CHAPTER XXVI.
Afterwards, when Mary looked back at the leading incidents of the big strike it wasn't the epic note which interested her the most, although the contest had for her its moments of exaltation.
Nor did her thoughts revert the oftenest to those strange things which might have engrossed the chance observer--work and happiness walking hand in hand, for instance, to the accompaniment of Mrs.Kelly's drum--or woman showing that she can acquire the same dexterity on a drilling machine as on a sewing machine, the same skill at a tempering oven as at a cook stove, the same competence and neatness in a factory as in a house.
Indeed, when all is said and done, the sound of the work which women were presently doing at New Bethel was only an echo of the tasks which women had done during four years of war, and being a repetition of history, it didn't surprise Mary when she stopped to think it over.

But looking back at the whole experience later, these were the two reflections which interested her the most.
"They have always called woman a riddle," she thought.

"I wonder if that is because she could never be natural.

If woman has been a riddle in the past, I wonder if this is the answer now...." That was her first reflection.
Her second was this, and in it she unconsciously worded one of the great lessons of life.

"The things I worried about seldom happened.