“Speak for yourself!” cried several of the girls at once.

“Now right here is where we come to a perfect understanding,” said Kate.  “I did say that for myself, but in the main what I say, I say for mother.  Now you will not one of you interrupt me again, or this meeting closes, and each of you stands to lose more than two thousand dollars, which is worth being civil for, for quite a while.  No more of that!  I say any woman should be ashamed to take advantage of her brother through an accident; and rob him of years of work and money he was perfectly justified in thinking was his.  I, for one, refuse to do it, and I want and need money probably more than any of you.  To tear up these farms, to take more than half from the boys, is too much.  On the other hand, for the girls to help earn the land, to go with no inheritance at all, is even more unfair.  Now in order to arrive at a compromise that will leave each boy his farm, and give each girl the nearest possible to a fair amount, figuring in what the boys have spent in taxes and work for Father, and what each girl has lost by not having her money to handle all these years, it is necessary to split the difference between the time Adam, the eldest, has had his inheritance, and Hiram, the youngest, came into possession, which by taking from and adding to, gives a fair average of fifteen years.  Now Mother proposes if we will enter into an agreement this morning with no words and no wrangling, to settle on this basis:  she will relinquish her third of all other land, and keep only this home farm.  She even will allow the fifty lying across the road to be sold and the money put into a general fund for the share of the girls.  She will turn into this fund all money from notes and mortgages, and the sale of all stock, implements, etc., here, except what she wants to keep for her use, and the sum of three thousand dollars in cash, to provide against old age.  This releases quite a sum of money, and three hundred and fifty acres of land, which she gives to the boys to start this fund as her recompense for their work and loss through a scheme in which she had a share in the start.  She does this only on the understanding that the boys form a pool, and in some way take from what they have saved, sell timber or cattle, or borrow enough money to add to this sufficient to pay to each girl six thousand dollars in cash, in three months.  Now get out your pencils and figure.  Start with the original number of acres at fifty dollars an acre which is what it cost Father on an average.  Balance against each other what the boys have lost in tax and work, and the girls have lost in not having their money to handle, and cross it off.  Then figure, not on a basis of what the boys have made this land worth, but on what it cost Father’s estate to buy, build on, and stock each farm.  Strike the fifteen-year average on prices and profits.  Figure that the girls get all their money practically immediately, to pay for the time they have been out of it; while each boy assumes an equal share of the indebtedness required to finish out the six thousand, after Mother has turned in what she is willing to, if this is settled here and now.”