chose, and she did not work if she did not choose. Mostly she
worked and worked harder than any one ever thought. She had a
habit of keeping her house always immaculate, finishing her
cleaning very early and then reading in a conspicuous spot on the
veranda when other women were busy with their most tiresome tasks.
Such was Agatha, whom Kate dreaded meeting, with every reason, for
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