with her frail arms, so that Adam being part human as well as part
Bates, held her closely also and said these words: "You bet your
sweet life I will!" And what is more he did. He followed a
furrow the next day, softly muttering over to himself: "Langs
have gone to town. I have gone to work. The birds have gone to
building nests." So Adam seldom said: "have went," or made any
other error in speech that Agatha had once corrected.

As Kate watched him leaning back in his chair, vital, a study in
well-being, the supremest kind of satisfaction on his face, she
noted the flash that lighted his eye when Agatha offered to
"freeze a custard." How like Agatha! Any other woman Kate knew
would have said, "make ice cream." Agatha explained to them that
when they beat up eggs, added milk, sugar, and corn-starch it was
custard. When they used pure cream, sweetened and frozen, it was
iced cream. Personally, she preferred the custard, but she did
not propose to call it custard cream. It was not correct. Why
persist in misstatements and inaccuracies when one knew better?
So Agatha said iced cream when she meant it, and frozen custard,
when custard it was, but every other woman in the neighbourhood,
had she acted as she felt, would have slapped Agatha's face when
she said it: this both Adam and Kate well knew, so it made Kate
laugh despite the fact that she would not have offended Agatha
purposely.

"I think -- I think," said Agatha, "that Nancy Ellen has much upon
which to congratulate herself. More education would not injure
her, but she has enough that if she will allow her ambition to
rule her and study in private and spend her spare time communing
with the best writers, she can make an exceedingly fair