His wife Priscilla sat in a large chair under a lamp and
knitted children's stockings. They were, she told Clara, for the children
of the poor. As a matter of fact the stockings never left her house. In a
large trunk in her room upstairs lay hundreds of pairs knitted during the
twenty-five years of her family life.
Clara was not very happy in the Woodburn household, but on the other hand,
was not very unhappy. She attended to her studies at the University
passably well and in the late afternoons took a walk with a girl classmate,
attended a matinee at the theater, or read a book. In the evening she sat
with her aunt and uncle until she could no longer bear the silence, and
then went to her own room, where she studied until it was time to go to
bed. Now and then she went with the two older people to a social affair at
the church, of which Henderson Woodburn was treasurer, or accompanied them
to dinners at the homes of other well-to-do and respectable business men.
On several occasions young men, sons of the people with whom the Woodburns
dined, or students at the university, came in the evening to call. On such
an occasion Clara and the young man sat in the parlor of the house and
talked. After a time they grew silent and embarrassed in each other's
presence. From the next room Clara could hear the rustling of the papers
containing the columns of figures over which her uncle was at work.
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