 Chapter 10 of A Daughter of the Land by Gene Stratton Porter This Libra box recording is in the public domain Chapter 10 John Jardine's Courtship The following morning they breakfasted together under the branches of the big maple tree in a beautiful world. Mrs. Jardine was so happy she could only taste a bite now and then, when urged to. Kate was trying to keep her head level and be natural. John Jardine wanted to think of everything and succeeded fairly well. It seemed to Kate that he could invent more ways to spend money and spend it with free her hand than any man she ever had heard of. But she had to confess that the men she had heard about were concerned with keeping their money, not scattering it. Did you hear unusual sounds when John came to bid me good night? asked Mrs. Jardine of Kate. Yes, laugh Kate, I did and I'm sure I made a fairly accurate guess as to the cause. What did you think? asked Mrs. Jardine. I thought Mr. Jardine had missed Suzette and you'd had to tell him, said Kate. You're quite right. It's a good thing she went on and lost herself in New York. I'm not at all sure that he doesn't contemplate starting out to find her yet. Let Suzette go, said Kate. We're interested in forgetting her. There's a little country school teacher here who wants to take her place and it will be the very thing for your mother and for her too. She's the one serving us. Notice her in particular. If she's a teacher, how does she come to be serving us? he asked. I'm a teacher. How do I come to be dining with you? said Kate. This is such a queer world when you go adventuring in it. Jenny had a small school in Al County, a little mother and a big family to help support. So she figured that the only way she could come here to try to prepare herself for a better school was to work for her room and board. She serves the table two hours, three times a day in studies between times. She tells me that almost every way during the dining hall is a teacher. Please watch her movements and manner and see if you think her suitable. Goodness knows she is an intended for a teacher. I like her very much, said John Jardine. Engage her as soon as we finish. Kate's small, but when she saw the ease and dexterity with which he and then Jenny weeks work as a waiter and installed her as his mother's main, making the least detail all right with his mother, with Jenny, with the manager, she realized that there had been nothing for her to smile about. Jenny was delighted and began her new undertaking earnestly with sincere desire to please. Kate helped her all she could while Mrs. Jardine developed a fund to patients commensurate with the need of it. She would have endured more inconvenience than resulted from Jenny's inexperienced hands because the realization that her son and the girl she had so quickly learned to admire were on the lake rambling the woods or hearing lectures together. When she asked him how long he could remain, he said as long as she did. When she explained that she was enjoying herself thoroughly and had no idea how long she would want to stay, he said that was all right. He had only had one vacation in his life. It was time he was having another. When she marveled at this, he said, now look here, mother, let's get this business straight. Right at the start, I told you when I came I'd seen the woman I wanted. If you want me to go back to business, the way to do it is to help me win her. But I don't want you to go back to business. I want you to have a long vacation, learn all you can from the educational advantages here. It's too late for me to learn more than I get every day by knocking around and meeting people. I've tried books two or three times and I've given them up. I can't do it. I've waited too long. I have no way to get down to it. I can't remember to save my soul. But you can remember anything on earth about a business deal, she urged. Of course I can. I was born with a business head. It was remember or starve and see you starve if I'd had the books at the time they would have helped. Now it's too late and I'll never try to get that settled. Much as I want to marry Miss Bates, she'll have to take me or leave me as I am. I can't make myself over for her or for you. I would if I could, but that's one of the things I can't do and I admit it. If I'm not good enough for her as I am, she'll have the chance to tell me so the very first minute I think it's proper to ask her. John, you are good enough for the best woman on earth. That never was a better lad. It isn't that and you know it. I'm so anxious I can scarcely wait, but you must wait. You must give her time and go slowly and you must be careful. Oh, so very careful. She's a teacher and a student. She came here to study. I'll fix that. I can rush things so that there will be no time to study. You'll make a mistake if you try it. You'd far better let her go her own way and only appear when she has time for you, she advised. That's a fine idea, he cried. A lot of eyesight cuts, sitting back waiting for a signal to run after a girl like a poodle. The way to do it is the same as with any business deal. See what you want, overcome anything in your way and get it. I go crazy hanging around like that. You've always told me I couldn't do the things in business I said I would and I've always proved to you that I could by doing them. Now watch me do this. You know I'll do anything to help you John. You know how proud I am of you, how I love you. I realize now that I've talked volumes to Kate about you. I've told her everything from the time you were a little boy and I stayed for you until now when you stayed for me. Including how many terms I'd gone to school. Yes, I even told her that, she said. Well, what did she seem to think about it, he asked. I don't know what she thought. She didn't say anything. There was nothing to say. It was a bare hand of fight with a wolf in those days. I'm sure I made her understand that, she said. Well, I'll undertake to make her understand this, he said. Are you sure that Jenny Weeks is taking good care of you? Jenny is well enough and is growing better each day. Now be off to your courting, but if you love me, remember and be careful. She said. Remember, one particular thing you mean, yes. She nodded, her lips closed. You bet I will, he said. All there is to me goes into this, isn't she a wonder mother? Mrs. Jardine looked closely at the big man who was all the world to her. So like her mentality, so like his father with his dark hair and eyes and big well rounded frame, looked at him with the eyes of love, then as he left her to seek the girl she had learned to love, she shut her eyes and frankly and earnestly asked the Lord to help her son to marry Kate Bates. One morning as Kate helped Mrs. Jardine into her coat and gloves, preparing for one of their delightful morning drives, she said to her, Mrs. Jardine, may I ask you a real question? Of course you may, said Mrs. Jardine, and I shall give you a real answer if it lies in my power. You'll be shocked, warned Kate. Shock away, laughed Mrs. Jardine. By now I flatter myself, I am so accustomed to you that you will have to try yourself to shock me. It's only this, said Kate, if you were a perfect stranger standing back and looking on, not acquainted with any of the parties, merely seeing things as they happen each day, would it be your honest opinion? Would you say that I am being courted? Mrs. Jardine laughed until she was weak. When she could talk she said, yes, my dear, under the conditions, and in the circumstances you mention, I would cheerfully go on oath and testify that you are being courted more openly, more vigorously, and as tenderly as I ever have seen woman courted in all my life. I always thought that John's father was a master-handed courting, but John hasn't beaten in many ways, yes, my dear, you certainly are being courted assiduously. Now then, on that basis, say Kate, just one more question and we'll proceed with our drive. From the same standpoint, would you say from your observation and experience that the mother of the man had any insurmountable objection to the proceedings? Mrs. Jardine laughed again. Finally she said, no, my dear, it's my firm conviction that the mother of the man in the case would be so delighted if you should love and marry her son that she would probably have a final attack of heart trouble and pass away from sheer joy. Thank you, Sid-Kate, I wasn't perfectly sure, having had no experience but ever, and I didn't want to make a mistake. That drive was wonderful over beautiful country roads through dells and across streams and hills, they stopped where they pleased, gathering flowers and early apples, visiting with people they met, lunching wherever they happened to be. If it weren't for wishing to hear John A. Logan tonight, Sid-Kate, I'd move that we'd drive on all day, I certainly am having the grandest time. She sat with her sailor hat filled with early harvest apples, a big bunch of Canadian anamones in her belt, a little stream at her feet, July drowsy fullness all around her, congenial companions, taking the wings of mourning paid after all. Why do you want to hear him so much? asked John. Kate looked up at him and wondered, don't you want to see and hear him? She asked. He hesitated, a thoughtful expression on his face. Finally, he said, I can't say that I do, well you tell me why I should. You should because he was one of the men who did much to preserve our union. He may tell us interesting things about the war. Where were you when it was the proper time for you to be studying the speech of Logan's ancestor and McGuffie's forth? That must have been the year I figured out the improved coupling pen in the CNW shops, wouldn't you think, mother? Somewhere near, my dear, she said. So they drove back as happily as they had set out, made themselves fresh and, while awaiting the lecture hour, Kate again wrote to Robert and Nancy Ellen, telling plainly and simply all that had occurred. She even wrote, John Jardine's mother is of the opinion that he is courting me. I am so lacking in experience myself that I scarcely dare venture an opinion, but it has at times appealed to me that if he isn't really, he certainly must be going through the motions. Nancy Ellen wrote, I read over what you say about John Jardine several times, then I had Robert write Brad Streets and lick him up. He is rated so high that if he hasn't a million right now he soon will have. You be careful and do your level best. Are your clothes good enough? Shall I send more of my things? You know I'll do anything to help you. Oh yes. That George Holt from your boarding place was here the other day hunting you. He seemed determined to know where you were and when you would be back and ask for your address. I then think you had any time for him and I could endure him more foolish talk about new medical theory. So I said you'd no time for writing and we're going about so much, I had no idea if you'd get a letter if he sent one. And I didn't give him what he wanted. I'll probably try general delivery, but you can drop it in the lake. I want you to be sure to change your boarding place this winter if you teach, but I haven't an idea you will. How did you better bring matters to a close if you can and let the director know? Love from us both, Nancy Ellen. Kate sat very still holding this letter in her hand when John Jardine came up and sat beside her. She looked at him closely. He was quite as good looking as his mother thought him in a brawny, masculine way. But Kate was not seeking the last word in mental or physical refinement. She was rather brawny herself and perfectly aware of the fact. She wanted intensely to learn all she could. She disliked the idea that any woman should have more stored in her head than she, but she had no time to study minute social graces and customs. She wanted to be kind, to be polite, but she told Mrs. Jardine flatly that she didn't give a flip about being overly nice, which was the exact truth. That required subtleties beyond Kate's depth, for she was at times alarmingly casual. So she held her letter and thought about John Jardine, as she thought she decided that she did not know whether she was in love with him or not. She thought she was. She liked being with him. She liked all he did for her. She wouldn't miss him if he went away. She would be proud to be his wife. But she did wish that he were interested in land instead of inventions and stocks and bonds. Stocks and bonds were almost as evanescent as rainbows to Kate. Land was something she could understand and handle. Maybe she could interest him in land. If she could, that would be ideal. What a place his wealth would buy and fit up! She wondered, as she's stunning John Jardine, what was in his head? If he truly intended to ask her to be his wife and sense reading Nancy Ellen's letter, when? She should let the trustee know she were not going to teach the school again. But some way, she rather wanted to teach the school. When she started anything, she did not know how to stop until she finished. She had so much she wanted to teach her pupils the coming winter. Suddenly John asked, Kate, if you could have anything you wanted, what would you have? Two hundred acres of land, she said. How easy, laughed John Rising to