"Then you'll just force me to leave you here--an' you can't hardly get
on without me."

"You mean you'd run away?"

"I'd hate to, but once I was going to. I stayed because you needed me."

"I guess I could keep a watch on you, if I had to," announced the father
shortly.

"You couldn't keep a ball an' chain on me," retorted the son. "I
wouldn't be much use that way about the farm."

The elder Burton very deliberately lighted his pipe. Like many men who
fly suddenly into passions at nothing, he had the surprising faculty of
remaining calm when anger might be expected. Now he said only, "Let's
hear your notion, son. What's been keepin' you awake of nights?"

"It hasn't been just thinkin' about myself that's done it," began Ham,
steadying his voice, though it still held a throb of fervor which
neither his father nor mother had ever heard before. "I've been thinkin'
about all of you. You an' mother are workin' your fingers to the bone
an' your hearts to the breakin' point--for what? Just now you sent Mary
away cryin' to bed because she wanted to be pretty. Why shouldn't she
want to be? Isn't it part of a woman's mission? You call a thing vanity
that's just havin' some life an' ambition in her heart. What's life got
in store here for Mary or for Paul or for me? We're startin'--not endin'
up. We have our ambitions. If we stay here Mary will be drudgin' till
she dies. Paul's got the soul of a great musician, an' he might as well
be dead right now as to stay here, an' as for me I'd a heap rather be