“We never pretended that our strong p’int was raising wheat ’n’ corn here in New England,” he said loftily. “The old Bay State can do better than that. She can raise men; men who fear God and honor their country, and can guide her in the hour of need with the spirit of wisdom and sound understanding.”
“We’ve got some of that sort, too,” said Kate, cutting in at the first pause. “The only difference is you started on your list a little ahead of us.”
But the remark was lost on her grandfather. He was on solid ground now, and he felt his eloquence rising. “You talk about our land being poor. Well, mebbe ’tis; mebbe we do have to scratch round among the rocks to make a living, but we’ve scratched lively enough to do it, and support our schools and churches, and start yours into the bargain. We’ve scratched deep enough to find the money to send lots of our boys to college—there’s been a good many of ’em right from this district. There was Abner Sickles that went to Harvard from the back side of Rocky Hill, where they used to say the stones were so thick you had to sharpen the sheep’s nose to get ’em down to the grass between; there was Baxter Slocum—thirteen children his father had—there were the Dunham boys, three out of six in one family.”
For the last minute Miss Katharine Saxon had been moving uneasily in her chair. Her square chin, which had been resting on her clasped hands at the top of her cane, had come up, and her eyes were fixed sharply on her brother.
“While you’re about it, Ruel,” she said, interrupting him in the dryest of tones, “you might just mention some o’ the girls that have been sent to college from these old farms.”
Ruel Saxon, reined up thus suddenly in the onward charge of his eloquence, opened and closed his lips for a moment with a rather helpless expression. She waited for him to speak, her thin hands gripping the cane, and the corners of her mouth twitching ominously.
“Well, of course, Katharine,” he said testily, “there hain’t been as many girls. For that matter there warn’t the female colleges to send ’em to fifty years ago; but you know yourself there hain’t been the means to send ’em both, the boys and the girls, and if it couldn’t be but one—”
He paused to moisten his lips, and she took up the word with an accent of intense bitterness. “If there couldn’t be but one, it must be the boy, of course,—always the boy. Oh, I know! Yes, and I know how the girls ’n’ their mothers have slaved to send ’em. It ain’t the men that have learned how to get more out of the farms; it’s the women that have learned how to get along with less in the house. There was Abner Sickles! Yes, there was; and there was his sister Abigail, too. I went to school with ’em both. She was enough sight smarter ’n he was; always could see into things quicker, ’n’ handle ’em better, but they took a notion to send him to college,—wanted to make a minister of him,—and she stopped going to school when she was fourteen, and did the housework for the family,—her mother was always sickly,—and then sat up nights, sewing straw and binding shoes to earn money for Abner.” She paused, with a note in her voice which suggested a clutch at the throat, then added: “She died when she was twenty. Went crazy the last part of the time, and thought she’d committed the unpardonable sin. It’s my opinion somebody had committed it; but ’twarn’t her.”
It was the old gentleman who was moving uneasily now. “It was too bad about Abigail,” he said, with a shake of the head. “I remember her case, and ’twas one of the strangest we ever had in the church. I went out to see her once, with two of the other deacons, and we set out the doctrine of the unpardonable sin clear and strong, and showed her that if she really had committed it she wouldn’t be feeling so bad about it—she’d have her conscience seared as with a hot iron; but she couldn’t seem to lay hold of any comfort. However, it was plain that her mind wasn’t right, and I don’t believe the Lord held her responsible for her lack of faith.”
The old woman gave an impatient snort. “If he didn’t hold somebody responsible, you needn’t talk to me about justice,” she said fiercely. “I don’t know how you and the other deacons figured it out, Ruel, but if it ain’t the unpardonable sin for folks to act like fools, when the Lord has given ’em eyes to see with, and sense enough to put two and two together, I don’t know what ’tis. I tell you the whole trouble grew out of that notion that a boy must be sent away to school just because he was a boy, and a girl must be kept at home just because she was a girl. If the Almighty ever meant to have things go that way why didn’t He give the men the biggest brains, and put the strongest backs ’n’ arms on the women? Heaven knows they’ve needed ’em.”