, four years ago?"

Then Greeba's eyes flashed with anger. "For shame," she cried, "for
shame! Oh, you mean, pitiful men, to bait and badger him like this."

Jacob threw up his head and laughed, and Mrs. Fairbrother said,
"Chut, girl, you're waxing apace with your big words, considering
you're a chit that has wasted her days in London and hasn't learned
to muck a byre yet."

Adam did not hear her. He sat like a man who is stunned by a heavy
blow. "Not for myself," he mumbled, "no, not for myself, though they
all think it." Then he turned to his sons and said, "You think I came
to beg for bed and board for myself, but you are wrong. I came to
demand it for the girl. I may have no claim upon you, but she has,
for she is one with you all and can ask for her own. She has no home
with her father now, for it seems that he has none for himself; but
her home is here, and here I mean to leave her."

"Not so fast, sir," said John. "All she can ever claim is what may
one day be hers when we ourselves come into anything. Meantime, like
her brothers, she has nothing but what she works for."

"Works for, you wagtail?" cried Adam; "she is a woman! Do you
hear?--a woman?"

"Woman or man, where's the difference here?" said Gentleman John, and
he snapped his fingers.

"Where's the difference, you jackanapes? Do you ask me where's the
difference here? Here? In grace, in charity, in unselfishness, in
faith in the good; in fidelity to the true, in filial love and duty!
There's the difference, you jackanapes."

"You are too old to quarrel with, sir; I will spare you," said
Gentleman John.

"Spare me, you whipper-snapper! _You_ will spare _me_! But oh, let me
have patience! If I have cursed the day I first saw my wife let me
not also curse the hour when she first bore me children and my heart
was glad. Asher, you are my firstborn, and heaven knows what you were
to me. You will not stand by and listen to this. She is your sister,
my son. Think of it--your only sister."

Asher twisted about, where he sat by the window nook, pretending to
doze, and said, "The girl is nothing to me. She is nothing to any of
us. She has been with you all the days of her life except such as you
made her to spend with strangers. She is no sister of ours."

Then Adam turned to Ross, "And do you say the same?" he asked.

"What can she do here?" said Ross. "Nothing. This is no place for
your great ladies. We work, here, every man and woman of us, from
d