“Adam, is there any such hurry?” asked Kate.  “You know you are abusing your horse dreadfully.”

Adam immediately jerked the horse with all his might, and slashed the length of its body with two long stripes that rapidly raised in high welts, so Kate saw that he was past reasoning with and said no other word.  She tried to think who would be at home, how they would treat her, the Prodigal, who had not been there in seven years; and suddenly it occurred to Kate that, if she had known all she now knew in her youth, and had the same decision to make again as when she knew nothing, she would have taken wing, just as she had.  She had made failures, she had hurt herself, mind and body, but her honour, her self-respect were intact.  Suddenly she sat straight.  She was glad that she had taken a bath, worn a reasonably decent dress, and had a better one in the back of the buggy.  She would cut the Gordian knot with a vengeance.  She would not wait to see how they treated her, she would treat them!  As for Adam’s state, there was only one surmise she could make, and that seemed so incredible, she decided to wait until her mother told her all about whatever the trouble was.

As they came in sight of the house, queer feelings took possession of Kate.  She struggled to think kindly of her father; she tried to feel pangs of grief over his passing.  She was too forthright and had too good memory to succeed.  Home had been so unbearable that she had taken desperate measures to escape it, but as the white house with its tree and shrub filled yard could be seen more plainly, Kate suddenly was filled with the strongest possessive feeling she ever had known.  It was home.  It was her home.  Her place was there, even as Adam had said.  She felt a sudden revulsion against herself that she had stayed away seven years; she should have taken her chances and at least gone to see her mother.  She leaned from the buggy and watched for the first glimpse of the tall, gaunt, dark woman, who had brought their big brood into the world and stood squarely with her husband, against every one of them, in each thing he proposed.

Now he was gone.  No doubt he had carried out his intentions.  No doubt she was standing by him as always.  Kate gathered her skirts, but Adam passed the house, driving furiously as ever, and he only slackened speed when he was forced to at the turn from the road to the lane.  He stopped the buggy in the barnyard, got out, and began unharnessing the horse.  Kate sat still and watched him until he led it away, then she stepped down and started across the barnyard, down the lane leading to the dooryard.  As she closed the yard gate and rounded a widely spreading snowball bush, her heart was pounding wildly.  What was coming?  How would the other boys act, if Adam, the best balanced man of them all, was behaving as he was?  How would her mother greet her?  With the thought, Kate realized that she was so homesick