Kate did her best, but she was so weakened by nursing both of the babies, by loss of sleep, and overwork in the house, that she was no help whatever to George in getting in the fall crops and preparing for spring.  She had lost none of her ambition, but there was a limit to her capacity.

In the spring the babies were big and lusty, eating her up, and crying with hunger, until she was forced to resort to artificial feeding in part, which did not agree with either of them.  As a saving of time and trouble she decided to nurse one and feed the other.  It was without thought on her part, almost by chance, yet the chance was that she nursed Adam and fed Polly.  Then the babies began teething, so that she was rushed to find time to prepare three regular meals a day, and as for the garden and poultry she had planned, George did what he pleased about them, which was little, if anything.

He would raise so much to keep from being hungry, he would grow so many roots, and so much cabbage for winter, he would tend enough corn for a team and to fatten pork; right there he stopped and went fishing, while the flask was in evidence on the pantry shelf only two days.  Kate talked crop rotation, new seed, fertilization, until she was weary; George heartily agreed with her, but put nothing of it all into practice.

“As soon as the babies are old enough to be taken out,” she said, “things will be better.  I just can’t do justice to them and my work, too.  Three pairs!  My poor mother!  And she’s alive yet!  I marvel at it.”

So they lived, and had enough to eat, and were clothed, but not one step did they advance toward Kate’s ideals of progression, economy, accumulation.  George always had a little money, more than she could see how he got from the farming.  There were a few calves and pigs to sell occasionally; she thought possibly he saved his share from them.

For four years, Kate struggled valiantly to keep pace with what her mother always had done, and had required of her at home; but she learned long before she quit struggling that farming with George was hopeless.  So at last she became so discouraged she began to drift into his way of doing merely what would sustain them, and then reading, fishing, or sleeping the remainder of the time.  She began teaching her children while very small, and daily they had their lessons after dinner, while their father slept.

Kate thought often of what was happening to her; she hated it, she fought it; but with George Holt for a partner she could not escape it.  She lay awake nights, planning ways to make a start toward prosperity; she propounded her ideas at breakfast.  To save time in getting him early to work she began feeding the horses as soon as she was up, so that George could go to work immediately after breakfast; but she soon found she might as well save her strength.  He would not start to harness until he had smoked, mostly three quarters of an hour.  That his neighbours laughed at him and got ahead of him bothered him not at all.  All they said and all Kate said, went, as he expressed it, “in at one ear, out at the other.”