“Of course she is,” said Kate.  “We all know that.  But what is the matter with Nancy Ellen helping her, while I take my turn at Normal?  There wasn’t a thing I could do last summer to help her off that I didn’t do, even to lending her my best dress and staying at home for six Sundays because I had nothing else fit to wear where I’d be seen.”

No one said a word.  Kate continued:  “Then Father secured our home school for her and I had to spend the winter going to school to her, when you very well know that I always studied harder, and was ahead of her, even after she’d been to Normal.  And I got up early and worked late, and cooked, and washed, and waited on her, while she got her lessons and reports ready, and fixed up her nice new clothes, and now she won’t touch the work, and she is doing all she can to help Father keep me from going.”

“I never knew Father to need much help on anything he made up his mind to,” said Adam.

Kate sat very tense.  She looked steadily at her brother, but he looked quite as steadily at his plate.  The back of her sister-in-law was fully as expressive as her face.  Her head was very erect, her shoulders stiff and still, not a curl moved as she poured Adam’s tea and Susan’s milk.  Only Adam, 3d, looked at Kate with companionable eyes, as if he might feel a slight degree of interest or sympathy, so she found herself explaining directly to him.

“Things are blame unfair in our family, anyway!” she said, bitterly.  “You have got to be born a boy to have any chance worth while; if you are a girl it is mighty small, and if you are the youngest, by any mischance, you have none at all.  I don’t want to harp things over; but I wish you would explain to me why having been born a few years after Nancy Ellen makes me her slave, and cuts me out of my chance to teach, and to have some freedom and clothes.  They might as well have told Hiram he was not to have any land and stay at home and help Father because he was the youngest boy; it would have been quite as fair; but nothing like that happens to the boys of this family, it is always the girls who get left.  I have worked for years, knowing every cent I saved and earned above barely enough to cover me, would go to help pay for Hiram’s land and house and stock; but he wouldn’t turn a hand to help me, neither will any of the rest of you.”

“Then what are you here for?” asked Adam.

“Because I am going to give you, and every other brother and sister I have, the chance to refuse to loan me enough to buy a few clothes and pay my way to Normal, so I can pass the examinations, and teach this fall.  And when you have all refused, I am going to the neighbours, until I find someone who will loan me the money I need.  A hundred dollars would be plenty.  I could pay it back with two months’ teaching, with any interest you say.”

Kate paused, short of breath, her eyes blazing, her cheeks red.  Adam went steadily on with his supper.  Agatha appeared stiffer and more uncompromising in the back than before, which Kate had not thought possible.  But the same dull red on the girl’s cheeks had begun to burn on the face of young Adam.  Suddenly he broke into a clear laugh.