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A Daughter Of The Land

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A DAUGHTER OF THE LAND

by Gene Stratton-Porter




CONTENTS
Chapter
I. The Wings of Morning
II. An Embryo Mind Reader
III. Peregrinations
IV. A Question of Contracts
V. The Prodigal Daughter
VI. Kate's Private Pupil
VII. Helping Nancy Ellen and Robert to Establish a Home
VIII. The History of a Leghorn Hat
IX. A Sunbonnet Girl
X. John Jardine's Courtship
XI. A Business Proposition
XII. Two Letters
XIII. The Bride
XIV. Starting Married Life
XV. A New Idea
XVI. The Work of the Sun
XVII. The Banner Hand
XVIII. Kate Takes the Bit in Her Teeth
XIX. "As a Man Soweth"
XX. "For a Good Girl"
XXI. Life's Boomerang
XXII. Somewhat of Polly
III. Kate's Heavenly Time
XXIV. Polly Tries Her Wings
XXV. One More for Kate
XXVI. The Winged Victory
XXVII. Blue Ribbon Corn
XXVIII. The Eleventh Hour

To Gene Stratton II

A DAUGHTER OF THE LAND


THE WINGS OF MORNING

"TAKE the wings of Morning."

Kate Bates followed the narrow footpath rounding the corner of the
small country church, as the old minister raised his voice slowly
and impressively to repeat the command he had selected for his
text. Fearing that her head would be level with the windows, she
bent and walked swiftly past the church; but the words went with
her, iterating and reiterating themselves in her brain. Once she
paused to glance back toward the church, wondering what the
minister would say in expounding that text. She had a fleeting
thought of slipping in, taking the back seat and listening to the
sermon. The remembrance that she had not dressed for church
deterred her; then her face twisted grimly as she again turned to
the path, for it occurred to her that she had nothing else to wear
if she had started to attend church instead of going to see her
brother.

As usual, she had left her bed at four o'clock; for seven hours
she had cooked, washed dishes, made beds, swept, dusted, milked,
churned, following the usual routine of a big family in the
country. Then she had gone upstairs, dressed in clean gingham and
confronted her mother.

"I think I have done my share for to-day," she said. "Suppose you
call on our lady school-mistress for help with dinner. I'm going
to Adam's."

Mrs. Bates lifted her gaunt form to very close six feet of height,
looking narrowly at her daughter.

"Well, what the nation are you going to Adam's at this time a-
Sunday for?" she demanded.

"Oh, I have a curiosity to learn if there is one of the eighteen
members of this family who gives a cent what becomes of me!"
answered Kate, her eyes meeting and looking clearly into her
mother's.

"You are not letting yourself think he would 'give a cent' to send
you to that fool normal-thing, are you?"

"I am not! But it wasn't a 'fool thing' when Mary and Nancy Ellen,
and the older girls wanted to go. You even let Mary go to college
two years."

"Mary had exceptional ability," said Mrs. Bates.

"I wonder how she convinced you of it. None of the rest of us can
discover it," said Kate.

"What you need is a good strapping, Miss."

"I know it; but considering the facts that I am larger than you,
and was eighteen in September, I shouldn't advise you to attempt
it. What is the difference whether I was born in '62 or '42?
Give me the chance you gave Mary, and I'll prove to you that I can
do anything she has done, without having 'exceptional ability!'"

"The difference is that I am past sixty now. I was stout as an ox
when Mary wanted to go to school. It is your duty and your job to
stay here and do this work."

"To pay for having been born last? Not a bit more than if I had
been born first. Any girl in the family owes you as much for life
as I do; it is up to the others to pay back in service, after they
are of age, if it is to me. I have done my share. If Father were
not the richest farmer in the county, and one of the richest men,
it would be different. He can afford to hire help for you, quite
as well as he can for himself."

"Hire help! Who would I get to do the work here?"

"You'd have to double your assistants. You could not hire two
women who would come here and do so much work as I do in a day.
That is why I decline to give up teaching, and stay here to slave
at your option, for gingham dresses and cowhide shoes, of your
selection. If I were a boy, I'd work three years more and then I
would be given two hundred acres of land, have a house and barn
built for me, and a start of stock given me, as every boy in this
family has had at twenty-one."

"A man is a man! He founds a family, he runs the Government! It
is a different matter," said Mrs. Bates.