find a seat for his mother who was approaching them. What do you think of that, mother, a girl who wants two hundred acres of land more than anything else in the world? What is better, asked Mrs. Jardine? I never heard you say anything about land before. Certainly not, said this mother, and I'm not saying anything about it now for myself, but I can see why it means so much to Kate, why it's her natural element. Well, I can't, he said. I meet many men in business who started on land, and most of them were mindy-glandy to get away from it. What's the attraction? Kate waved her hand toward the distance. Oh, merely sky and land and water and trees and birds and flowers and fruit and crops and a few other things scarcely worth mentioning, she said lightly. I'm not in the mood to talk bushel, seed, and fertilization just now, but I understand them. They are in my blood. I think possibly the reason I want two hundred acres of land for myself is because I've been hard on the job of getting them for other people ever since I began to work, about the age of four. But if you want land personally, why didn't you work to get it for yourself, asked John Jardine? Because I happen to be the omega of my father's system, answered Kate. This is Jardine looked at her interestingly. She had never mentioned her home or her parents before. The older woman did not intend to ask a word, but if Kate was going to talk, she did not want to miss one. Kate evidently was going to talk before she continued. You see, my father's land mad and sun-crazy. He thinks a boy of all the importance in the world, a girl of none whatever. He has the biggest family of anyone we know. From birth, each girl is work like a man or a slave, from four in the morning until nine at night. Each boy has worked exactly the same way. The difference lies in the fact that the girls get plain food and plainer clothes out of it. The boys each get 200 acres of land, buildings, and stock, that the girls have been worked to the limit to help pay for. They get nothing personally worth mentioning. I think I have 200 acres of land on the brain and I think this is the explanation of it. It's a prenatal influence at our house. While we nurse, eat, sleep, and above all work it afterward, she paused and looked toward John Jardine calmly. I think, she said, that there's not a task ever performed on a farm that I haven't had my share in. I've ploughed, hoed, seeded, driven reapers and bound wheat, pitched hay in the whole manure, chopped wood and sheared sheep and boiled sap. If you can mention anything else, go ahead. I bet a dollar I've done it. Well, what do you think of that, he muttered, looking at her wonderingly? If you ask me and want the answer in plain words, I think it's a shame, said Kate. If it were 100 acres of land and the girls had as much and were as willing to work for it as the boys are, well and good. But to drive a slight cattle and turn all we earn into land for the boys is another matter. I rebelled last summer, borrowed the money, went to normal and taught last winter. I'm going to teach again this winter, but last summer and this on the first in my life I haven't been in the harvest field at this time. Women in the harvest field of land, king baits are common as men and wagons and horses, but not nearly so much considered. The women always walk on Sunday to save the horses and often on weekdays. Mother has it hammered into me that it is impolite to ask questions, said John. I'd like to ask one. Go ahead, said Kate, ask 50. What do I care? How many boys are there in your family? There are seven, said Kate, and if you want to use them as a basis for a land estimate add 250 for the home place, 1650 is what father pays tax on, besides numerous mortgages and investments, he's the richest man in the county we live in, at least he pays the most taxes. Mother and son looked at each other in silence. They had been thinking her so poor that she would be bewildered by what they had to offer. But if 200 acres of land were her desire, there was a possibility that she was a woman who was not asking either ease or luxury of life and would refuse it if it were proffered. I hope you will take me home with you and let me see all that land and how it is handled, said John Jardine. I don't own an acre. I never even thought of it. There's no reason why I or any member of my family shouldn't have all the land they want. Mother, do you feel a wild desire for 200 acres of land, same kind of a desire that took you to come here? All I know about land is that I know it when I see it and I know if I think it's pretty. I can see why Kate Thiel said she would like that amount for herself after having helped her in all those farms for her brothers. If it's land she wants, I hope she speedily gets all she desires in whatever location she wants it, and then I hope she lets me come to visit her and watch her do what she likes with it. Surely, said Kate, you are invited right now as soon as ever I get the land, I'll give you another invitation. Of course, you may go home with me, Mr. Jardine, and I'll show you each of what father calls those little parcels of land of mine. But the one he lives on, we shall have to gaze it from afar because I'm a prodigal daughter. When I would leave home in spite of him for the game, riot his life of a schoolmarm, he ordered me to take all my possessions with me, which I did in one small telescope. I was not to enter his house again while I lived. I was glad to go, he was glad to have me, while I don't think either of us has changed our minds since. Teaching school isn't exactly gay, but I'll fill my tummy with quite a lot of symbolical husks before he'll kill the fatted calf for me. They'll be glad to see you at my brother Adams, and my sister Nancy Allen would greatly enjoy meeting you. Surely you may go home with me if you'd like. I can think of only one thing I'd like better, he said. We've been such good friends here and had such a good time, it would be the thing I'd like best to take you home with us, and show you where and how we live. Mother, did you ever invite Kate to visit us? I have often, and she has said that she would, replying Mrs. Jardine. I think it would be nice for her to go from here with us, and then you can take her home whenever she fails to find us interesting. How would that suit you for a plan, my dear? I think that would be a perfect ending to a perfect summer, saying Kate. I can't see an objection in any way. Thank you very much. Then we'll call that settled, said John Jardine. End of Chapter 10. Chapter 11 of A Daughter of the Land, this LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 11, A Business Proposition. Mid-August saw them on their way to Chicago. Kate had taken care of Mrs. Jardine a few days while Jenny Weeks went home to see her mother and arranged for her new work. She had no intention of going back to school teaching. She preferred to brush Mrs. Jardine's hair, button her shoes, write her letters, and read to her. In the month, Jenny had grown so deft at her work and made herself so appreciated that she was practically indispensable to the elderly woman and therefore the greatest comfort to John. Immediately he saw that his mother was properly cared for, sympathetically and even lovingly. He made it his business to smooth Jenny's path in every way possible. In turn, she studied him, and in many ways made herself useful to him. Often she looked long at him with large and speculative eyes as he sat reading letters or papers or smoking. The world was all right with Kate when they crossed the sand dunes as they neared the city. She was sorry about the situation in her home, but she smiled sardonically as she thought how soon her father would forget his anger when he heard about the city home and the kind of farm she could have, merely by consenting to take it. She was that sure of John Jardine, yet he had not asked her to marry him. He had seemed on the verge of it a dozen times and then had paused as if better judgment told her it would be wise to wait a little longer. Now Kate had concluded that there was a definite thing he might be waiting for since that talk about land. She thought possibly she understood what it was. He was a businessman. He knew nothing else. He said so frankly. He wanted to show her his home, his business, his city, his friends, and then he required, he had almost put into words, that he be shown her home and her people. Kate not only acquiesced, she approved. She wanted to know as much of a man she married as Nancy Ellen had known and Robert had taken her to his home and told his people she was his betrothed wife before he married her. Kate's eyes were wide open and her brain busy as they entered a finely appointed carriage and she heard John say, rather sultry, home down the Lake Shore, George. She wished their driver had not been named George but after all made no difference. There could not be a commoner name than John and she knew of but one that she liked better. For the ensuing three days she lived in the Lake Shore home of wealth. She watched closely not to trip in the heavy rugs and carpets. She looked at wonderful paintings and long shelves of books. She never had touched such china or tasted such food or seen so good service. She understood why John had opposed his mother's undertaking the trip without him. For everyone in the house seemed busy serving the little woman. Jenny Weas was frankly enchanted. My sakes, she said to Kate, if I not grateful to you for getting me into a place like this, I won't give it up for all the school teaching in the world. I'm going to snuggle right in here and make myself so useful I won't have to leave until I die. I hope you won't turn me out when you've come to take charge. Don't you think you're presuming, said Kate? Jenny drew back with a swift apology but there was a flash in the little eyes and a spiteful look on the small face as she withdrew. Then Kate was shown each of John's wonderful inventions. To her they seemed almost miracles because they were so obvious, so simple, yet brought such astounding returns. She saw offices and heard the explanation of big business but did not comprehend farther than that when an invention was completed the piling up of money began. Before the week's visit was over, Kate was trying to fit herself in their aims and objects of life into the surroundings with no success whatever. She felt housed in, crebbed, confined, frustrated. When she realized that she was becoming plainly crossed she began keen self-analysis and soon admitted to herself that she did not belong there. Kate watched with keen eyes repeatedly she tried to imagine herself in such surroundings for life. A wise sentence she expressed it for soon she understood that would be to her a prison. The only way she could imagine herself enduring it at all was to think of the promised farm and when she began to think of that on jardine terms she saw that would mean to sit down and tell someone else what she wanted done. There would be no battle to fight. Her mind kept harking back to the day when she had sent a John that she hoped there would be a lake on the land she owned and the answer casually, if there isn't a lake make one. Kate thought that over repeatedly, make one, make a lake. It would have seemed no more magical to her if he had said make a cloud, make a star, make a rainbow. What on earth would I do with myself with my time with my life pondered Kate? She said goodbye to Mrs. Jardine and Jenny Weeks and started home with John still pondering when the train pulled into Hartley, Nancy, Ellen, and Robert were on the platform to meet them. From that time Kate was on solid ground. She was reckoning in terms she could comprehend. All her former assurance and energy came back to her. She almost wished the visit were over and that she were on the way to Walton to clean the schoolhouse. She was eager to roll her sleeves and be the tub of soapy clothes to foam and boil them snowy white. She had the desire she could scarcely control the sweep and dust and cook. She had been out of the environment. She thought she'd disliked and found when she returned to it after a wider change than she could have imagined that she did not dislike it at all. It was her element, her work, but she knew. She could attempt it with sure foot capable hand and certain knowledge. Sunday morning she said to Nancy, Ellen, as they washed the breakfast dishes while the men smoked on the veranda. Nancy, Ellen, I don't believe I was ever cut out for a rich woman. If I have got a chance, I wish you had it and I have this. This just suits my style to a tee. Tell me all about it, said Nancy, Ellen. Kate told all she could remember. You don't mean to say you didn't like it, cried Nancy, Ellen. I didn't say anything, said Kate. But if I were saying exactly what I feel, you'd know I despise it all. Why, Kate Bates, cried the horror of Nancy, Ellen. Whatever do you mean? I haven't thought enough to put it to you clearly, said Kate, but some way the city repels me. Facilities for manufacturing something start a city and begins with the men who do the work and the men who profit from that work living in the same coop and expands and goes on and grows on that basis. It's the laborer living on his hire and