A Daughter of the Land (Musaicum Children's Classics). Stratton-Porter Gene

asked Kate.

      "You'd be a sixteenth of two hundred acres better off than you are now," said Adam.

      "Possibly," laughed Kate, "but I wouldn't want to become a land shark that way. Look down the road."

      "Who is it?" asked Adam.

      "Nancy Ellen, with my telescope," answered Kate. "I am to go, all right."

      "All right, then we will go," said the boy, angrily. "But it is a blame shame and there is no sense to it, as good a girl as you have been, and the way you have worked. Mother said at breakfast there was neither sense nor justice in the way Grandpa always has acted and she said she would wager all she was worth that he would live to regret it. She said it wasn't natural, and when people undertook to controvert—ain't that a peach? Bet there isn't a woman in ten miles using that word except Ma—nature they always hurt themselves worse than they hurt their victims. And I bet he does, too, and I, for one, don't care. I hope he does get a good jolt, just to pay him up for being so mean."

      "Don't, Adam, don't!" cautioned Kate.

      "I mean it!" cried the boy.

      "I know you do. That's the awful thing about it," said Kate. "I am afraid every girl he has feels the same way, and from what your father said yesterday, even the sons he favours don't feel any too good toward him."

      "You just bet they don't! They are every one as sore as boiled owls. Pa said so, and he knows, for they all talk it over every time they meet. He said they didn't feel like men, they felt like a lot of 'spanked school-boys.'"

      "They needn't worry," said Kate. "Every deed is made out. Father reads them over whenever it rains. They'll all get their land when he dies. It is only his way."

      "Yes, and THIS is only his way, too, and it's a dern poor way," said Adam. "Pa isn't going to do this way at all. Mother said he could go and live on his land, and she'd stay home with Susan and me, if he tried it. And when I am a man I am going to do just like Pa and Ma because they are the rightest people I know, only I am not going to save QUITE so close as Pa, and if I died for it, I never could converse or dance like Ma."

      "I should hope not!" said Kate, and then added hastily, "it's all right for a lady, but it would seem rather sissy for a man, I believe."

      "Yes, I guess it would, but it is language let me tell you, when Ma cuts loose," said Adam.

      "Hello, Nancy Ellen," said Kate as Adam stopped the buggy. "Put my telescope in the back with the horse feed. Since you have it, I don't need ask whether I am the Prodigal Daughter or not. I see clearly I am."

      Nancy Ellen was worried, until she was pale.

      "Kate," she said, "I never have seen Father so angry in all my life. I thought last night that in a day or two I could switch the school over to Serena Woodruff, and go on with my plans, but Father said at breakfast if the Bates name was to stand for anything approaching honour, a Bates would teach that school this winter or he'd know the reason why. And you know how easy it is to change him. Oh, Kate, won't you see if that Walden trustee can't possibly find another teacher, and let you off? I know Robert will be disappointed, for he's rented his office and bought a house and he said last night to get ready as soon after Christmas as I could. Oh, Kate, won't you see if you can't possibly get that man to hire another teacher?"

      "Why, Nancy Ellen—" said Kate.

      Nancy Ellen, with a twitching face, looked at Kate.

      "If Robert has to wait months, there in Hartley, handsome as he is, and he has to be nice to everybody to get practice, and you know how those Hartley girls are—"

      "Yes, Nancy Ellen, I know," said Kate. "I'll see what I can do. Is it understood that if I give up the school and come back and take ours, Father will let me come home?"

      "Yes, oh, yes!" cried Nancy Ellen.

      "Well, nothing goes on guess-work. I'll hear him say it, myself," said Kate.

      She climbed from the buggy. Nancy Ellen caught her arm.

      "Don't go in there! Don't you go there," she cried. "He'll throw the first thing he can pick up at you. Mother says he hasn't been asleep all night."

      "Pooh!" said Kate. "How childish! I want to hear him say that, and he'll scarcely kill me."

      She walked swiftly to the side door.

      "Father," she said, "Nancy Ellen is afraid she will lose Robert Gray if she has to put off her marriage for months—"

      Kate stepped back quickly as a chair crashed against the door facing. She again came into view and continued—"so she asked me if I would get out of my school and come back if I could"—Kate dodged another chair; when she appeared again—"To save the furniture, of which we have none too much, I'll just step inside," she said. When her father started toward her, she started around the dining table, talking as fast as she could, he lunging after her like a furious bull. "She asked me to come back and teach the school—to keep her from putting off her wedding—because she is afraid to— If I can break my contract there—may I come back and help her out here?"

      The pace was going more swiftly each round, it was punctuated at that instant by a heavy meat platter aimed at Kate's head. She saw it picked up and swayed so it missed.

      "I guess that is answer enough for me," she panted, racing on. "A lovely father you are—no wonder your daughters are dishonest through fear of you—no wonder your wife has no mind of her own—no wonder your sons hate you and wish you would die—so they could have their deeds and be like men—instead of 'spanked school-boys' as they feel now—no wonder the whole posse of us hate you."

      Directly opposite the door Kate caught the table and drew it with her to bar the opening. As it crashed against the casing half the dishes flew to the floor in a heap. When Adam Bates pulled it from his path he stepped in a dish of fried potatoes and fell heavily. Kate reached the road, climbed in the buggy, and said the Nancy Ellen: "You'd better hide! Cut a bundle of stuff and send it to me by Adam and I'll sew my fingers to the bone for you every night. Now drive like sin, Adam!"

      As Adam Bates came lurching down the walk in fury the buggy dashed past and Kate had not even time to turn her head to see what happened.

      "Take the first turn," she said to Adam. "I've done an awful thing."

      "What did you do?" cried the boy.

      "Asked him as nicely as I could; but he threw a chair at me. Something funny happened to me, and I wasn't afraid of him at all. I dodged it, and finished what I was saying, and another chair came, so the two Bates went at it."

      "Oh, Kate, what did you do?" cried Adam.

      "Went inside and ran around the dining table while I told him what all his sons and daughters think of him. 'Spanked school-boys' and all—"

      "Did you tell him my father said that?" he demanded.

      "No. I had more sense left than that," said Kate. "I only said all his boys FELT like that. Then I pulled the table after me to block the door, and smashed half the dishes and he slipped in the fried potatoes and went down with a crash—"

      "Bloody Murder!" cried young Adam, aghast.

      "Me, too!" said Kate. "I'll never step in that house again while he lives. I've spilled the beans, now."

      "That you have," said Adam, slacking his horse to glance back. "He is standing in the middle of the road shaking his fist after you."

      "Can you see Nancy Ellen?" asked Kate.

      "No. She must have climbed the garden fence and hidden behind the privet bush."

      "Well, she better make it a good long hide, until he has had plenty of time to cool off. He'd have killed me if he had caught me, after he fell—and wasted all those potatoes already cooked——"

      Kate laughed a dry hysterical laugh, but the boy sat white-faced and awed.

      "Never mind," said Kate, seeing how frightened he was. "When he has had plenty of time he'll cool off;