er
shoulder, and realized that they were sixteen. So quickly the time
goes, when people are busy, happy, and working together. At least Kate
and Adam were happy, for they were always working together. By tacit
agreement, they left Polly the easy housework, and went themselves to
the fields to wrestle with the rugged work of a farm. They thought
they were shielding Polly, teaching her a woman's real work, and being
kind to her.

Polly thought they were together because they liked to be; doing the
farm work because it suited them better; while she had known from
babyhood that for some reason her mother did not care for her as she
did for Adam. She thought at first that it was because Adam was a boy.
Later, when she noticed her mother watching her every time she started
to speak, and interrupting with the never-failing caution: "Now be
careful! THINK before you speak! Are you SURE?" she wondered why this
should happen to her always, to Adam never. She asked Adam about it,
but Adam did not know. It never occurred to Polly to ask her mother,
while Kate was so uneasy it never occurred to her that the child would
notice or what she would think. The first time Polly deviated slightly
from the truth, she and Kate had a very terrible time. Kate felt fully
justified; the child astonished and abused.

Polly arrived at the solution of her problem slowly. As she grew
older, she saw that her mother, who always was charitable to everyone
else, was repelled by her grandmother, while she loved Aunt Ollie.
Older still, Polly realized that SHE was a reproduction of her
grandmother. She had only to look at her to see this; her mother did
not like her grandmother, maybe Mother did not like her as well as
Adam, because she resembled her grandmother. By the time she was
sixteen, Polly had arrived at a solution that satisfied her as to why
her mother liked Adam better, and always left her alone in the house to
endless cooking, dishwashing, sweeping, dusting, washing, and ironing,
while she hoed potatoes, pitched hay, or sheared sheep. Polly thought
the nicer way would have been to do the housework together and then go
to the fields together; but she was a good soul, so she worked alone
and brooded in silence, and watched up the road for a glimpse of Henry
Peters, who liked to hear her talk, and to whom it mattered not a mite
that her hair was lustreless, her eyes steel coloured, and her nose
like that of a woman he never had s