Agatha, despite
curls, bony structure, language, and dance, was the most powerful
factor in the whole Bates family with her father-in-law; and all
because when he purchased the original two hundred acres for Adam, and
made the first allowance for buildings and stock, Agatha slipped the
money from Adam's fingers in some inexplainable way, and spent it all
for stock; because forsooth! Agatha was an only child, and her prim
father endowed her, she said so herself, with three hundred acres of
land, better in location and more fertile than that given to Adam, land
having on it a roomy and comfortable brick house, completely furnished,
a large barn and also stock; so that her place could be used to live on
and farm, while Adam's could be given over to grazing herds of cattle
which he bought cheaply, fattened and sold at the top of the market.

If each had brought such a farm into the family with her, father Bates
could have endured six more prim, angular, becurled daughters-in-law,
very well indeed, for land was his one and only God. His respect for
Agatha was markedly very high, for in addition to her farm he secretly
admired her independence of thought and action, and was amazed by the
fact that she was about her work when several of the blooming girls he
had selected for wives for his sons were confined to the sofa with a
pain, while not one of them schemed, planned, connived with her husband
and piled up the money as Agatha did, therefore she stood at the head
of the women of the Bates family; while she was considered to have
worked miracles in the heart of Adam Bates, for with his exception no
man of the family ever had been seen to touch a woman, either publicly
or privately, to offer the slightest form of endearment, assistance or
courtesy. "Women are to work and to bear children," said the elder
Bates. "Put them at the first job when they are born, and at the
second at eighteen, and keep them hard at it."

At their rate of progression several of the Bates sons and daughters
would produce families that, with a couple of pairs of twins, would
equal the sixteen of the elder Bates; but not so Agatha. She had one
son of fifteen and one daughter of ten, and she said that was all she
intended to have, certainly it was all she did have; but she further
aggravated matters by announcing that she had had them because she
wanted them; at such times as she intended to; and that she had the boy
first and five years the older,