the manufacturer living on the laborer's productions coming in daily contact. The contrast is too great, the space is too small. Somebody is going to get the life crowded out of him at every turn and it isn't always the work hand in the factory. The money kings eat each other for breakfast every day. As for work, we always thought we worked. You should take a peep into the shops and factories I've seen this week. Work, why we don't know what work is and we waste enough food every day to keep a workman's family and we dress like queens in comparison with them right now. What do you mean to say if he asks you? It was a small explosion. I mean to say if he asks me, buy me that 200 acres of land where I want it, build me the house and barns I want and guarantee that I may live there as I please and I'll marry you tomorrow. If it's Chicago, never. I haven't stolen, murdered or betrayed. Why should I be imprisoned? Why you hopeless anarchists and Nancy Allen, I'm going to tell John Jardine on you. Do urge Kate, sound him on the land question. It's our only hope of a common foundation. Have you sent Agatha word that we will be out this afternoon? I have, said Nancy Allen and I don't doubt that now even now she's in the kitchen. How would she put it? Compounding a cake, said Kate while Adam is in the cellare freezing a custard. Adam third will be raking the yard afresh and Susan will be sweeping the walk steadily from now until a sign is coming down the road. Why don't you bet Agatha asks John his intentions? I almost wish she would, she hadn't. He has some but there's a string to them in some way and I can't just make out where or why it is. Not even a guess, asked Nancy Allen, not even a guess with any sense to it. I thought it was coming repeatedly but I've got a stubborn bait streak and I won't lift a finger to help him. He'll speak up loud and plain or there will be no cannubial bliss for us, as Agatha says. I think he has ideas about other things and freight train gear. According to his program, we must have so much time to become acquainted, I must see his home and people he must see mine. If there's more after that, I'm not informed. Like it's not there is. May come after we get back tonight, I can't say. Have you told him, asked Nancy Allen, not the details but the essentials. He knows that I can't go home. It came up one day in talking about land. I guess they thought before that my people were poor church mice. I happened to mention how much land I had helped earn for my brothers and they seemed so interested. I finished the job. Well, after they heard about the land king, it made a noticeable difference in their treatment of me. Not that they weren't always fine but it made, I scarcely know how to put it. It was so intangible. What was the difference in added respect? You bet money is a power. I can see why father hangs onto those deeds when I get out in the world. They are his compensation for his years of hard work, the material evidence that he has succeeded in what he undertook. He'd show them to John Jardine with the same feeling John showed me, improved car couplers, brakes and air cushions. They stand for successes that win the deference of men. Out in the little bit of world I've seen, I noticed that men fight, bleed and die for even a tiny fraction of deference. Aren't they funny? What would I care? Well, I'd care a lot, said Nancy Allen. Cate surveyed her slowly. Yes, I guess you would. They finished the dishes and went to church because Robert was accustomed to going. They made a remarkable group. Then they went to the hotel for dinner so that the girls would not have to prepare it. And then in the double carriage, Robert had secured for the occasion. They drove to Bates' corners and, as Cate said, fueled the landscape war. There was eight pieces of land none under 200 acres, some slightly over. All in the very highest state of cultivation with modern houses, barns, outbuildings and fine-start grazing in the pastures made an impressive picture. It was probably the first time that any of the Bates girls had seen it all at once and looked on it merely as a spectacle. They stopped at Adam's last then while Robert was busy with the team and John had the light to help him. Nancy Allen revealing tight lips and unnaturally red cheeks leaned back to Cate. This is about as mean a trick and as big a shame as I've ever seen, she said hotly, you know I was brought up with this and I never looked at it with the eyes of a stranger before. If ever I get my fingers on those deeds I'll make short work of them. And a good job too, ascended Cate instantly. Look out, there comes Adam. I just as soon tell him so is not, whispered Nancy Allen, which would result in the deeds being recorded tomorrow and spoiling our trip today. And look what it do to you, said Cate. None of course, nothing ever does abate girl any good unless she gets out and does her first self retorted Nancy Allen spitefully. There there, said Robert as he came to help Nancy Allen protect her skirts in the lighting. I was afraid this trip would breed discontent. What's the trouble? As John as he performed the same service for Cate. Oh, the girls are grouching a little because they helped earn all this in order to be left out of it, explained Robert in a low voice. Let's get each one of them a farm that will lay any of these completely in the shade, suggested John. All right for you if you can do it, said Robert laughing, but I've got my limit for the present. Besides, if you gave each of them 200 acres of the kingdom of heaven, it wouldn't stop them from feeling that they have been defrauded at their birth right here. How would you feel if you would serve the same way? As John, and even as she shook hands with Adam and introduced John Jardine, Cate found herself wishing that he had said were. As the girls had predicted, the place was immaculate, the yard shading and cool from the shelter of many big trees, the house comfortable and convenient, the best of everything in sight. Agatha and Susan were new white dresses, while Adam, Junior and Third wore tan and white striped seersucker coats and white duck trousers. It was not difficult to feel a glow of pride in the place and people. Adam made them cordially welcome. You undoubtedly are blessed with good fortune, said Agatha. Won't you please enlighten us concerning your travels, Catherine? So Cate told them everything she could think of that she thought with interest and amuse them, even outlining for Agatha's speeches she had heard made by Dr. Vincent, Chaplain McCabe, J. Hood DeWitt Miller, a number of famous politicians, teachers and ministers. Then all of them talked about everything. Adam took John and Robert to look over the farm whereupon Cate handed over her hat for Agatha to finger and try on. And how long will it be, my dear, said Agatha Cate, before you enter Canubial Bliss? My goodness, I'm glad you asked me that while the men are at the barn, said Cate. Mr. Jardine hasn't said a word about himself, so please be careful what you say before him. Agatha looked at Cate in wonder. You amazed me, she said. Why he regards you as if he would devour you. He hasn't proposed for your hand, you say. Sure that you're not giving him proper encouragement. She isn't giving him any further than allowing him to be around, said Nancy Ellen. Do enlighten me, cried the surprised Agatha. How astounding, why, my dear, there is a just and proper amount of encouragement that must be given in a self-respecting youth before he makes his declarations. You surely know that. No, I do not know it, said Cate. I thought it was a man's place to speak up loud and plain and say what he had to propose. Oh dear, wailed Agatha, wringing her thin hands, her face a mirror of distress. Oh dear, I very much fear you will lose him. I, Catherine, after a man has been to see you a certain number of times and evidence, enough interest in you, my dear, there are thousands strictly womanly ways in which you can lend his enterprise a little, only a faint amount of encouragement, just enough to allow him to recognize that he is not repulsive to you. How many times must he come and how much interest must he have? As Cate, I can scarcely name an exact number, said Agatha, that is personal. You must decide for yourself whether this is a psychological moment at which he has to be taken. Have you even signified to him that you could be induced even to contemplate marriage? Oh yes, said Cate hardily. I told this mother that was a height to my ambition to marry by the time I'm 20. I told her I wanted a man as tall as I am, 200 acres of land and at least 12 babies. Agatha collapsed suddenly. She turned her sharp face toward Nancy Ellen. Cate, day of rest, she cried. No wonder the man doesn't propose. When the men returned from their stroll, Agatha and Susan served them with delicious frozen custard and angel-sweet cake. Then they resumed their drive, passing Hyrum's place last. At the corner, Robert hesitated and then turned to ask, shall we go ahead, Cate? Certainly, said Cate, I want Mr. Jardine to see where I was born and spent my time of legal servitude. I suppose we dare not stop. I thought if mother would want to see me and I haven't the slightest doubt that father would not, but he has no jurisdiction over the road. It's the shortest way and besides I want to see the lilac bush and the cabbage roses. As they approached the place, Nancy Ellen turned. Father standing at the gate, what shall we do? There's nothing you can do, but to drive straight ahead and you and Robert speak to him, said Cate, go fast, Robert. He touched the team and at fair speed, they whirled past the White House at the gate of which sniffly a wreck stirred a brawny man of six feet six, his face runny and healthy in appearance. He was dressed as he prepared himself to take a trip to pay his taxes or to go to court. He stood squarely a wrecked with stern, forbidding face, looking directly at them. Robert spoke to him and Nancy Ellen leaned forward and waved, calling, Father, that she might be sure he knew her, but he gave not the slide a sign of recognition. They carried away a distinct picture of him and his best physically and in appearance at his worst mentally. There you have it, Cate bitterly. I'd be safe in wagering a thousand dollars if I had it, that Agatha or the children told at Hiram's or the mother's girl that we were coming. They knew we would pass about this time. Mother was at the side door watching and Father was in the Sunday best, waiting to show us what would happen if we stopped and that he never changes his mind. It didn't happen by accident. They were standing there dressed that way. What do you think, Nancy Ellen? That he was watching for us, said Nancy Ellen. But why do you suppose they did it, asked Cate? He thought that if he were not standing guard there, we might stop on the road and at least call mother out. He wanted to be seen and seen at his best, but as always in command showing his authority. Don't mind, said John Jardine. It's easy to understand the situation. Thank you, Cate. I hope you'll tell your mother that. I can't bear her to think that the trouble's wholly my fault. No danger of that, he said. Mother thinks there's nobody in all the world like you and so do I. Nancy Ellen kicked Robert Shen to let him know that she heard. Cate was very depressed for a time, but she soon recovered and they spent a final happy evening together. When John had parted from Robert and Nancy Ellen with the arrangement that he was to come again the following Saturday evening and spend Sunday with them, he asked Cate to walk a short distance with him. He seemed to be debating some proposition in his mind that he did not know how to approach. Finally, he stopped abruptly and said, Cate, mother told me that she told you how I grew up. We've been together most of every day for six weeks. I have no idea how a man used to women goes at what I want so I can only do what I think is right and best and above all honest and fair. I'd be the happiest I've ever been to do anything on earth I've got the money to do. For you. There's a question I'm going to ask you the next time I come. You can think overall you know of me and of mother and of what we have and are and be ready to tell me how you feel about everything next Sunday. There's one question I want to ask you before I go in case we can plan for a life together next Sunday. What about my mother? Whatever please is her best of course, said Cate. Any arrangement that you feel will make her happy will be all right with me and the event we agree on other things. He laughed shortly. This sounds cold blooded in business like he said but mother's been all the world to me until I met you. I must be sure about her and one other thing. All right, she about that this week. If I was all right with you you can get ready for a deluge. I've held in as long as I can. Cate, will you kiss me goodbye? That's against the rules said Cate. That's getting the car for the horse. I know it he said Have I been an example for six weeks? Only one, please. They were back at Dr. Gray's gate standing in the deep shelter of a big maple. Cate said, I'll make a bargain with you. I'll kiss you tonight and if we come to an agreement next Sunday night you shall kiss