rris paused with a boot half unlaced. While his recollection of
Beulah's defiance was clear enough, it had not occurred to him that
the girl actually would stand by her guns. He had told her that she
would milk the cows tonight as usual, and he had assumed, as a matter
of course, that she would do so. He was not accustomed to being
disobeyed.

"Where's Beulah?" he demanded.

"I guess she's in her room."

Harris laced up his boot. Then he started upstairs.

"Don't be too hard on her, John," urged his wife, with a little catch
in her voice.

"I won't be too hard on anybody," he replied curtly. "It's a strange
thing you wouldn't see that she did as she was told. I suppose I have
to plug away in the field until dark and then come in and do another
half-day's work because my women folk are too lazy or stubborn to do
it themselves."

If this outburst was intended to crush Mary Harris it had a very
different effect. She seemed to straighten up under the attack; the
colour came back to her cheeks, and her eyes were bright and defiant.

"John Harris," she said. "You know better than to say that your women
folk are either lazy or stubborn, but there's a point where
imposition, even the imposition of a husband, has to stop, and you've
reached that point. You didn't have to stay in the field until dark.
There's another day coming, and the ploughing'll keep. It isn't like
the harvest. It was just your own contrariness that kept you there.
You fired the best man you ever had to-day, in a fit of temper, and
now you're trying to take it out on us."

Harris looked at her for a moment; then, without speaking, he
continued up the stairs. The difficulties of his position were
increasing; it was something new to be assailed from the bosom of his
own family. He felt that he was being very unfairly used, but he had
no intention of shrinking from his duty as a husband and father, even
if its discharge should bring pain to all of them.

He found Beulah in her room, ostensibly reading.

"Why are the cows not milked?" he demanded.

"I thought I made it clear to you at noon that they wouldn't be
milked by me," she answered, "and there didn't seem to be anybody
else hankering for the job."

"Beulah," he said, trying to speak calmly, "don't you think this
nonsense has gone far enough?"

"Too far," she agreed. "But you started it--let's see you stop it."

"Beulah," he said, with rising anger, "I won't allow you to talk to
me like t