Adam was like him as possible up to the time he married, yet Adam
was the only one of his sons who disobeyed him; but there was a
redeeming feature. Adam married a slender tall slip of a woman,
four years his senior, who had been teaching in the Hartley
schools when he began courting her. She was a prim, fussy woman,
born of a prim father and a fussy mother, so what was to be
expected? Her face was narrow and set, her body and her movements
almost rigid, her hair, always parted, lifted from each side and
tied on the crown, fell in stiff little curls, the back part
hanging free. Her speech, as precise as her movements, was formed
into set habit through long study of the dictionary. She was born
antagonistic to whatever existed, no matter what it was. So
surely as every other woman agreed on a dress, a recipe, a house,
anything whatever, so surely Agatha thought out and followed a
different method, the disconcerting thing about her being that she
usually finished any undertaking with less exertion, ahead of
time, and having saved considerable money.
She could have written a fine book of synonyms, for as certainly
as any one said anything in her presence that she had occasion to
repeat, she changed the wording to six-syllabled mouthfuls,
delivered with ponderous circumlocution. She subscribed to papers
and magazines, which she read and remembered. And she danced!
When other women thought even a waltz immoral and shocking;
perfectly stiff, her curls exactly in place, Agatha could be seen,
and frequently was seen, waltzing on the front porch in the arms
of, and to a tune whistled by young Adam, whose full name was Adam
Alcibiades Bates. In his younger days, when discipline had been
required, Kate once had heard her say to the little fellow: "Adam
Alcibiades ascend these steps and proceed immediately to your
maternal ancestor."
Kate thought of this with a dry smile as she plodded on toward
Agatha's home hoping she could see her brother at the barn, but
she knew that most probably she would "ascend the steps and
proceed to the maternal ancestor," of Adam Bates 3d. Then she
would be forced to explain her visit and combat both Adam and his
wife; for Agatha was not a nonentity like her collection of
healthful, hard-working sisters-in-law. Agatha worked if she
chose, and she did not work if she did not choose. Mostly she
worked and worked harder than any one ever thought. She had a
habit of keeping her house always immaculate, finishing her
cleaning very early and then reading in a conspicuous spot on the
veranda when other women were busy with their most tiresome tasks.
Such was Agatha, whom Kate dreaded meeting, with every reason, for
Agatha, despite curls, bony structure, language, and dance, was
the most powerful factor in the whole Bates family with her
father-in-law; and all because when he purchased the original two
hundred acres for Adam, and made the first allowance for buildings
and stock, Agatha slipped the money from Adam's fingers in some
inexplainable way, and spent it all for stock; because forsooth!
Agatha was an only child, and her prim father endowed her, she
said so herself, with three hundred acres of land, better in
location and more fertile than that given to Adam, land having on
it a roomy and comfortable brick house, completely furnished, a
large barn and also stock; so that her place could be used to live
on and farm, while Adam's could be given over to grazing herds of
cattle which he bought cheaply, fattened and sold at the top of
the market.