to double your assistants. You could not hire two women
who would come here and do so much work as I do in a day. That is why I
decline to give up teaching, and stay here to slave at your option, for
gingham dresses and cowhide shoes, of your selection. If I were a boy,
I'd work three years more and then I would be given two hundred acres
of land, have a house and barn built for me, and a start of stock given
me, as every boy in this family has had at twenty-one."

"A man is a man! He founds a family, he runs the Government! It is a
different matter," said Mrs. Bates.

"It surely is; in this family. But I think, even with us, a man would
have rather a difficult proposition on his hands to found a family
without a woman; or to run the Government either."

"All right! Go on to Adam and see what you get."

"I'll have the satisfaction of knowing that Nancy Ellen gets dinner,
anyway," said Kate as she passed through the door and followed the long
path to the gate, from there walking beside the road in the direction
of her brother's home. There were many horses in the pasture and
single and double buggies in the barn; but it never occurred to Kate
that she might ride: it was Sunday and the horses were resting. So
she followed the path beside the fences, rounded the corner of the
church and went on her way with the text from which the pastor was
preaching, hammering in her brain. She became so absorbed in thought
that she scarcely saw the footpath she followed, while June flowered,
and perfumed, and sang all around her.

She was so intent upon the words she had heard that her feet
unconsciously followed a well-defined branch from the main path leading
into the woods, from the bridge, where she sat on a log, and for the
unnumbered time, reviewed her problem. She had worked ever since she
could remember. Never in her life had she gotten to school before noon
on Monday, because of the large washings. After the other work was
finished she had spent nights and mornings ironing, when she longed to
study, seldom finishing before Saturday. Summer brought an endless
round of harvesting, canning, drying; winter brought butchering, heaps
of sewing, and postponed summer work. School began late in the fall
and closed early in spring, with teachers often inefficient; yet
because she was a close student and kept her books where she could take
a peep and memorize and think as she washed dishes and cooked, she had
thoroughl