"It surely is; in this family. But I think, even with us, a man
would have rather a difficult proposition on his hands to found a
family without a woman; or to run the Government either."

"All right! Go on to Adam and see what you get."

"I'll have the satisfaction of knowing that Nancy Ellen gets
dinner, anyway," said Kate as she passed through the door and
followed the long path to the gate, from there walking beside the
road in the direction of her brother's home. There were many
horses in the pasture and single and double buggies in the barn;
but it never occurred to Kate that she might ride: it was
Sunday and the horses were resting. So she followed the path
beside the fences, rounded the corner of the church and went on
her way with the text from which the pastor was preaching,
hammering in her brain. She became so absorbed in thought that
she scarcely saw the footpath she followed, while June flowered,
and perfumed, and sang all around her.

She was so intent upon the words she had heard that her feet
unconsciously followed a well-defined branch from the main path
leading into the woods, from the bridge, where she sat on a log,
and for the unnumbered time, reviewed her problem. She had worked
ever since she could remember. Never in her life had she gotten
to school before noon on Monday, because of the large washings.
After the other work was finished she had spent nights and
mornings ironing, when she longed to study, seldom finishing
before Saturday. Summer brought an endless round of harvesting,
canning, drying; winter brought butchering, heaps of sewing, and
postponed summer work. School began late in the fall and closed
early in spring, with teachers often inefficient; yet because she
was a close student and kept her books where she could take a peep
and memorize and think as she washed dishes and cooked, she had
thoroughly mastered all the country school near her home could
teach her. With six weeks of a summer Normal course she would be
as well prepared to teach as any of her sisters were, with the
exception of Mary, who had been able to convince her parents that
she possessed two college years' worth of "ability."

Kate laid no claim to "ability," herself; but she knew she was as
strong as most men, had an ordinary brain that could be trained,
and while she was far from beautiful she was equally as far from
being ugly, for her skin was smooth and pink, her eyes large and
blue-gray, her teeth even and white. She missed beauty because
her cheekbones were high, her mouth large, her nose barely
escaping a pug; but she had a real "crown of glory" in her hair,
which was silken fine, long and heavy, of sunshine-gold in colour,
curling naturally around her face and neck. Given pure blood to
paint such a skin with varying emotions, enough wind to ravel out
a few locks of such hair, the proportions of a Venus and perfect
health, any girl could rest very well assured of being looked at
twice, if not oftener.

Kate sat on a log, a most unusual occurrence for her, for she was
familiar only with bare, hot houses, furnished with meagre
necessities; reeking stables, barnyards and vegetable gardens.
She knew less of the woods than the average city girl; but there
was a soothing wind, a sweet perfume, a calming silence that
quieted her tense mood and enabled her to think clearly; so the
review went on over years of work and petty economies, amounting
to one grand aggregate that gave to each of seven sons house,
stock, and land at twenty-one; and to each of nine daughters a
bolt of muslin and a fairly decent dress when she married, as the
seven older ones did speedily, for they were fine, large,
upstanding girls, some having real beauty, all exceptionally
well-trained economists and workers. Because her mother had the
younger daughters to help in the absence of the elder, each girl
had been allowed the time and money to prepare herself to teach a
country school; all of them had taught until they married. Nancy
Ellen, the beauty of the family, the girl next older than Kate,
had taken the home school for the second winter. Going to school
to Nancy Ellen had been the greatest trial of Kate's life, until
the possibility of not going to Normal had confronted her.

Nancy Ellen was almost as large as Kate, quite as pink, her
features assembled in a manner that made all the difference, her
jet-black hair as curly as Kate's, her eyes big and dark, her lips
red. As for looking at Kate twice, no one ever looked at her at
all if Nancy Ellen happened to be walking beside her. Kate bore
that without protest; it would have wounded her pride to rebel
openly; she did Nancy Ellen's share of the work to allow her to
study and have her Normal course; she remained at home plainly
clothed to loan Nancy Ellen her best dress when she attended
Normal; but when she found that she was doomed to finish her last
year at school under Nancy Ellen, to work double so that her
sister might go to school early and remain late, coming home tired
and with lessons to prepare for the morrow, some of the
spontaneity left Kate's efforts.

