"Boys," she said, between fits of pain, "keep the land together, and don't separate; and mind you bring no women here or you'll fall to quarrelling, and if any of you must marry let him have his share and go. Don't forget the heifer that's near to calving, and see that you fodder her every night. Fetch the geese down from Barrule at Martinmas, and count the sheep on the mountains once a week, for the people of Maughold are the worst thieves in the island."
They gave her their promise duly to do and not to do what she had named, and, being little used to such scenes, they grew uneasy and began to shamble out.
"And, boys, another thing," she said, faintly, stretching her wrinkled hand across the counterpane, "give the girl her rights, and let her marry whom she will."
This, also, they promised her; and then she, thinking her duty done as an honest woman towards man and the world, but recking nothing of higher obligations, lay backward with a groan.
Now it did not need that the men should marry in order that they might quarrel, for hardly was the breath out of their mother's body when they set to squabbling, without any woman to help them. Asher grumbled that Thurstan was drunken, Thurstan grumbled that Asher was lazy, Asher retorted that, being the eldest son, if he had his rights he would have every foot of the land, and Ross and Stean arose in fury at the bare thought of either being [hands] on their brother's farm or else taking the go-by at his hands. So they quarrelled, until Jacob said that there was plainly but one way of peace between them, and that was to apportion the land into equal parts and let every man take his share, and then the idleness of Asher and the drunkenness of Thurstan would be to each man his own affair. At that they remembered that the lands of Lague, then the largest estate on the north of the island, had once been made up of six separate farms, with a house to each of them, though five of the six houses had long stood empty. And seeing that there were just six of themselves it seemed, as Jacob said, as if Providence had so appointed things to see them out of their difficulty. But the farms, though of pretty equal acreage, were of various quality of land, and therein the quarrelling set in afresh.
"I'll take Ballacraine," said Thurstan.
"No, but I'll take it," said Jacob, "for I've always worked the meadows."
In the end they cast lots, and then, each man having his farm assigned to him, all seemed to be settled when Asher cried.
"But what about the girl?"
At that they looked stupidly into each other's faces, for never once in all their bickering had they given a thought to Greeba. But Jacob's resource was not yet at an end, for he suggested that Asher should keep her at Lague, and at harvest the other five should give her something, and that her keep and their gifts together should be her share; and if she had all she needed what more could she wish?