“Don’t, Adam, don’t!” cautioned Kate.

“I mean it!” cried the boy.

“I know you do.  That’s the awful thing about it,” said Kate.  “I am afraid every girl he has feels the same way, and from what your father said yesterday, even the sons he favours don’t feel any too good toward him.”

“You just bet they don’t!  They are every one as sore as boiled owls.  Pa said so, and he knows, for they all talk it over every time they meet.  He said they didn’t feel like men, they felt like a lot of ‘spanked school-boys.’”

“They needn’t worry,” said Kate.  “Every deed is made out.  Father reads them over whenever it rains.  They’ll all get their land when he dies.  It is only his way.”

“Yes, and this is only his way, too, and it’s a dern poor way,” said Adam.  “Pa isn’t going to do this way at all.  Mother said he could go and live on his land, and she’d stay home with Susan and me, if he tried it.  And when I am a man I am going to do just like Pa and Ma because they are the rightest people I know, only I am not going to save quite so close as Pa, and if I died for it, I never could converse or dance like Ma.”

“I should hope not!” said Kate, and then added hastily, “it’s all right for a lady, but it would seem rather sissy for a man, I believe.”

“Yes, I guess it would, but it is language let me tell you, when Ma cuts loose,” said Adam.

“Hello, Nancy Ellen,” said Kate as Adam stopped the buggy.  “Put my telescope in the back with the horse feed.  Since you have it, I don’t need ask whether I am the Prodigal Daughter or not.  I see clearly I am.”

Nancy Ellen was worried, until she was pale.

“Kate,” she said, “I never have seen Father so angry in all my life.  I thought last night that in a day or two I could switch the school over to Serena Woodruff, and go on with my plans, but Father said at breakfast if the Bates name was to stand for anything approaching honour, a Bates would teach that school this winter or he’d know the reason why.  And you know how easy it is to change him.  Oh, Kate, won’t you see if that Walden trustee can’t possibly find another teacher, and let you off?  I know Robert will be disappointed, for he’s rented his office and bought a house and he said last night to get ready as soon after Christmas as I could.  Oh, Kate, won’t you see if you can’t possibly get that man to hire another teacher?”

“Why, Nancy Ellen —­” said Kate.

Nancy Ellen, with a twitching face, looked at Kate.

“If Robert has to wait months, there in Hartley, handsome as he is, and he has to be nice to everybody to get practice, and you know how those Hartley girls are —­”

“Yes, Nancy Ellen, I know,” said Kate.  “I’ll see what I can do.  Is it understood that if I give up the school and come back and take ours, Father will let me come home?”

“Yes, oh, yes!” cried Nancy Ellen.