He got up at
once, blushed, stammered something about having another engagement, and
hurried away.
In the street car, homeward bound beside Frank Metcalf, Clara thought of
Phillip Grimes and wondered whether or not he would have stood the test of
Kate Chanceller's speech regarding love and friendship. He had confused
her, but that was perhaps her own fault. He had not insisted on himself
at all. Frank Metcalf had done nothing else. "One should be able," she
thought, "to find somewhere a man who respects himself and his own desires
but can understand also the desires and fears of a woman." The street car
went bouncing along over railroad crossings and along residence streets.
Clara looked at her companion, who stared straight ahead, and then turned
to look out of the car window. The window was open and she could see the
interiors of the laborers' houses along the streets. In the evening with
the lamps lighted they seemed cosy and comfortable. Her mind ran back to
the life in her father's house and its loneliness. For two summers she had
escaped going home. At the end of her first year in school she had made an
illness of her uncle's an excuse for spending the summer in Columbus, and
at the end of the second year she had found another excuse for not going.
This year she felt she would have to go home. She would have to sit day
after day at the farm table with the farm hands.
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