me. Is that all right? The reply was so indistinct, Cate was not sure of it but she took his face between her hands and gave him exactly the same kind of kiss she would have given Adam third. She hesitated in an instant then giving him a second. You may take that to your mother, she said and flood up the walk. End of chapter 11. Chapter 12 of A Daughter of the Land by Jean Stratton Porter. This labor box recording is in the public domain. Chapter 12, Two Letters. Nancy, Ellen and Robert were sitting on the side porch not seeming in the least sleepy when Cate entered the house as she stepped out to them. She found them laughing mysteriously. Take this chair, Cate, said Nancy, Ellen. Come on, Robert, let's go stand under the maple and let her see whether she can see us. If you're going to rehearse any momentous moment of your existence, said Cate, I shouldn't think of even being on the porch. I shall keep discreetly in the house even going at once to bed. Good night, pleasant dreams. Now we've made her angry, said Robert. I think there was a little touch of asparity as Agatha would say in that, said Nancy, Ellen. But Cate has a good heart. She'll get over it before morning. Would Agatha use such a common word as little? Asked Robert. And he knows, said Nancy, Ellen. She would say infinitesimal, but all the same he kissed her. If she didn't step up and kiss him, never again shall I trust my eyes, said the doctor. Hush, cautioned Nancy, Ellen. She's provoked now. If she hears that, she'll never forgive us. Cate did not need even a hint to start her talking in the morning. The day was fine, a snappy tinge of autumn in the air. Her head and heart were full. Nancy, Ellen would understand and sympathize. Of course, Cate told her all there was to tell. And even at that, said Nancy, Ellen, he hasn't just come out right square and said, Cate, will you marry me, as I understand it? Same here as laugh, Cate. He said he had to be sure about his mother and there was one other thing he'd write me about this week. And he'd come again next Sunday. Then, if things were all right with me, the deluge. And what is the other thing, asked Nancy, Ellen. There, he has me guessing. We had six long, lovely weeks of daily association alike. I've seen his home and his inventions. As much of his business as is visible to the eye of a woman who doesn't know a tinger about business. His mother has told me minutely of his life every day since he was born, I think. She insists that he never paid the slightest attention to a girl before and he says the same. So there can't be any hidden ugly feature tomorrow, my joy. He is thoughtful, quick, kind, a self-made businessman. He looks well enough. He acts like a gentleman. He seldom makes a mistake in speech. He doesn't say enough to make any mistakes. I haven't yet heard him talk freely, give an opinion or discuss a question, said Nancy Ellen. Neither have I, said Kate. He's very silent, thinking out more inventions maybe. The worst thing about him is a kind of hard-headed self-assurance. He got it fighting for his mother from boyhood. He knew she would freeze and starve if he didn't take care of her. He had to do it. He soon found he could and it took money to do what he had to do. He got the money. Then he began performing miracles with it. He lifted his mother out of poverty. He dressed her in purple and fine linen. He housed her in the same kind of home of the rich men of the Lakeshore Drive living and gave her the same kind of service as most men do when things begin to come their way. He lived from making money alone. He was so keen on the chase he wouldn't stop to educate and culture himself. He drove headlong and dawn piling up more, far more than any one man should be allowed to have. So you can see that it isn't strange. I think there's nothing on earth that money can't do. You can see that sticking out all over him at the hotel on boats, on the trains, anywhere we went. He pushed straight for the most conspicuous place, the most desirable thing, the most expensive. I almost prayed sometimes that in some way he would strike one single thing that he couldn't make come his way with money. But he never did. No, I have an idea what he has in his mind yet. But he's going to write me about it this week and if I agree to whatever it is, he's coming Sunday. Then he has threatened me with a deluge, whatever he means by that. He means providing another teacher for Walden, taking you to Chicago shopping for a wonderful trousseau, burying you in his Lake Shore Palace, no doubt. Well, if that's what he means by a deluge, said Kate, he'll find the flood coming his way. He'll strike the first thing he can't do with money. I shall teach my school this winter as I agreed to. I shall marry him in the clothes I buy with what I earn. I shall marry him quietly here or at Adams or before justice of the peace of neither of you wants me. He can't pick me up and carry me away and dress me and marry me as if I were a pauper. You're right about it, said Nancy-Ellen. I don't know how he came to be so different. I should do it once anyway he suggested to get such a fine-looking man that much money. That would be a humiliation to me all my afterlife. I wouldn't think about until the humiliation began and I'd have no way to protect myself. You're right, but I kid out of teaching this winter if I could, I'd love to have you here. But I must teach to earn the money for my outfits. I'll have to go back to school in the same old sailor. Don't you dare, laughed Nancy-Ellen. We know a secret that we do, agreed Kate. Wednesday Kate noticed Nancy-Ellen watching for the boy Robert had promised to send with the mail as soon as it was distributed because she was herself. Twice Thursday Kate hoped in vain that the suspense would be over. It had in Friday of John were coming Saturday night. She began to resent the length of time he was waiting. It was like him to wait until the last minute and then depend on money to carry him through. He was giving me a long time to think things over. Kate said to Nancy-Ellen when there was no letter in the afternoon mail Thursday. It may have been lost or delayed, said Nancy-Ellen. It will come tomorrow surely. Both of them saw the boy turn in at the gate Friday morning. Each saw that he carried more than one letter. Nancy-Ellen was on her feet and near to the door. She stepped to it and took the letters, giving them a hasty glance as she handed them to Kate. Two, she said, Tursley. One, with the address written in the clear, bold hand of a gentleman and one, the straggle of a country clawed hopper. Kate smiled as she took the letters. All wager my hat, which is my most precious possession, she said, that the one with the beautifully written address comes from the clawed hopper and the straggle from the gentleman. She glanced at the stamping and addresses and smiled again. So approved, she said, while I'm about it, I'll see what the clawed hopper has to say and then I shall be free to give my whole attention to the gentleman. Oh, Kate, how can you? Cried Nancy-Ellen. Where I'm made, I suspect, said Kate. Anyway, that's the way this is going to be done. She dropped the big square letter in her lap and ran her finger under the flap of the long, thin, beautifully addressed envelope and drew for several quite as perfectly written sheets. She read them slowly and deliberately, sometimes turning back a page and going over a part of it again. When she finished, she glanced at Nancy-Ellen while slowly folding the sheets. Just for half a sin, I'd ask you to read this, she said. I certainly shan't pay any faked for the privilege, but I'll read it if you want me to, offered Nancy-Ellen. All right, go ahead, Cikade. Might possibly teach you that you can't always judge a man by appearance or hastily, though just why George Holt looks more like a clawed hopper than Adam or Hiram or Andrew. It passes me the tell. She handed Nancy-Ellen the letter and slowly ripped open the flap of the heavy white envelope. She drew forth the sheet and sat an instant with it in her fingers, watching the expression on Nancy-Ellen's face. While she read the most restrained, yet impassioned plea that a man of George Holt's nature and opportunities could devise, to make to a woman after having spent several months in the construction of it, it was a masterly letter, perfectly composed, spelled and written. For among his other fields of endeavor, George Holt had taught several terms of country school and taught them with much success, so that he might have become a fine instructor had it been in his blood to stick to anything long enough to make it succeed. After a page as she turned the second sheet, Nancy-Ellen glanced at Cate and saw that she had not opened the crease page in her hands. She flamed with sudden irritation. You do beat the band, she cried. You watch for two days and then provoke because that letter didn't come. Now you've got it there, you sit like a mummy and let your mind be so filled with this idiotic drivel that you're not even reading John Jardine's letter. That's to tell you what both of us are crazy to know. If you were in any mood to be fair and honest, you'd admit that you never read a finer letter than that, said Cate. As for this, I never was so afraid in all my life. Look at that. She threw the envelope in Nancy-Ellen's lap. That's the very first line of John Jardine's writing I've ever seen, she said. Do you see anything about it to encourage me to go farther? You goose, cried the exasperated Nancy-Ellen. I suppose he transacts so much business he scarcely ever puts pen to paper. What's the difference how he writes? Look at what he is and what he does. Go on, read his letter. Cate arose and walked to the window, turning her back to Nancy-Ellen, who sat staring at her while she read John Jardine's letter. Once Nancy-Ellen saw Cate throw up her head and twist her neck as if she were choking. Then she heard a great, gulping sob down in her throat. Finally, Cate turned and stared at her with dazed, incredulous eyes. Slowly she dropped the letter, deliberately set her foot on it, and leaving the room climbed the stairs. Nancy-Ellen threw George Holt's letter aside and snatched up John Jardine's. She read, My dearest Cate, I'm a day late with this because, as I told you, I've no schooling and am writing the letters where I prove it, so I never write them. It was not fair to you for you to not know what kind of a letter I would write if I did write one, so here it is, very bad no doubt, but the best I can possibly do, which has got nothing at all to do with my passion for you, and the awful time I will have till I hear from you. If you can stand for this, telegraph me and I will come first train and we will forget this and I will never write another letter. With dearest love from mother and from me all the love in my heart, forever yours only, John Jardine. The writing would have been a discredit to a ten-year-old schoolboy. Nancy Ellen threw the letter back on the floor. With a stiffly extended finger, she poked into the position in which she thought she had found it and slowly stepped back. Great God, she said amazingly, what does this man mean? Where does that dainty and wonderful little mother come in? She must be a regular parasite to suck ease and comfort for herself out of him and not see that he had time and chance to do better than that for himself. Kate will never endure it and never in the world and by the luck of the very devil there comes that school-proof thing in the same mail from that abundable George Holt and Kate reads it first. It's too bad I can't believe it. What did this mother mean? Suddenly Nancy Ellen began to cry bitterly. Between sob she could hear Kate. She walked from closet and bureau to her trunk which she was packing. The lid slammed heavily. And a few minutes later Kate entered the room dressed for the street. Why are you weeping? She asked casually. Her eyes were flaming, her cheeks scarlet and her lips twitching. Nancy Ellen sat up and looked at her. She pointed to the letter. I read that, she said. Well, what do I care, said Kate. If he has no more respect for me than to rightly such an insult as that, why should I have the respect for him to protect him in it? Publish it in the paper if you want to. Kate, what are you going to do? Demanded Nancy Ellen. Three things, said Kate, slowly putting on her long silk gloves. First, I'm going to telegraph John Jardine. I never shall see him again if I can possibly avoid it. Second, I'm going to send a drain man to get my trunk and take it to Walden. Third, I'm going to start out and walk miles. I don't know or care where. But in the end, I'm going to Walden to clean the schoolhouse and get ready for my winter term of school. Okay, you're such a fine teacher. Teach him. Don't be so hurry and take more time to think. He will break his heart. Pleading Nancy Ellen. Kate throughout both hands, palms down. P-A-S-H-A-U-G-H-H-A-R-T-D-O-U-T-D-E-R-E. She slowly spelled out the letters. What about my heart and my pride? Think I can respect that or ask my children to respect it? But thank you and Robert didn't come after me as often as you can as a mercy to me. If John persists in coming to try to buy me as he thinks he can buy anything he wants, you needn't