She had a worse grievance when Nancy Ellen hung several new
dresses and a wrapper on her side of the closet after her first
pay-day, and furnished her end of the bureau with a white hair
brush and a brass box filled with pink powder, with a swan's-down
puff for its application. For three months Kate had waited and
hoped that at least "thank you" would be vouchsafed her; when it
failed for that length of time she did two things: she studied so
diligently that her father called her into the barn and told her
that if before the school, she asked Nancy Ellen another question
she could not answer, he would use the buggy whip on her to within
an inch of her life. The buggy whip always had been a familiar
implement to Kate, so she stopped asking slippery questions,
worked harder than ever, and spent her spare time planning what
she would hang in the closet and put on her end of the bureau when
she had finished her Normal course, and was teaching her first
term of school.

Now she had learned all that Nancy Ellen could teach her, and much
that Nancy Ellen never knew: it was time for Kate to be starting
away to school. Because it was so self-evident that she should
have what the others had had, she said nothing about it until the
time came; then she found her father determined that she should
remain at home to do the housework, for no compensation other than
her board and such clothes as she always had worn, her mother
wholly in accord with him, and marvel of all, Nancy Ellen quite
enthusiastic on the subject.

Her father always had driven himself and his family like slaves,
while her mother had ably seconded his efforts. Money from the
sale of chickens, turkeys, butter, eggs, and garden truck that
other women of the neighbourhood used for extra clothing for
themselves and their daughters and to prettify their homes, Mrs.
Bates handed to her husband to increase the amount necessary to
purchase the two hundred acres of land for each son when he came
of age. The youngest son had farmed his land with comfortable
profit and started a bank account, while his parents and two
sisters were still saving and working to finish the last payment.
Kate thought with bitterness that if this final payment had been
made possibly there would have been money to spare for her; but
with that thought came the knowledge that her father had numerous
investments on which he could have realized and made the payments
had he not preferred that they should be a burden on his family.

"Take the wings of morning," repeated Kate, with all the emphasis
the old minister had used. "Hummm! I wonder what kind of wings.
Those of a peewee would scarcely do for me; I'd need the wings of
an eagle to get me anywhere, and anyway it wasn't the wings of a
bird I was to take, it was the wings of morning. I wonder what
the wings of morning are, and how I go about taking them. God
knows where my wings come in; by the ache in my feet I seem to
have walked, mostly. Oh, what ARE the wings of morning?"

Kate stared straight before her, sitting absorbed and motionless.
Close in front of her a little white moth fluttered over the twigs
and grasses. A kingbird sailed into view and perched on a brush-
heap preparatory to darting after the moth. While the bird
measured the distance and waited for the moth to rise above the
entangling grasses, with a sweep and a snap a smaller bird, very
similar in shape and colouring, flashed down, catching the moth
and flying high among the branches of a big tree.

"Aha! You missed your opportunity!" said Kate to the kingbird.

She sat straighter suddenly. "Opportunity," she repeated. "Here
is where I am threatened with missing mine. Opportunity! I
wonder now if that might not be another name for 'the wings of
morning.' Morning is winging its way past me, the question is:
do I sit still and let it pass, or do I take its wings and fly
away?"

Kate brooded on that awhile, then her thought formulated into
words again.

"It isn't as if Mother were sick or poor, she is perfectly well
and stronger than nine women out of ten of her age; Father can
afford to hire all the help she needs; there is nothing cruel or
unkind in leaving her; and as for Nancy Ellen, why does the fact
that I am a few years younger than she, make me her servant? Why
do I cook for her, and make her bed, and wash her clothes, while
she earns money to spend on herself? And she is doing everything
in her power to keep me at it, because she likes what she is doing
and what it brings her, and she doesn't give a tinker whether I
like what I am doing or not; or whether I get anything I want out
of it or not; or whether I miss getting off to Normal on time or
not. She is blame selfish, that's what she is, so she won't like
the jolt she's going to get; but it will benefit her soul, her
soul that her pretty face keeps her from developing, so I shall
give her a little valuable assistance. Mother will be furious and
Father will have the buggy whip convenient; but I am going! I
don't know how, or when, but I am GOING.

"Who has a thirst for knowledge, in Helicon may slake it,
If he has still, the Roman will, to find a way, or make it."

Kate arose tall and straight and addressed the surrounding woods.
"Now you just watch me 'find a way or make it,'" she said. "I am
'taking the wings of morning,' observe my flight! See me cut
curves and circles and sail and soar around all the other Bates
girls the Lord ever made, one named Nancy Ellen in particular. It
must be far past noon, and I've much to do to get ready. I fly!"

