“You’re right,” said Mrs. Bates.  “Look at Nancy Ellen and Adam.  Sometimes I think Adam has been pretty much galled with Agatha and her money all these years; and it just drives him crazy to think of having still less than she has.  Have you got your figures all set down, to back you up, Katie?”

“Yes,” said Kate.  “I’ve gone all over it with Robert, and he thinks it’s the best and only thing that can be done.  Now go to sleep.”

Each knew that the other was awake most of the night, but very few words passed between them.  They were up early, dressed, and waiting when the first carriage stopped at the gate.  Kate told her mother to stay where she would not be worried until she was needed, and went down herself to meet her brothers and sisters in the big living room.  When the last one arrived, she called her mother.  Mrs. Bates came down looking hollow-eyed, haggard, and grim, as none of her children ever before had seen her.  She walked directly to the little table at the end of the room, and while still standing she said:  “Now I’ve got a few words to say, and then I’ll turn this over to a younger head an’ one better at figures than mine.  I’ve said my say as to Pa, yesterday.  Now I’ll say this, for myself.  I got my start, minding Pa, and agreeing with him, young; but you needn’t any of you throw it in my teeth now, that I did.  There is only one woman among you, and no man who ever disobeyed him.  Katie stood up to him once, and got seven years from home to punish her and me.  He wasn’t right then, and I knew it, as I’d often known it before, and pretty often since; but no woman God ever made could have lived with Adam Bates as his wife and contraried him.  I didn’t mind him any quicker or any oftener than the rest of you; keep that pretty clear in your heads, and don’t one of you dare open your mouth again to tell me, as you did Saturday, what I should a-done, and what I shouldn’t.  I’ve had the law of this explained to me; you all know it for that matter.  By the law, I get this place and one third of all the other land and money.  I don’t know just what money there is at the bank or in notes and mortgages, but a sixteenth of it after my third is taken out ain’t going to make or break any of you.  I’ve told Katie what I’m willing to do on my part and she will explain it, and then tell you about a plan she has fixed up.  As for me, you can take it or leave it.  If you take it, well and good; if you don’t, the law will be set in motion to-day, and it will take its course to the end.  It all depends on you.

“Now two things more.  At the start, what Pa wanted to do seemed to me right, and I agreed with him and worked with him.  But when my girls began to grow up and I saw how they felt, and how they struggled and worked, and how the women you boys married went ahead of my own girls, and had finer homes, an’ carriages, and easier times, I got pretty sick of it, and I told Pa so more’n once.  He just raved whenever I did, an’ he always carried his keys in his pocket.  I never touched his chest key in my life, till I handed him his deed box Friday afternoon.  But I agree with my girls.  It’s fair and right, since things have come out as they have, that they should have their shares.  I would, too.