let him come to Walden. For probably I won't be there until I have to and I won't see him or his mother so we needn't try to bring her in. Say goodbye to Robert for me. She walked from the house, had her back shoulder-squared and sewed down the street from sight. In half an hour, a truckman came for a trunk so Nancy Ellen made everything K.N. Missed into a bundle to send with it. When she came to the letters, she hesitated. I guess she didn't want them, she said. I'll just keep them awhile and if she doesn't ask about them the next time she comes I'll burn them. Robert must go after her every Friday evening and we'll keep her until Monday and do all we can to cheer her. And this very day he must find out all there is to know about that George Holt. This is the finest letter I ever read. She does kind of stand up for him and in the reaction impulsive as she is and self-confident. Of course she wouldn't, but you never can tell what kind of fool a girl will make of herself in some cases. Kate walks swiftly, finished two of the errands she set out to do. Then her feet carried her three miles from Hartley on the Walden Road before she knew where she was so she proceeded to the village. Mrs. Holt was not at home but the house was standing open. Kate found her room clean, shining and filled with flowers. She paved the draemon, opened her trunk and put away her dresses, laying out all the things which needed washing. Then she bathed, put on heavy shoes and old skirt and waist and crossing the road sat in a secluded place in the ravine and looked stupidly at the water. She noticed that everything was as she had left it in the spring with many fresher improvements made, no doubt to please her. She closed her eyes, leaned against a big tree and slow, cold and hot shutters alternated and shaking her frame. She did not open her eyes when she heard a step and her name called. She knew without taking the trouble to look that George had come home, found her luggage in her room and was hunting for her. She heard him come closer and knew when he seated himself that he was watching her but she did not care enough even to move. Finally she shifted her position to rest herself, opened her eyes and looked at him without a word. He returned her gaze steadily, smiling gravely. She had never seen him looking so well. He had put in the summer grooming himself, he had kept up the house and garden and spent all his spare time on the ravine and farming on the shares with his mother's sister who lived three miles east of them. At last she roused herself and again looked at him. I had your letter this morning, she said. I was wondering about that, he replied. Yes, I got it just before I started, Sinkate. Are you surprised to see me? No, he answered, after last year we figured you might come the last of this week or the first of Nick so we got your room ready Monday. Thank you, Sinkate. It's very clean and nice. I hope soon to be able to offer you such a room and home as you should have. He said, I haven't opened my office yet. It was late and hot when I got home in June and mother was fussing about this winter that she had no garden and didn't do her share at Aunt Ollie's so I farmed most of the summer and lived on hope but I'll start in and make things fly this fall and by spring I'll be sailing around with a horse and cares like the best of them. You bet I'm going to make things hum so I can offer you anything you want. You haven't opened an office yet. She asked for the sake of saying something and because the practical thing would naturally suggest itself to her. I haven't had a breath of time, he said in candid disclaimer. Why don't you ask me what's the matter? Didn't figure there was any of my business in the first place, he said and I have a pretty fair idea in the second. But how could you have, she asked in surprise. When your sister won't give me your address she hinted that you had all the masculine attention you cared for. Then Tillie Nepple visited town again last week and she had been sick and called Dr. Gray. She asked him about you and he told what fine time you had at Chautauqua in Chicago with the rich new friends you'd made. I was watching for you about this time and I just happened to be at the station in Hartley last Saturday when you got off the train with your fine gentleman. So I stayed over with some friends of mine and I saw you several times Sunday. I saw that I had practically no chance with you at all but I made up my mind I'd stick until I saw you marrying to him so I wrote just as I would if I hadn't known there was another man in existence. That was a very fine letter, said Kate. It is a very fine deep sincere love that I'm offering you, said George Holt. Of course I could see prosperity sticking out all over that city chap but it didn't bother me much because I knew that you evolved women would judge a man on his worth. A rising young professional man is not to be sneered at at least until he makes his start and proves what he can do. I couldn't get an early start because I've always had to work just as you've seen me last summer in this so I couldn't educate myself so fast but I've gone as fast as far as I could. Kate winced. This was getting on places that hurt and to matter she well understood but she was the soul of Kandor. You did very well to educate yourself as you have with no help at all, she said. I've done my best in the past. I'm going to do marvels in the future and whatever I do is all for you and George for the taking. He sang grandiosely. Thank you, said Kate. What are you making that offer when you can't help seeing that I'm in deep trouble? A thousand times over, he said. All I want to know about your troubles whether there's anything a man of my size and strength can do to help you. Now the thing, said Kate, in the direction of slaying a gay deceiver if that's what you mean. The extent of my familiarities with John Jardine consistent and voluntarily kissing him twice last Sunday night for the first and last time. Once for himself and once for his mother whom I've since ceased to respect. George Holt was watching her with eyes linked sharp but Kate never saw it. When she mentioned her farewell Sunday night a queer smile swept over his face and instantly disappeared. I should think any girl might be permitted that much and saying a final goodbye to a man who had shown her a fine time for weeks. He commented casually. But I didn't know I was saying goodbye. Explained Kate, I expected him back in a week and then I would then arrange to marry him. That was the agreement we made then. As she began to speak, George Holt's face flashed triumph at having let her on and what she said it fell perceptibly but he instantly controlled it and said casually. And any event it was your own business. It was, said Kate. I give no man the slightest encouragement. I was perfectly free. John Jardine was courting me openly in the presence of his mother and anyone who happened to be around. I intended to marry him. I liked him as much as any man he'd be liked. I don't know whether it was the same feeling Nancy Ellen had for Robert Gray or not but it was a whole lot of feeling of some kind. I was satisfied with it and he would have been. I meant to be a good wife to him and a good daughter to his mother and I could have done much good in the world and extract an untold pleasure from the money he would have put in my power to handle. All was going marry his marriage bell and then this morning came my Waterloo in the same post with your letter. Do you know what you're doing? cried George Holt roughly losing self-control with hope. You are proving to me and admitting to yourself that you never loved that man at all. You were flattered and tempted with possession of riches but your heart was not his or that you would be mighty sure of it. Don't you forget that. I'm not interested in analyzing exactly what I felt for him, said Kate. It made small difference then. It makes none at all now. I would have married him gladly and I would have been to him all a good wife is to any man. Then in a few seconds I turned squarely against him and lost my respect for him. He wouldn't marry me to him if he were the last and only man on earth but it hurt terribly, let me tell you that. George Holt suddenly arose and went to Kate. He sat down close beside her and leaned toward her. There was at least danger of my trying to marry you to him, he said, because I'm going to marry you myself at the very first opportunity. Why not now? Why not have a simple ceremony somewhere once and go away until school begins and forget him? Having a good time by ourselves. Come on, Kate, let's do it. We can go stay with Ann Olly and if he comes trying to force himself on you, he'll get what he deserves. He'll learn that there's something on earth he can't buy with his money. But I don't love you, said Kate. Neither did you love him, retorted George Holt. I can prove it by what you say. Neither did you love him but you were going to marry him and use all his wonderful power of position and wealth and trust to association to bring love. You can try that with me. As for wealth, who cares? We are young and strong and we have a fine chance in the world. You go on and teach this year and I'll get such a start that by next year you can be riding around in your carriage proud as Pompey. Of course we can make it all right as to a living, said Kate, big and strong as we are but then the torrent broke. At the first tent that she would consider as proposal, George Holt drew her to him and talked volumes of impassioned love to her. He gave her no chance to say anything. He said all there was to say himself. He urged that Jardine wouldn't come and she should not be there. He banged, he pleaded, he reasoned. Knight found Kate sitting on the back porch at Aunt Ollie's with a confused memory of having stood beside the little stream with her hand in George Holt's while she ascended to the questions of a justice of the peace in the presence of the school director and Mrs. Holt. She knew that immediately thereafter they had walked away along a hot, dusty country road. She had tried to eat something that tasted like salt and ashes. She could hear George's ringing laugh of exultation breaking out the fresh every few minutes and said in irritation at the latest loud guffaw she clearly remembered one thing. In her dazed and bewildered state she had forgotten to tell him that she was a prodigal daughter. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 of A Daughter of the Land by Jean Stratton Porter. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 13, The Bride. Only one memory in the 10 days that followed before her school began ever stood out clearly and distinctly with Kate. That was the morning of the day after she married George Holt. She saw Nancy Ellen and Robert at the gate so she went out to speak with them. Nancy Ellen was driving. She held the lines and the whip in her hands. Kate and Dull apathy wondered why they seemed so deeply agitated. Both of them stared at hers if she might be a maniac. It's this thing in the morning paper true, cried Nancy Ellen in a high shrill voice that made Kate start and wonder. She did not take the trouble to evade by asking what thing she merely made a scent with her head. You are married to that, the. Nancy Ellen choked until she could not say what. It's time to stop since I am married to him, said Kate bravely. You rushed in and married him without giving Robert time to find out and tell you what everybody knows about him, demanded Nancy Ellen. I married him for what I knew about him myself, said Kate. We shall do very well. Do well, cried Nancy. Do well, you'll be hungry and then rags the rest of your life. Don't Nancy Ellen, don't. Pled Robert. This is Kate's affair. Wait until you hear what she has to say before you go further. I don't care what she has to say, cried Nancy Ellen. I'm saying my say right now. This is a disgrace to the whole Bates family. We may not be much, but there isn't a lazy, gambling, drunken loafer among us and there won't be so far as I'm concerned. She glared at Kate who gazed at her and wonder. You really married this lout? She demanded. I told you I was married, so Kate patiently first saw that Nancy Ellen was irresponsible with anger. You're going to live with him. You're going to stay in Walden to live, she cried. That is my plan at present, said Kate. Well, see that you stay there, said Nancy Ellen. You can't bring that creature to my house and if you're going to be his wife, you needn't come yourself. That's all I've got to say to you shameless, crazy. Nancy Ellen, you shall not, cried Robert Gray, deftly slipping the lines from her fingers and starting the horse full speed. Kate saw Nancy Ellen's head fall forward and her hands lifted to cover her face. She heard the deep, tearing sob that shook her and then they were gone. She did not know what to do so she stood still in the hot sunshine, trying to think, but her brain refused to act at her will. When the heat became oppressive, she turned back to the shade of a tree, sat down and leaned against it. There she got two things clear after a time. She had married George Holt. There was nothing to do but make the best of it, but Nancy Ellen had said that if she