Kate walked back to the highway, but instead of going on she
turned toward home. When she reached the gate she saw Nancy
Ellen, dressed her prettiest, sitting beneath a cherry tree
reading a book, in very plain view from the road. As Kate came up
the path: "Hello!" said Nancy Ellen. "Wasn't Adam at home?"

"I don't know," answered Kate. "I was not there."

"You weren't? Why, where were you?" asked Nancy Ellen.

"Oh, I just took a walk!" answered Kate.

"Right at dinner time on Sunday? Well, I'll be switched!" cried
Nancy Ellen.

"Pity you weren't oftener, when you most needed it," said Kate,
passing up the walk and entering the door. Her mother asked the
same questions so Kate answered them.

"Well, I am glad you came home," said Mrs. Bates. "There was no
use tagging to Adam with a sorry story, when your father said
flatly that you couldn't go."

"But I must go!" urged Kate. "I have as good a right to my chance
as the others. If you put your foot down and say so, Mother,
Father will let me go. Why shouldn't I have the same chance as
Nancy Ellen? Please Mother, let me go!"

"You stay right where you are. There is an awful summer's work
before us," said Mrs. Bates.

"There always is," answered Kate. "But now is just my chance
while you have Nancy Ellen here to help you."

"She has some special studying to do, and you very well know that
she has to attend the County Institute, and take the summer course
of training for teachers."

"So do I," said Kate, stubbornly. "You really will not help me,
Mother?"

"I've said my say! Your place is here! Here you stay!" answered
her mother.

"All right," said Kate, "I'll cross you off the docket of my
hopes, and try Father."

"Well, I warn you, you had better not! He has been nagged until
his patience is lost," said Mrs. Bates.

Kate closed her lips and started in search of her father. She
found him leaning on the pig pen watching pigs grow into money,
one of his most favoured occupations. He scowled at her, drawing
his huge frame to full height.

"I don't want to hear a word you have to say," he said. "You are
the youngest, and your place is in the kitchen helping your
mother. We have got the last installment to pay on Hiram's land
this summer. March back to the house and busy yourself with
something useful!"

Kate looked at him, from his big-boned, weather-beaten face, to
his heavy shoes, then turned without a word and went back toward
the house. She went around it to the cherry tree and with no
preliminaries said to her sister: "Nancy Ellen, I want you to
lend me enough money to fix my clothes a little and pay my way to
Normal this summer. I can pay it all back this winter. I'll pay
every cent with interest, before I spend any on anything else."

"Why, you must be crazy!" said Nancy Ellen.

"Would I be any crazier than you, when you wanted to go?" asked
Kate.

"But you were here to help Mother," said Nancy Ellen.

"And you are here to help her now," persisted Kate.

"But I've got to fix up my clothes for the County Institute," said
Nancy Ellen, "I'll be gone most of the summer."

"I have just as much right to go as you had," said Kate.

"Father and Mother both say you shall not go," answered her
sister.

"I suppose there is no use to remind you that I did all in my
power to help you to your chance."

"You did no more than you should have done," said Nancy Ellen.

"And this is no more than you should do for me, in the
circumstances," said Kate.

"You very well know I can't! Father and Mother would turn me out
of the house," said Nancy Ellen.

"I'd be only too glad if they would turn me out," said Kate. "You
can let me have the money if you like. Mother wouldn't do
anything but talk; and Father would not strike you, or make you
go, he always favours you."

"He does nothing of the sort! I can't, and I won't, so there!"
cried Nancy Ellen.

"'Won't,' is the real answer, 'so there,'" said Kate.

She went into the cellar and ate some cold food from the cupboard
and drank a cup of milk. Then she went to her room and looked
over all of her scanty stock of clothing, laying in a heap the
pieces that needed mending. She took the clothes basket to the
wash room, which was the front of the woodhouse, in summer; built
a fire, heated water, and while making it appear that she was
putting the clothes to soak, as usual, she washed everything she
had that was fit to use, hanging the pieces to dry in the
building.

