"All of us know that, Kate," said Nancy Ellen. "You needn't
worry. We're all used to it, and we're all at the place where we
have nothing to say."
To escape grieving for her mother, Kate worked that summer as
never before. Adam was growing big enough and strong enough to be
a real help. He was interested in all they did, always after the
reason, and trying to think of a better way. Kate secured the
best agricultural paper for him and they read it nights together.
They kept an account book, and set down all they spent, and
balanced against it all they earned, putting the difference, which
was often more than they hoped for, in the bank.
So the years ran. As the children grew older, Polly discovered
that the nicest boy in school lived across the road half a mile
north of them; while Adam, after a real struggle in his loyal twin
soul, aided by the fact that Henry Peters usually had divided his
apples with Polly before Adam reached her, discovered that Milly
York, across the road, half a mile south, liked his apples best,
and was as nice a girl as Polly ever dared to be. In a dazed way,
Kate learned these things from their after-school and Sunday talk,
saw that they nearly reached her shoulder, and realized that they
were sixteen. So quickly the time goes, when people are busy,
happy, and working together. At least Kate and Adam were happy,
for they were always working together. By tacit agreement, they
left Polly the easy housework, and went themselves to the fields
to wrestle with the rugged work of a farm. They thought they were
shielding Polly, teaching her a woman's real work, and being kind
to her.
Polly thought they were together because they liked to be; doing
the farm work because it suited them better; while she had known
from babyhood that for some reason her mother did not care for her
as she did for Adam. She thought at first that it was because
Adam was a boy. Later, when she noticed her mother watching her
every time she started to speak, and interrupting with the never-
failing caution: "Now be careful! THINK before you speak! Are
you SURE?" she wondered why this should happen to her always, to
Adam never. She asked Adam about it, but Adam did not know. It
never occurred to Polly to ask her mother, while Kate was so
uneasy it never occurred to her that the child would notice or
what she would think. The first time Polly deviated slightly from
the truth, she and Kate had a very terrible time. Kate felt fully
justified; the child astonished and abused.
Polly arrived at the solution of her problem slowly. As she grew
older, she saw that her mother, who always was charitable to
everyone else, was repelled by her grandmother, while she loved
Aunt Ollie. Older still, Polly realized that SHE was a
reproduction of her grandmother. She had only to look at her to
see this; her mother did not like her grandmother, maybe Mother
did not like her as well as Adam, because she resembled her
grandmother. By the time she was sixteen, Polly had arrived at a
solution that satisfied her as to why her mother liked Adam
better, and always left her alone in the house to endless cooking,
dishwashing, sweeping, dusting, washing, and ironing, while she
hoed potatoes, pitched hay, or sheared sheep. Polly thought the
nicer way would have been to do the housework together and then go
to the fields together; but she was a good soul, so she worked
alone and brooded in silence, and watched up the road for a
glimpse of Henry Peters, who liked to hear her talk, and to whom
it mattered not a mite that her hair was lustreless, her eyes
steel coloured, and her nose like that of a woman he never had
seen. In her way, Polly admired her mother, loved her, and worked
until she was almost dropping for Kate's scant, infrequent words
of praise.