"Steve's all right, but business is business. We're
dealing in big affairs, he and I. I don't say he would try to get the best
of me; I'm just telling you that in the future I'll have to be in town most
of the time and can't think of things out here. You look out for the farm.
Don't bother me with details. You just tell me about it when there is any
buying or selling to do."
Clara arrived in Bidwell in the early afternoon of a warm day in June. The
hill country through which her train came into town was in the full flush
of its summer beauty. In the little patches of level land between the hills
grain was ripening in the fields. Along the streets of the tiny towns and
on dusty country roads farmers in overalls stood up in their wagons and
scolded at the horses, rearing and prancing in half pretended fright of the
passing train. In the forests on the hillsides the open places among the
trees looked cool and enticing. Clara put her cheek against the car window
and imagined herself wandering in cool forests with a lover. She forgot
the words of Kate Chanceller in regard to the independent future of women.
It was, she thought vaguely, a thing to be thought about only after some
more immediate problem was solved. Just what the problem was she didn't
definitely know, but she did know that it concerned some close warm contact
with life that she had as yet been unable to make.
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