lived with him, she should not come to her home. Very well. She had to live with him since she had consented to marry him so she was cut off from Robert and Nancy Ellen. She was now a prodigal indeed and those things Nancy Ellen had said, she was wild with anger. She had been misinformed. Those things could not be true. Shouldn't you be in here helping Aunt Olly as George's voice from the front step where he seated himself with this pipe? Yes, in a minute, said Kate Rising. Did you see who came? No, I was out doing the morning work. Who was it? He asked. Nancy Ellen and Robert, she answered. He laughed hilariously. What a meta hurry, didn't we? Why didn't they come in? They came to tell me, said Kate, slowly, that if I had married you yesterday as I did, but they felt so disgrace, I wasn't to come to their home again. Disgraced, he cried, his color rising. What was the matter with me? Not the things they said, I fervently hope. Well, they have some assurance to come out here and talk about me and you've got as much to listen then come and tell me about it, he cried. It was over in a minute, said Kate. I had no idea what they were going to say. They said it and went, oh, I can't spare Nancy Ellen. She's all I had. Kate sank down on the step and covered her face. George took one long look at her, arose and walked out of hearing. He went into the garden and watched from behind a honeysuckle bush until he saw her finally lift her head and wipe her eyes. Then he sauntered back and sat down on the step beside her. That's right, he said, cry it out and get it over. It was pretty mean of them to come out here and insult you and tell any lie they could think up and then drive away and leave you. But don't lie, they'll soon get over it. Nobody ever keeps up a fuss over a wedding long. Nancy Ellen never told a lie in her life, said Kate, she has too much self-respect. What she said, she thought was true. My only chance is that somebody has told her a lie. You know best that they did. Of course they did, he broke in glibly. Haven't you lived in the same house with me long enough to know me better than anyone else does? You can live in the same house with people, know less about them than anyone else for that matter, said Kate, but that's neither here nor there. Wearing this together, we got to get on the job and pull and make a success out of it that will make all of them proud to be our friends. That's the only thing left for me, as I know the baits once they make up their minds, they never change. With Nancy Ellen and father both down on me, I'm a prodigal for sure. What, he cried loudly. What, is your father in this too? Did he send you word you couldn't come home either? This is a hell of a mess, speak up. Kate closed her lips, looked at him with deep scorn and walked around the corner of the house. For a second he looked after her, threateningly. Then he sprang to his feet and ran to her, catching her in his arms. Forgive me, dearest, he cried. That took the wind out of my sails until I was a brute. You know business to say a thing like that, of course we can't have the old land king down on us. We've got to have our share of that land and money to buy us a fine home in Heartland, fix me up the kind of an office I should have. We'll borrow a rig and drive over to mom, fix things solid with the old folks. You bet I'm a star-spangled old persuader and look what I did with you. You stop, cried Kate, breaking from his hold. He'll drive me crazy, you're talking as if you marry me expecting land and money from it. I haven't been home in a year and my father would deliberately kill me if I went within his reach. Well, score one for a little old scratch and pickin' mommy, he cried. She said you had a secret. Kate stood very still, looking at him so intently that a sense of shame must have stirred in his breast. Look here, Kate, he said roughly. Mother did say you had a secret. She hinted at Christmas that the reason you didn't go home was because your folks were out with you. You can ask her if I didn't tell her to shut up and leave you alone, I was in love with you. Now, marry you and we get along all right even if you were barred from home and didn't get a penny. I just dare you to ask her. It's no matter, said Kate, rarely. I'd rather take your word. All right, you take it, for that's the truth, he said. Well, what was the rumpest? How did you come to have a racket with your old man? Over my wanting to teach, said Kate, then she explained in detail. Father, don't you fret about that, said George. I'm taking care of you now and I'll see that you soon get home in the grays, too. That's all bun comb. As for your share of your father's estate, you watch me get it. You are his child and there is law. There's law that allows him to deed his land to the sons before he dies and that is exactly what he has done, said Kate. The devil, you say? Shall he, George Holt, stepping back to stare at her? You tell that at the insane asylum or the feeble-minded home I've seen the records. I know to the acre how much land stands in your father's name. Don't try to work that on me, my lady. I'm not trying to work anything on you, said Kate Dolly, wondering to herself why she listened, why she went on with it. I'm merely telling you when Father's big chest in the head of his bed at home lies a deed for 200 acres of land for each of his seven sons, all signed and ready to deliver. He keeps the land in his name on record to bring him distinction and feed his vanity. He makes the boys pay the taxes and co-tow and help with his work. He keeps them under control, but the land is theirs. None of the girls gets a penny's worth of it. George Holt cleared his face with an effort. Well, we are no worse off than the rest of them, than he said in trying to speak naturally and cheerfully. But don't you ever believe it. Little Georgie will sleep with us in his nightcap a while and it's a problem he will solve if he works himself to death on it. But that is Father's affair, said Kate. You had best turn your efforts in lie-awake nights thinking how to make enough money to buy some land for us yourself. Certainly, certainly I see myself doing it, lack, George Holt. And now, knowing how you feel and feeling none too good myself, we are going to take a few days off and go upstream fishing. I'll take a pack of comforts to sleep on and to tackle on some food and we will forget the whole bunch and go have a good time. There's a place not so far away where I have camp beside a spring since I was a little shaver and it's quiet and cool. Go get what you can't possibly exist without. Nothing more. But we must take the potatoes, protested Kate. Let them wait till we get back. It's a trifle early anyway, he said. Stop objecting and get ready. I'll tell Ann Olly, we're chums. Whatever I do is always all right with her. Come on, this is our wedding trip. Not much like the one you had planned, no doubt, but one of some kind. So they slipped beneath a tangle of vines and bushes and following the stream of the ravine. They walked until mid-afternoon where they reached a spot that was very lovely. A clear, clean spring, grassy bank, a sheltered cave in, floored with clean sand, warm and golden. From the depths of the cave George brought an old frying pan and coffee pot. He spread a comfort on the sand of the cave for a bed, produced coffee, steak, bread, butter and fruit from his load and told Kate to make herself comfortable while he got dinner. They each tried to make allowances for Ann to be as decent as possible with the other, with the result that before they knew it, they were having a good time. At least they were keeping the irritating things they thought to themselves and saying only the pleasant ones. After a week which George enjoyed to the fullest extent while Kate made the best of everything, they put away the coffee pot and frying pan, folded the comforts and went back to Ann always for dinner, then to Walden in the afternoon. Because Mrs. Holt knew they would be there that day, she had the house clean and the best supper she could prepare ready for them, she was in a quandary as to how to begin with Kate. She heartily hated her. She had been sure the girl had a secret. Now she knew it. For as she did not attend the wedding of her sister, she had not been at home all summer. If her father and mother never mentioned her name or made any answer to anyone who didn't, there was a reason and a good reason. Of course, a man as rich as Adam Bates could do no wrong whenever the trouble was, Kate was at fault. She had done some terrible thing. How you didn't in the bushes? Spent Mrs. Holt, how you didn't in the bushes? Marry a man who didn't know he was going to be married an hour before our unbeknownst to her folks and wouldn't even come in the house and have a few of the neighbors in. Nice dealings for the school, ma'am. Nice prospect for George. Mrs. Holt hissed like a copperhead which was a harmless little creature compared with her. As she scraped and slashed and dismembered the chicken she was preparing to fry, she had not been able even by running into each store in the village in the post office to find one person who would say a word against Kate. The girl had laid her foundations too well. The one thing people could and did say was, how could she marry George Holt? The rest of them could not very well say it to his mother. They said it frequently to each other and then supplied the true answers. Look how he spruced up after she came. Look how he worked. Look how he ran after her and waited on her. Look how nice he has been all summer. Plenty was being said in Walden but not one word of it was for the itching ears of Mrs. Holt. They had told her how splendid Kate was, how they loved her, how glad they were that she was at the school again, how fortunate her son was, how proud she should be until she was almost bursting with repressed venom. She met them at the gate after their week's camping. They were feeling in splendid health, the best fair as possible and in circumstances but appearing dirty and disreputable. They were both laughing as they approached the gate. Buddy, look and bide you be, Mrs. Holt spat at Kate. Yes, aren't I, left Kate? But you just give me a tub of hot soap suds in an hour and you won't know me. How are you? Things look as if you weren't expecting us. Huh, said Mrs. Holt. Kate laughed and went into the house. George stepped in front of his mother. Now you look here, he said. I know every nasty thing your mind has conjured up that you'd like to say and have other folks say about Kate. And I know as well as if you were honest enough to tell me that you haven't been able to root out one living soul who would say a single word against her. Swallow your secret, swallow your suspicion, swallow your venom and forget all of them. Kate is as fine a woman as God ever made and anybody who has common sense knows it. She can just make me if she wants to and she will. She's coming on fine much faster and better than I hoped for. Now you drop this, stop it, do you hear? He passed her and hurried up the walk. In an hour, both George and Kate had bathed and dressed in their very best. Kate put on her prettiest white dress in George's graduation suit. Then together they walked to the post office for their mail which George had ordered held before they left. Carrying the bundle, they entered several stores on trifling errands and then went home. They stopped and spoke to everyone. Kate kissed all her little pupils she met and told them to come to see her and to be ready to help clean the schoolhouse in the morning. Word flew over town swiftly. The teacher was back wearing the loveliest dress and nicer than ever and she had invited folks to come to see her. Kate and George had scarcely finished their supper when the first pair of shy little girls came for their kisses and to bring teacher a bunch of flowers and a pretty pocket hankerchief from each. They came in flocks, each with flowers, most with a towel or some small remembrance. Then the elders began to come merchants with comforts, blankets and towels, hard-rear men with frying pans, flat irons and tinware. By 10 o'clock almost everyone in Walden had carried Kate some small gift which drew joy all the more earnestly because they felt the chances of her ever having it were so small and had gone their way leaving her feeling better than she had thought possible. She slipped into a room alone and read two letters, one that viewed typewritten lines from John Jardine saying he had been at Hartley, also at Walden and having found her married and gone, there was nothing for him to do but wish that the man she married had it in his heart to guard her life and happiness as he would have done. He would never cease to love her and if at any time in her life there was anything he could do for her, would she please let him know? Kate dropped the letter on her dresser with a purpose and let it lie there. The other was from Robert. He said he was very sorry but he could do nothing with Nancy Ellen at present. He hoped she would change later. If there was ever anything he could do to let him know. Kate locked that letter in her trunk. She wondered as she did so why both of them seemed to think she would need them in the future. She felt