberton asked with interest.

The judge, who preferred to talk babies or shrubs with a pleasant young woman, answered briefly:—

"Well, we haven\'t settled anything yet. Mr. Hollister seems to be against the university plan, and I don\'t know that I favor it. But you\'ll have to talk to Pemberton here. It was his idea."

"Why do you think Mr. Jackson would have objected?" Pemberton inquired gravely.

"We often used to discuss college education," Helen replied quickly, turning to the younger trustee. "And he had very positive ideas about what was needed nowadays. He thought that colleges educated the leaders, the masters, and that there would always be enough left for that kind of institution. So many people are interested in colleges. But he wanted to do something with his money for the people."

"Yes, of course, it must be a free technical school," Pemberton replied literally, "and it must be out there on the West Side."

"But planned for the people, the working people," she insisted.

"Naturally. But we are all the \'people,\' aren\'t we, Mrs. Hart? I haven\'t much sympathy with this talk nowadays about the \'people\' as opposed to any other class."

"That\'s the unions," the judge nodded sagely. "We are all the \'people.\' There is no class distinction in educational matters. We want to offer the best kind of education for the poor boy or the rich boy. What was Powers himself? His school must be a place to help boys such as he was, of course."

They were both completely at sea as to the donor\'s real intentions, Helen felt sure, and she was eager to have them see the matter as she saw it. Suddenly ideas came to her, things she wished to say, things that seemed to her very important to say. She remembered talks that she had had with the old man, and certain remarks about college education which had dropped from him like sizzling metal.

"But a technological school like the one in Boston,"—Pemberton had instanced this famous school as an example they should follow,—"that\'s a place to educate boys out of their class, to make them ambitious, to push them ahead of their mates into some higher class."

"Well?" asked Pemberton. "What\'s the matter with that idea? Doesn\'t all education do just that for those who are fitted for it?"

"Uncle wanted something so different! He wanted to make boys good workmen, to give them something to be contented with when they had just labor before them, daily labor, in the factories and mills."

The judge\'s face puckered in puzzle over this speech. He was of an older generation, and he could see life only in the light of competition. Free competition in all the avenues of life—that was his ideal. And the constant labor disputes in Chicago had thickened his prejudices against the working people as a class. He believed, in common with his associates, that their one aim was to get somebody\'s money without working for it.

But the other man, who was younger and less prejudiced, was more responsive. He felt that this woman had an idea, that she knew perhaps what the benefactor really wanted, and so they talked of the school until the train reached Chicago. As they rose to leave the cars, Pemberton said warmly:—

"I am glad we have had this talk, Mrs. Hart. I think I see what you mean, although I am not at all clear how to attain the objects that you describe as the donor\'s intention. But you have modified my ideas very materially. May I call on you some day and continue this discussion?"

"If you would!" Helen exclaimed, glowing with an enthusiasm unfelt for a long time.

"Well," the judge concluded, "I hope we can get the thing settled pretty soon and start on the building. I want to see something done before I die."

"Yes," Helen assented, "I should think you would want to see the school go up. And I hope Jackson will have the building of it."

She expressed this wish very simply, without considering how it might strike the trustees. It was merely a bit of sentiment with her that her husband, who had got his education from Powers Jackson, might, as a pure labor of love, in gratitude, build this monument to the old man. It did not then enter her mind that there would be a very large profit in the undertaking. She assumed that the architect would do the work without pay!

It was not until Pemberton\'s thin lips closed coldly and the judge stared at her in surprise that she realized what she had said. Then her face turned crimson with the thought of her indelicacy, as Judge Phillips replied shortly:—

"We haven\'t got that far yet, Mrs. Hart. It\'s probable that if we build we shall have a competition of designs."

The two men raised their hats and disappeared into the black flood pouring across the bridge, while she got into an omnibus. That remark of hers, she felt, might have undone all the good of the talk they had had about the old man\'s plan. Her cheeks burned again as she thought of hinting for business favors to her husband. It seemed a mean, personal seeking, when she had been thinking solely of something noble and pure.

