Kate waved her hand toward the distance.
"Oh, merely sky, and land, and water, and trees, and birds, and
flowers, and fruit, and crops, and a few other things scarcely
worth mentioning," she said, lightly. "I'm not in the mood to
talk bushels, seed, and fertilization just now; but I understand
them, they are in my blood. I think possibly the reason I want
two hundred acres of land for myself is because I've been hard on
the job of getting them for other people ever since I began to
work, at about the age of four."
"But if you want land personally, why didn't you work to get it
for yourself?" asked John Jardine.
"Because I happened to be the omega of my father's system,"
answered Kate.
Mrs. Jardine looked at her interestedly. She had never mentioned
her home or parents before. The older woman did not intend to ask
a word, but if Kate was going to talk, she did not want to miss
one. Kate evidently was going to talk, for she continued: "You
see my father is land mad, and son crazy. He thinks a BOY of all
the importance in the world; a GIRL of none whatever. He has the
biggest family of any one we know. From birth each girl is worked
like a man, or a slave, from four in the morning until nine at
night. Each boy is worked exactly the same way; the difference
lies in the fact that the girls get plain food and plainer clothes
out of it; the boys each get two hundred acres of land, buildings
and stock, that the girls have been worked to the limit to help
pay for; they get nothing personally, worth mentioning. I think I
have two hundred acres of land on the brain, and I think this is
the explanation of it. It's a pre-natal influence at our house;
while we nurse, eat, sleep, and above all, WORK it, afterward."
She paused and looked toward John Jardine calmly: "I think," she
said, "that there's not a task ever performed on a farm that I
haven't had my share in. I have plowed, hoed, seeded, driven
reapers and bound wheat, pitched hay and hauled manure, chopped
wood and sheared sheep, and boiled sap; if you can mention
anything else, go ahead, I bet a dollar I've done it."
"Well, what do you think of that?" he muttered, looking at her
wonderingly.
"If you ask me, and want the answer in plain words, I think it's a
shame!" said Kate. "If it were ONE HUNDRED acres of land, and the
girls had as much, and were as willing to work it as the boys are,
well and good. But to drive us like cattle, and turn all we earn
into land for the boys, is another matter. I rebelled last
summer, borrowed the money and went to Normal and taught last
winter. I'm going to teach again this winter; but last summer and
this are the first of my life that I haven't been in the harvest
fields, at this time. Women in the harvest fields of Land King
Bates are common as men, and wagons, and horses, but not nearly so
much considered. The women always walk on Sunday, to save the
horses, and often on week days."