A Daughter of the Land | Page 9

reason for this docility on the part
of these big, matured men, lay wholly in the methods of father Bates.
He gave those two hundred acres of land to each of them on coming of
age, and the same sum to each for the building of a house and barn and
the purchase of stock; gave it to them in words, and with the fullest
assurance that it was theirs to improve, to live on, to add to. Each of
them had seen and handled his deed, each had to admit he never had
known his father to tell a lie or deviate the least from fairness in a deal
of any kind, each had been compelled to go in the way indicated by his
father for years; but not a man of them held his own deed. These
precious bits of paper remained locked in the big wooden chest beside
the father's bed, while the land stood on the records in his name; the
taxes they paid him each year he, himself, carried to the county clerk;
so that he was the largest landholder in the county and one of the very
richest men. It must have been extreme unction to his soul to enter the
county office and ask for the assessment on those "little parcels of land
of mine." Men treated him very deferentially, and so did his sons.

Those documents carefully locked away had the effect of obtaining
ever-ready help to harvest his hay and wheat whenever he desired, to
make his least wish quickly deferred to, to give him authority and the
power for which he lived and worked earlier, later, and harder than any
other man of his day and locality.
Adam was like him as possible up to the time he married, yet Adam
was the only one of his sons who disobeyed him; but there was a
redeeming feature. Adam married a slender tall slip of a woman, four
years his senior, who had been teaching in the Hartley schools when he
began courting her. She was a prim, fussy woman, born of a prim father
and a fussy mother, so what was to be expected? Her face was narrow
and set, her body and her movements almost rigid, her hair, always
parted, lifted from each side and tied on the crown, fell in stiff little
curls, the back part handing free. Her speech, as precise as her
movements, was formed into set habit through long study of the
dictionary. She was born antagonistic to whatever existed, no matter
what it was. So surely as every other woman agreed on a dress, a recipe,
a house, anything whatever, so surely Agatha thought out and followed
a different method, the disconcerting thing about her being that she
usually finished any undertaking with less exertion, ahead of time, and
having saved considerable money.
She could have written a fine book of synonyms, for as certainly as any
one said anything in her presence that she had occasion to repeat, she
changed the wording to six-syllabled mouthfuls, delivered with
ponderous circumlocution. She subscribed to papers and magazines,
which she read and remembered. And she danced! When other women
thought even a waltz immoral and shocking; perfectly stiff, her curls
exactly in place, Agatha could be seen, and frequently was seen,
waltzing on the front porch in the arms of, and to a turn whistled by
young Adam, whose full name was Adam Alcibiades Bates. In his
younger days, when discipline had been required, Kate once had heard
her say to the little fellow: "Adam Alcibiades ascend these steps and
proceed immediately to your maternal ancestor."
Kate thought of this with a dry smile as she plodded on toward

Agatha's home hoping she could see her brother at the barn, but she
knew that most probably she would "ascend the steps and proceed to
the maternal ancestor," of Adam Bates 3d. Then she would be forced to
explain her visit and combat both Adam and his wife; for Agatha was
not a nonentity like her collection of healthful, hard-working
sisters-in-law. Agatha worked if she 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