"Hit him," she said. "Don't be afraid. He's only a coward.
Hit him on the head with the stone."
The three people stood in silence waiting for something to happen. John May
was disconcerted by Clara's words. He had thought she wanted him to pursue
her. He stepped toward the school teacher, who dropped the stone that had
been put into his hand and ran away. Clara went back along the road toward
her own house followed by the muttering farm hand who, after her speech at
the bridge, did not dare approach. "Maybe she was making a bluff. Maybe
she didn't want that young fellow to get on to what is between us," he
muttered, as he stumbled along in the darkness.
In the house Clara sat for a half hour at a table in the lighted living
room beside her father, pretending to read a book. She half hoped he would
say something that would permit her to attack him. When nothing happened
she went upstairs and to bed, only again to spend the night awake and white
with anger at the thought of the cruel and unexplainable things life seemed
trying to do to her.
In September Clara left the farm to attend the State University at
Columbus. She was sent there because Tom Butterworth had a sister who was
married to a manufacturer of plows and lived at the State Capital. After
the incident with the farm hand and the misunderstanding that had sprung
up between himself and his daughter, he was uncomfortable with her in the
house and was glad to have her away.
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