A Daughter of the Land

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?"