"Mother, what will the other children say?" implored Kate.
"Humph! You are about as well acquainted with them as I am. Take a shot at it yourself. If it will avoid a fuss, we might just say you had to come to stay with me, and run the farm for me, and let them get used to your being here, and bossing things by degrees; like the man that cut his dog's tail off an inch at a time, so it wouldn't hurt so bad."
"But by inches, or 'at one fell swoop,' it's going to hurt," said Kate.
"Sometimes it seems to me," said Mrs. Bates, "that the more we get HURT in this world the decenter it makes us. All the boys were hurt enough when Pa went, but every man of them has been a BIGGER, BETTER man since. Instead of competing as they always did, Adam and Andrew and the older, beforehandeder ones, took hold and helped the younger as you told them to, and it's done the whole family a world of good. One thing is funny. To hear Mary talk now, you'd think she engineered that plan herself. The boys are all thankful, and so are the girls. I leave it to you. Tell them or let them guess it by degrees, it's all one to me."
"Tell me about Nancy Ellen and Robert," said Kate.
"Robert stands head in Hartley. He gets bigger and broader every year. He is better looking than a man has any business to be; and I hear the Hartley ladies give him plenty of encouragement in being stuck on himself, but I think he is true to Nancy Ellen, and his heart is all in his work. No children. That's a burning shame! Both of them feel it. In a way, and strictly between you and me, Nancy Ellen is a disappointment to me, an' I doubt if she ain't been a mite of a one to him. He had a right to expect a good deal of Nancy Ellen. She had such a good brain, and good body, and purty face. I may miss my guess, but it always strikes me that she falls SHORT of what he expected of her. He's coined money, but she hasn't spent it in the ways he would. Likely I shouldn't say it, but he strikes me as being just a leetle mite too good for her."
"Oh, Mother!" said Kate.
"Now you lookey here," said Mrs. Bates. "Suppose you was a man of Robert's brains, and education, and professional ability, and you made heaps of money, and no children came, and you had to see all you earned, and stood for, and did in a community spent on the SELFISHNESS of one woman. How big would you feel? What end is that for the ambition and life work of a real man? How would you like it?"
"I never thought of such a thing," said Kate.
"Well, mark my word, you WILL think of it when you see their home, and her clothes, and see them together," said Mrs. Bates.