“The other thing is just this:  I’m tired to death of the whole business.  I want peace and rest and I want it quick.  Friday and Saturday I was so scared and so knocked out I s’pose I’d ‘a’ took it if one of the sucking babies had riz up and commenced to tell me what I should a-done, and what I shouldn’t.  I’m through with that.  You will all keep civil tongues in your heads this morning, or I’ll get up and go upstairs, an’ lock myself in a room till you’re gone, an’ if I go, it will mean that the law takes its course; and if it does, there will be three hundred acres less land to divide.  You’ve had Pa on your hands all your lives, now you will go civil, and you will go easy, or you will get a taste of Ma.  I take no more talk from anybody.  Katie, go ahead with your figures.”

Kate spread her sheet on the table and glanced around the room: 

“The Milton County records show sixteen hundred and fifty acres standing in Father’s name,” she said.  “Of these, Mother is heir to five hundred and fifty acres, leaving one thousand one hundred acres to be divided among sixteen of us, which give sixty-eight and three-fourths acres to each.  This land is the finest that proper fertilization and careful handling can make.  Even the poorest is the cream of the country as compared with the surrounding farms.  As a basis of estimate I have taken one hundred dollars an acre as a fair selling figure.  Some is worth more, some less, but that is a good average.  This would make the share of each of us in cash that could easily be realized, six thousand eight hundred and seventy-five dollars.  Whatever else is in mortgages, notes, and money can be collected as it is due, deposited in some bank, and when it is all in, divided equally among us, after deducting Mother’s third.  Now this is the law, and those are the figures, but I shall venture to say that none of us feel right about it, or ever will.”

An emphatic murmur of approval ran among the boys, Mary and Nancy Ellen stoutly declared that they did.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” said Kate.  “If God made any woman of you so that she feels right and clean in her conscience about this deal, he made her wrong, and that is a thing that has not yet been proven of God.  As I see it, here is the boys’ side:  from childhood they were told, bribed, and urged to miss holidays, work all week, and often on Sunday, to push and slave on the promise of this land at twenty-one.  They all got the land and money to stock it and build homes.  They were told it was theirs, required to pay the taxes on it, and also to labour at any time and without wages for Father.  Not one of the boys but has done several hundred dollars’ worth of work on Father’s farm for nothing, to keep him satisfied and to insure getting his deed.  All these years, each man has paid his taxes, put thousands in improvements, in rebuilding homes and barns, fertilizing, and developing his land.  Each one of these farms is worth nearly twice what it was the day it was received.  That the boys should lose all this is no cause for rejoicing on the part of any true woman; as a fact, no true woman would allow such a thing to happen —­ "