tickle Father's vanity until he would do the same for you."

"I doubt it!" said Kate. "I can't see the vanity in Father."

"You can't?" said Adam, Jr., bitterly. "Maybe not! You have not
been with him in the Treasurer's office when he calls for 'the tax
on those little parcels of land of mine.' He looks every inch of
six feet six then, and swells like a toad. To hear him you would
think sixteen hundred and fifty acres of the cream of this county
could be tied in a bandanna and carried on a walking stick, he is
so casual about it. And those men fly around like buttons on a
barn door to wait on him and it's 'Mister Bates this' and 'Mister
Bates that,' until it turns my stomach. Vanity! He rolls in it!
He eats it! He risks losing our land for us that some of us have
slaved over for twenty years, to feed that especial vein of his
vanity. Where should we be if he let anything happen to those
deeds?"

"How refreshing!" cried Kate. "I love to hear you grouching! I
hear nothing else from the women of the Bates family, but I didn't
even know the men had a grouch. Are Peter, and John, and Hiram,
and the other boys sore, too?"

"I should say they are! But they are too diplomatic to say so.
They are afraid to cheep. I just open my head and say right out
loud in meeting that since I've turned in the taxes and insurance
for all these years and improved my land more than fifty per
cent., I'd like to own it, and pay my taxes myself, like a man."

"I'd like to have some land under any conditions," said Kate, "but