perfectly able to take care of herself. Monday morning George carried Kate's books to school for her, saw that she was started on her work in good shape, then went home, put on his own clothes and began the fall work at Aunt Ollie's. Kate wearing her prettiest blue dress forgot even the dull ache in her heart as she threw herself into the business of educating those young people. She worked as she never had before. She seemed to have developed fresh patience, new perception, keen or penetration. She made the dullest of them see her points and interested the most in an attentive. She went home to dinner feeling better. She decided to keep on teaching a few years until George was well started in his practice. If he ever got started, he was very slow in action it seemed to her compared with his enthusiasm when he talked. End of chapter 13. Chapter 14 of A Daughter of the Land by Jean Stratten Porter. This labor box recording is in the public domain. Chapter 14, Starting Married Life. For two weeks Kate threw herself into the business of teaching with all her power. She succeeded in so interesting herself and her pupils that she was convinced she had done a wise thing. Marriage did not interfere with her teaching. She felt capable and independent so long as she had her salary. George was working and working diligently to prepare for winter whenever she was present or could see results. With the first month's salary she would buy herself a warm coat, a wool suit, an extra skirt for school and some wastes. If there was enough left she would have another real hat. Then for the remainder of the year she would spend only for the barest necessities and save to help toward a home something like Nancy Ellen's. Whenever she thought of Nancy Ellen and Robert there was a choking sensation in her throat, a dull ache where she had been taught her heart was located. For two weeks everything went as well as Kate hoped. Then Mrs. Holt began to show the results of having been partially bottled up for the first time in her life. She was careful to keep to generalities which she could claim meant nothing. If anything she said was taken up by either George or Kate. George was too lazy to quarrel unless he was personally angered. Kate thought best to ignore anything that did not come in the nature of a direct attack. So long as Mrs. Holt could not understand how some folks could see their way to live off of other folks or why a girl who had a chance to marry a fortune or make herself a burden to a poor man, Kate made the mistake of ignoring her. Thus emboldened she soon became personal as seemed as if she spent her spare time in mental force thinking up suggestive sarcastic things to say where Kate could not help hearing them. She paid no attention unless the attack was too mean and premeditated but to her surprise she found that every ugly malicious word the old woman said lodged in her brain and arose to confront her at the most inopportune times in the middle of a recitation or when she roused enough to turn over in her bed at night. The more vigorously she threw herself into her schoolwork, the more she realized a queer lassitude creeping over her. She kept squaring her shoulders, lifting her chin and brushing imaginary cobwebs from before her face. The final Friday evening of the month she stopped at the post office and carried away with her the bill for her leg and hat, mailed with nicely conceived estimate as to when her first check would be due. Kate visited the trustee, then smiled grimly as she slipped the amount in an envelope and gave it to the hack driver to carry to Hartley on his trip the following day. She had intended all fall to go with him and select a winter headpiece that would be no discredit to her summer choice but a sort of numbness was in her bones so she decided to wait until the coming week before going. She declined George's pressing invitation to go along to Aunt Ollie's and help load and bring home a part of his share of their summer's crops on the ground that she had some work to prepare for the coming week. Then Kate went to her room feeling faint and heavy. She lay there most of the day becoming sorry for herself and heavier every passing hour. By morning she was violently ill when she tried to leave her bed dizzy and faint. All day she could not stand. Toward evening she appealed to George either to do something for her himself or to send for the village doctor. He asked her a few questions and then laughing coarsely told her that a doctor would do her no good and that was very probable that she would feel far worse before she felt better. Kate stared at him in dumb wonder. But my school, she cried, my school. I must be able to go to school in the morning. Could that spring water have been infected with typhus? I've never been sick like this before. I should hope not, said George. And then he told her bluntly what caused her trouble. Kate had been white to begin with. Now she slowly turned greenish as she gazed at him with incredulous eyes. Then she sprang to her feet. But I can't be ill, she cried. I can't. There's my school I've got to teach or what shall I do? George had a very clear conception of what she could do but he did not intend to suggest it to her. She could think of it and propose it herself. She could not think of anything at that minute because she fainted and fell half on the bed half in his arms as he sprang to her. He laid her down and stood a second smiling triumphantly at her unheating face. A easy snap for you this winter, Georgie, my boy, he muttered. I don't see people falling over each other to get to you for professional services and it's hard work anyway. Zonaletics are way above the head of these country neuramuses. Gloomass and Queen Ein are about their limit. He took his time to bathe Kate's face. Presently she sat up then fell on the pillow again. Better not try that, warned George. You'll hurt yourself and you can't make it. You're out of the game. You might as well get used to it. I won't be out of the game, cried Kate. I can't be. What will become of my school? Oh, George, could you possibly teach for me only for a few days until I get my stomach settled? Oh, I'd like to help you, he said. But you see how it is with me. I've got my fall work finished up and I'm getting ready to open my office next week. I'm going to rent that nice front room over the post office. But George, you must, said Kate. You've taught several terms. You've a license. You can take it until this passes. If you've waited from June to October to open your office, you can wait a few more days. Suppose you open the office and patients don't come and we haven't the school. What would we live on? What would I buy things with and pay doctor bills? Why didn't you think of that before you got married? What was your rush anyway? I can't figure it to save my soul, he said. George, the school can't go, she cried. If what you say is true and I suspect it is, I must have money to see me through. Then set your wits to work and fix things up with your father, he said casually. Kate arose tall and straight, standing and waveringly as she looked at him in blazing contempt. So, she said, this is the kind of man you are. I'm not so helpless as you think me. I have a refuge. I know where to find it. You'll teach my school until I'm able to take it myself and the trustee and patrons will allow you or I'll sever my relations with you as quickly as I form them. You have no practice. I've graved doubts if you can get any. This is our only chance for the money. We must have this winter. Go ask the trustee to come here until I can make arrangements with him. Then she wavered and rolled on the bed again. George stood looking at her between narrowed islands. Tactics I use with mother don't go with you, old girl, he said to himself, things of fire and toes, stubborn as an ox, won't be pushed to hair's breadth. Old bait's over again, I like his two peas, but I'll break you, damn you, I'll break you. Only I want that school. Lots easier than needing somebody's old stiff muscles while the money is sure. Oh, I go after the trustee, all right. He revived Kate and telling her to keep quiet and not excite herself. He explained it was a terrible sacrifice to him to put off opening his office any longer. She must forgive him for losing self-control when he thought of it. But for her dear's sake, he would teach until she was better. Possibly she would be all right in a few days and then she could take her work again. Because she's so devoutly hoped that Kate made that arrangement with the trustee. Monday she lay half-starved yet gagging and ill while George went to teacher school. As she contemplated that, she grew sicker than she had been before. When she suddenly marshaled all the facts she knew of him, she stoutly refused to think of what Nancy Ellen had said. When she reviewed his character and disposition and thought of him taking charge in the minds of her pupils, Kate suddenly felt she must not allow that to happen. She must not. Then came another thought even more personal and terrible, a thought so disconcerting she mercifully lost consciousness again. She sent for the village doctor and found no consolation from her talk with him. She was out of the school, that was settled. No heartbeat ever went to its meat with one half the zest Mrs. Holt found in the situation. With Kate so ill she could not stand on her feet half the time. So ill she could not reply with no spirit left to appeal to George. But more could be asked. Mrs. Holt could add to every grievance she formerly had that of a sick woman in the house for her to wait on. She could even make violent situations to Kate, prostrate and helpless, that she would not have dared otherwise. She could prepare food that with a touch of salt or sugar where it was not supposed to be would have sickened a well person. One day George came in from school and saw a bowl of broth sitting on a chair beside Kate's bed. Can't you drink it? he asked. Do if you possibly can, he urged. You'll get so weak you'll be helpless. I just can't, said Kate. Things have such a sickening Swedish taste or they are better. Sour, not a thing as as it used to be. I simply can't. A curious look crept over George's face. He picked up the bowl and tasted the contents. Instantly his face went black. He started toward the kitchen. Kate heard part of what happened but she never lifted her head. After a while he came back with more broth and a plate of delicate toast. Try this, he said. I made it myself. Kate ate ravenously. That's good, she cried. I'll tell you what I'm going to do, he said. I'm going to take you out to Aunt Oli's for a week after school tonight. Wanna go? Yes, oh yes, cried Kate. All right, he said. I know where I can borrow a rig for an hour. Get ready if you are well enough. If you are not, I'll help you after school. That week with Aunt Oli remained a bright spot in Kate's memory. The October days were beginning to be crisp and cool. Food was different. She could sleep, she could eat many things Aunt Oli knew to prepare especially. Soon she could walk and be outdoors. She was so much better, she wrote Georgia note asking him to walk out and bring her sewing basket and some goods she listed. And in the afternoons the two women cut and sewed quaint and tithing little garments. George found Kate so much better when it came that he proposed she remain another week. Then for the first time he talked to her about her theory of government and teaching until she realized that school director had told him he was dissatisfied with him. So George was trying to learn her ways. Appalled at what might happen if he lost the school, Kate made notes, talked at length, begged him to do his best and to come at once if anything went wrong. He did come and brought the school books so she went over the lessons with him and made marginal notes of things suggested to remind by the text for him to discuss and lucidate. The next time he came he was in such good spirit she knew his work had been praised. So after that they went over the lessons together each evening. Thinking of what would help him also helped Bill her day. He took her home greatly improved and much better spirits to her room, cleaned and ready for winter with all of her things possible to use in place so that was much change prettier and more convenient. As they drove in she said to him, George, what about it? Did your mother purposely fix my food so I could not eat it? Oh, I wouldn't say that. And he said, you know, neither of you is violently attached to the other. She'll be more careful after this, I'm sure she will. Why have you been sick? Ask Kate as soon as she saw Mrs. Holt. She seemed so nervous and appeared so badly. Kate was sorry for her but she could not help noticing how she kept watch on her son. She seemed to keep the width of the room and the piece of furniture between them while her cooking was so different that was not the least necessary for George to fix things for Kate himself as he had suggested. Everything was so improved, Kate felt better. She began to sew, to read, to sit for long periods in profound thought, then to take walks that brought back her strength and color. So through the winter and toward the approach to spring they lived in greater