"Watch me fly!" muttered Kate. "I don't seem to be cutting those
curves so very fast; but I'm moving. I believe now, having
exhausted all home resources, that Adam is my next objective. He
is the only one in the family who ever paid the slightest
attention to me, maybe he cares a trifle what becomes of me, but
Oh, how I dread Agatha! However, watch me take wing! If Adam
fails me I have six remaining prospects among my loving brothers,
and if none of them has any feeling for me or faith in me there
yet remain my seven dear brothers-in-law, before I appeal to the
tender mercies of the neighbours; but how I dread Agatha! Yet I
fly!"



AN EMBRYO MIND READER

KATE was far from physical flight as she pounded the indignation
of her soul into the path with her substantial feet. Baffled and
angry, she kept reviewing the situation as she went swiftly on her
way, regardless of dust and heat. She could see no justice in
being forced into a position that promised to end in further
humiliation and defeat of her hopes. If she only could find Adam
at the stable, as she passed, and talk with him alone! Secretly,
she well knew that the chief source of her dread of meeting her
sister-in-law was that to her Agatha was so funny that ridiculing
her had been regarded as perfectly legitimate pastime. For Agatha
WAS funny; but she had no idea of it, and could no more avoid it
than a bee could avoid being buzzy, so the manner in which her
sisters-in-law imitated her and laughed at her, none too secretly,
was far from kind. While she never guessed what was going on, she
realized the antagonism in their attitude and stoutly resented it.

Adam was his father's favourite son, a stalwart, fine-appearing,
big man, silent, honest, and forceful; the son most after the
desires of the father's heart, yet Adam was the one son of the
seven who had ignored his father's law that all of his boys were
to marry strong, healthy young women, poor women, working women.
Each of the others at coming of age had contracted this prescribed
marriage as speedily as possible, first asking father Bates, the
girl afterward. If father Bates disapproved, the girl was never
asked at all. And the reason for this docility on the part of
these big, matured men, lay wholly in the methods of father Bates.
He gave those two hundred acres of land to each of them on coming
of age, and the same sum to each for the building of a house and
barn and the purchase of stock; gave it to them in words, and with
the fullest assurance that it was theirs to improve, to live on,
to add to. Each of them had seen and handled his deed, each had
to admit he never had known his father to tell a lie or deviate
the least from fairness in a deal of any kind, each had been
compelled to go in the way indicated by his father for years; but
not a man of them held his own deed. These precious bits of paper
remained locked in the big wooden chest beside the father's bed,
while the land stood on the records in his name; the taxes they
paid him each year he, himself, carried to the county clerk; so
that he was the largest landholder in the county and one of the
very richest men. It must have been extreme unction to his soul
to enter the county office and ask for the assessment on those
"little parcels of land of mine." Men treated him very
deferentially, and so did his sons. Those documents carefully
locked away had the effect of obtaining ever-ready help to harvest
his hay and wheat whenever he desired, to make his least wish
quickly deferred to, to give him authority and the power for which
he lived and worked earlier, later, and harder than any other man
of his day and locality.

Adam was like him as possible up to the time he married, yet Adam
was the only one of his sons who disobeyed him; but there was a
redeeming feature. Adam married a slender tall slip of a woman,
four years his senior, who had been teaching in the Hartley
schools when he began courting her. She was a prim, fussy woman,
born of a prim father and a fussy mother, so what was to be
expected? Her face was narrow and set, her body and her movements
almost rigid, her hair, always parted, lifted from each side and
tied on the crown, fell in stiff little curls, the back part
hanging free. Her speech, as precise as her movements, was formed
into set habit through long study of the dictionary. She was born
antagonistic to whatever existed, no matter what it was. So
surely as every other woman agreed on a dress, a recipe, a house,
anything whatever, so surely Agatha thought out and followed a
different method, the disconcerting thing about her being that she
usually finished any undertaking with less exertion, ahead of
time, and having saved considerable money.

She could have written a fine book of synonyms, for as certainly
as any one said anything in her presence that she had occasion to
repeat, she changed the wording to six-syllabled mouthfuls,
delivered with ponderous circumlocution. She subscribed to papers
and magazines, which she read and remembered. And she danced!
When other women thought even a waltz immoral and shocking;
perfectly stiff, her curls exactly in place, Agatha could be seen,
and frequently was seen, waltzing on the front porch in the arms
of, and to a tune whistled by young Adam, whose full name was Adam
Alcibiades Bates. In his younger days, when discipline had been
required, Kate once had heard her say to the little fellow: "Adam
Alcibiades ascend these steps and proceed immediately to your
maternal ancestor."

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