For four years, Kate struggled valiantly to keep pace with what
her mother always had done, and had required of her at home; but
she learned long before she quit struggling that farming with
George was hopeless. So at last she became so discouraged she
began to drift into his way of doing merely what would sustain
them, and then reading, fishing, or sleeping the remainder of the
time. She began teaching her children while very small, and daily
they had their lessons after dinner, while their father slept.
Kate thought often of what was happening to her; she hated it, she
fought it; but with George Holt for a partner she could not escape
it. She lay awake nights, planning ways to make a start toward
prosperity; she propounded her ideas at breakfast. To save time
in getting him early to work she began feeding the horses as soon
as she was up, so that George could go to work immediately after
breakfast; but she soon found she might as well save her strength.
He would not start to harness until he had smoked, mostly three
quarters of an hour. That his neighbours laughed at him and got
ahead of him bothered him not at all. All they said and all Kate
said, went, as he expressed it, "in at one ear, out at the other."
One day in going around the house Kate was suddenly confronted by
a thing she might have seen for three years, but had not noticed.
Leading from the path of bare, hard-beaten earth that ran around
the house through the grass, was a small forking path not so wide
and well defined, yet a path, leading to George's window. She
stood staring at it a long time with a thoughtful expression on
her face.
That night she did not go to bed when she went to her room.
Instead she slipped out into the night and sitting under a
sheltering bush she watched that window. It was only a short time
until George crawled from it, went stealthily to the barn, and a
few minutes later she saw him riding barebacked on one of the
horses he had bridled, down the footpath beside the stream toward
town. She got up and crossing the barnyard shut the gate after
him, and closed the barn door. She went back to the house and
closed his window and lighting a lamp set it on his dresser in
front of his small clock. His door was open in the morning when
she passed it on her way to the kitchen, so she got breakfast
instead of feeding the horses. He came in slowly, furtively
watching her. She worked as usual, saying no unpleasant word. At
length he could endure it no longer.
"Kate," he said, "I broke a bolt in the plow yesterday, and I
never thought of it until just as I was getting into bed, so to
save time I rode in to Walden and got another last night. Ain't I
a great old economist, though?"