comfort. With Kate's help George was doing so well with the school that he was frequently complimented by the parents, that he was trying to do good work and when the approval of both pupils and parents was evident to Kate, once he said to her that he wondered if it would be a good thing for him to put in an application for the school the coming winter. Kate stared at him in surprise. Put your profession, she objected. You should be in your office and having enough practice to support us by then. Yes I should, he said, but this is a new thing and you know how these Claude hoppers are. If I came as near living in the country and worked at farming as much as you do that's the last thing I would call any human being, said Kate. I certainly do know how they are and what I know convinces me that you need not look to them for any patients. You seem to think I won't have any from any source, he said hotly. I confess myself dubious, said Kate. You certainly are or you wouldn't be talking of teaching. Well I'll just show you, he cried. I'm waiting, said Kate. But as we must live in the meantime, it will be so long before I can earn anything again and so much expense, possibly it would be a good idea to have the school too fall back on if you shouldn't have the patience you hope for the summer. I think you have done well with the school. Do your level best until the term closes and you may have a chance. Laughing scornfully, he repeated in his old boast. I'll just show you. Go ahead, said Kate. And while you are at it, be generous. Show me plenty. But in the meantime, save every penny you can so you'll be ready to pay the doctor's bills and furnish your office. I love your advice, it's so baitsy, he said. I have money saved for both contingencies you mentioned but I'll tell you what I think and about this I'm the one who knows. I've told you repeatedly winter is my best time. I've lost the winter trying to help you out. It takes cold weather to make folks feel what ills their muscles and my treatment is mostly muscular. To save so we can get a real start wouldn't be a good idea for you to put part of your things in my room. Take what you must have and fix mother's bedroom for you. Let her move her bed into her living room and spare me all you can if you have things to fix up your room for my office this summer. That would save rent is only a few steps from downtown and when I wasn't busy with patients I could be handy to the garden and to help you. If your mother is willing, I'll do my share. So Kate, although the room's cramped and where I'll put the small party when he comes I don't know but I'll manage some way. The big objection to it is that it will make it look to people as if it were a makeshift instead of starting a real business. Real was the wrong word. It was the red flag that started George raging until to save her self respect, Kate left the room. Later in the day, he announced that his mother was willing. She would clean the living room and move in that day. How Kate hated the tiny room with its one exterior wall, only one small window, it scratched woodwork and soiled paper she could not say. She felt physically ill when she thought of it and when she thought of the heat in the coming summer she wondered what she would do but all she could do was the acquiesce. She made a trip downtown and bought a cord of white paint and a few rolls of dainty fresh paper. She made herself ill with turpentine odors and giving the ward work, three coats and fell from the table almost killing herself while papering the ceiling. There was no room for a trunk, the closet would not hold half a close. Her only easy chair was crowded out. She was sheared of personal comfort at the clip just at a time when every comfort should have been hers. George ordered an operating table in which to massage his patients, a few other necessaries and in high spirits went about fixing up his office and finishing his school. He spent hours in the wood shed with the remainder of Kate's white paint making a sign to hang in front of the house. He was so pathetically anxious for a patient after he had put his table in place, hung up his sign and paid for an announcement in the county paper in the little Walden sheet that Kate was sorry for him. On the hot July morning, Mrs. Holt was sweeping the front porch when a forlorn specimen of humanity came shuffling up the front walk and asked to see Dr. Holt. Mrs. Holt took him into the office and ran to the garden to tell George his first patient had come. His face had been fleshed from pulling weeds but it peeled perceptibly as he started to the back porch to wash his hands. Do you know who it is, mother? He asked. It's that old Peter Mines, she said, and he looks fit to drop. Peter Mines said, George, he's had about 50 things to matter with him for about 50 years. Then you're a made man, if you can even make him think he feels enough better, so go round talking about it, said Mrs. Holt shrewdly. George stood with his hands dripping water and instant, thinking deeply. Well said for once, old lady, he agreed, you are just exactly right. He hurried to his room and put on his coat. A patient, there will be a big boom for me, he boasted the caves he went down the hall. Mrs. Holt stood listening at the hall door. Kate walked around the dining room trying to occupy herself. Presently, cringing groans began to come from the room, mangled with George's deep voice explaining and trying to encourage the man. Then came a wild shriek and then silence. Kate hurried out to the back walk and began pacing up and down in the sunshine. She did not know it, but she was praying. A minute later, George's pal and face appeared at the back door. You come in here quick and help me, he demented. What's the matter, asked Kate. He's fainted, his heart, I think. He's got everything that ever held a man, he said. Oh, George, you shouldn't have touched him, said Kate. Can't you see it will make me if I can help him? Even mother could see that, he cried. But if his heart is bad, the risk of massaging him is awful, said Kate as she hurried after George. Kate looked at the man on the table, ran her hand over the heart region and lifted terrified eyes of George. Do you think? He stammered. Sure of it, she said, but we can try. Bring your camp for a bottle and some water, she cried to Mrs. Holt. For a few minutes they worked frantically, then Kate stepped back. I'm scared, I don't care who knows it, she said. I'm going after Dr. James. No, you are not, cried George. You just hold yourself, I'll have him out in a minute, begin at his feet and rub the blood up to his heart. They're swollen to a puff, he's got no circulation, said Kate. Oh, George, how could you ever hope to do anything for a man in this shape with muscular treatment? You keep still and rub for God's sake, he cried frantically. Can't you see that I'm ruined if he dies on this table? No, I can't, said Kate. Everybody would know that he was practically dying when he came here. Nobody will blame you only, you never should have touched him. George, I am going after Dr. James. Well, go then, he said wildly. Kate started, Mrs. Holt blocked the doorway. You just stop, Missy, she cried, you're way too smart trying to get folks in here and ruin my George's chances. You just stay where you are till I think what to do to put the best face on this. He may not be really gone, the doctor might save him, cried Kate. Mrs. Holt looked long at the man. He's dead or in a doornail, she said, you stay where you are. Kate picked her up by the shoulder, set her to one side, ran from the room and down the street as fast as possible. She found the doctor in his office with two patients. She had no time to think or a temper. Get your case and come to her house quick, doctor, she cried. An old man they called Peter Mines came to see George and his heart has failed, please hurry. Hard, eh, said the doctor. Well, wait a minute, no use to go about in the heart without digitalists. He got up and put on his hat, told the men he would be back soon and went to the nearest drug store. Kate followed. The men who had been in the office came also. Doctor hurry, she panting, I'm so frightened. You go to some of the neighbors and stay away from there, he said. Hurry Ben Kate, oh do hurry. She was beside them as they sped down the street and at his shoulder as they entered the room. With one glance she lurched against the casing and then she plunged down the hall, entered her room, closed the door behind her and threw herself on the bed. She had only a glance, but in that glance she had seen Peter Mines handing fully clothed his hat on his head, his stick in his hands and her easy chair. The operating table folded and standing against the wall, Mrs. Holt holding the cam for bottle in the Peter's nose while George had one handle for Peter's heart, the other steadying his head. The doctor swung the table in place and with George's help laid Peter on it, then began tearing open his clothes as they worked the two men followed into the house to see if they could do anything and excited neighbors began to gather. George and his mother explained how Peter had exhausted himself walking two miles from the country that hot morning, how he had entered the office tottering with fatigue and had fallen in the chair in a fainting condition. Everything was plausible until a neighbor woman, eager to be the center of attraction for a second, cried, yes, we all see him come on an hour ago and when he began to let out the yells, we says to each other, there, George has got his first patient, sure, and we all kind of waited to see if he'd come out better. The doctor looked at her sharply, more than an hour ago, he said, you heard cries? Yes, more than a good hour ago, yes, we all heard him yell just once, good and loud, she said. The doctor turned to George before he could speak as mother intervened. That was our keep down the yelling, she said. She was scared crazy from the start. He just come in and sat in the chair and he's been there ever since. You didn't give him any treatment, Holt, asked the doctor. Again, Mrs. Holt answered, never touched him, hadn't even got time to get his table open, what nothing he could have done for him anyway. Peter was good as gone when he got here, his real folks never ought to let him come out this whole day, stick as he was. The doctor looked at George and his mother, long at Peter. He surely was too sick to walk that far in the seat, he said, but to make sure I'll look him over, George, you help me, clear the room with all but these two men. He began minutely examining Peter's heart region, then he rolled him over and started to compress his lungs. Long white streaks marked the puffy red of the swollen dropsicle flesh. The doctor examined the length of the body and looked straight into George Holt's eyes. No use, he said. Bill, go to the phone in my office and tell Coroner Smith to get here from Hartley as soon as he can. All that's left to do here is to obey the law and have a funeral. Better some of the rest of you go tell his folks, I've done all I can do. It's up to the Coroner now. The rest of you go home and keep still till he comes. When he and George were left alone, he said to Earthly, of course you and your mother are lying. You had this man stripped, he did cry out and he did die from the pain of the treatment you tried to give him in his condition. By the way, where's your wife? This is a bad thing for her right now. Come, let's find her and see what state she is in. Together they left the room and entered Kate's door. As soon as the doctor was busy with her, George slipped back into the closed room, rolled Peter on his back and covered him in the hope that the blood burden settled until it would effaced the marks of his work before the Coroner arrived. By that time the doctor was too busy to care much what happened to Peter Mines. He was a poor old soul, better off as he was. Across Kate's unconscious body said to George Holt, I'm going to let the Coroner make what he pleases out of this, solely for your wife's sake. But two things, take down that shingle, take it down now and never put it up again if you want me to keep still. I'll give you what you paid for that table, it's a good one. Get him out as soon as you can, send him in another room. I've got to have Mrs. Holt where I can work. And send Sarah and Nepple here to help me, move fast, this is going to be a close call on the other thing. I've heard you put in an application for our school this winter, withdrawn. Now move. So they set Peter in the living room, cleaned Kate's room quickly and moved in her bed. By the time the Coroner arrived, the doctor was too busy to care what happened. On oath he said a few words they hope would make life easier for Kate and at the same time pass muster for truth. Told the Coroner what witnesses to call and gave an opinion as to Peter's condition. He also added that he was sure Peter's family would be very glad he was to suffer no more. And then he went back to Kate who was suffering entirely too much for safety. Then began the long vigil that ended at midnight with Kate barely alive and Sarah and Nepple, the walled and midwife trying to divide a scanty wardrobe between a pair of lusty twins. End of chapter 14.