This idea distressed her more and more until she was ingulfed in that mammoth caravansary where one-half of Chicago shops and, incidentally, meets its acquaintances and gossips. She hurried hither and thither about this place in the nervous perturbation of buying. Finally, she had to mount to the third floor to have a correction made in her account. There, in the centre of the building, nearly an acre of floor space was railed off for the office force,—the bookkeepers and tally clerks and cashiers. Near the main aisle thirty or forty girls were engaged in stamping little yellow slips. Each had a computation machine before her and a pile of slips. Now and then some girl would glance up listlessly from her work, let her eyes wander vacantly over the vast floor, and perhaps settle her gaze for a moment on the face of the lady who was waiting before the cashier\'s window. This store boasted of the excellent character of its employees. They were of a neater, more intelligent, more American class than those employed in other large retail stores. Even here, however, they had the characteristic marks of dull, wholesale labor.

Helen was hypnotized by the constant punch, click, and clatter of the computation machines, the repeated movements of the girls\' arms as they stretched out for fresh slips, inserted them in the machines, laid them aside. This was the labor of the great industrial world,—constant, rhythmic as a machine is rhythmic, deadening to soul and body. Standing there beside the railing, she could hear the vast clatter of our complex life, which is carried on by just such automata as these girls. What was the best education to offer them, and their brothers and fathers and lovers? What would give their lives a little more sanity, more joy and human interest?—that was the one great question of education. Not what would make them and their fellows into department managers or proprietors.

The receipted bill came presently, with a polite bow. She stuffed the change into her purse and hurried away, conscious that the girl nearest the railing was looking languidly at the back of her gown.

On her way to the Auditorium to meet some women who were to lunch with her there, and afterward go to the afternoon concert, she stopped at her husband\'s office. The architect had moved lately to the top story of a large new building on Michigan Avenue, where his office had expanded. He had taken a partner, a pleasant, smooth-faced young man, Fred Stewart, who had excellent connections in the city, which were expected to bring business to the firm. Cook was still the head draughtsman, but there were three men and a stenographer under him now. His faith in Hart had been justified, and yet at times he shook his head doubtfully over some of the work which passed through the office.

Cook recognized Helen when she entered the outer office, and opened the little wicket gate for her to step inside.

"Your husband\'s busy just now, been shut up with a contractor most all the morning. Something big is on probably. Shall I call him?"

"No," she answered. "I\'ll wait awhile. Is this the new work?" She pointed in surprise to the water-color sketches and photographs on the walls. "It\'s so long since I have been in the office. I had no idea you had done so much."

"More\'n that, too. There\'s some we don\'t hang out here," the draughtsman answered with suppressed sarcasm. "We\'ve kept pretty busy."

He liked his boss\'s wife. She had a perfectly simple, kindly manner with all the world, and a face that men love. The year before she had had Cook and his younger brother in the country over Sunday, and treated them "like distinguished strangers," as Cook expressed it.

"That\'s the Bushfields\' house—you know it, perhaps? This is Arnold Starr\'s residence at Marathon Point—colonial style. That\'s an Odd Fellows hall in Peoria. I did that myself."

Helen said something pleasant about the blunt elevation of the Odd Fellows hall.

"That\'s the Graveland," he continued, pointing to a dingy photograph that Helen recognized. "It was called after the contractor\'s name. We did that the first year."

"Yes, I think I remember it," she murmured, passing on quickly. That was the building her husband had done for the disreputable contractor, who had made it a mere lath-and-plaster shell.

She kept on around the room, glancing at the photographs and sketches. Among the newer ones there were several rows of semi-detached houses that, in spite of the architect\'s efforts, looked very much as if they had been carved out of the same piece of cake. Some of these were so brazen in their commonplaceness that she thought they must be the work of the Cooks. Probably Jackson had reached that point of professional success where he merely "criticised" a good many of the less important sketches, leavin............