When she closed her
eyes, strong warm hands seemed to come out of nothingness and touch her
flushed cheeks. The fingers of the hands were strong like the branches of
trees. They touched with the firmness and gentleness of the branches of
trees nodding in a summer breeze.
Clara sat up stiffly in her seat and when the train stopped at Bidwell got
off and went to her waiting father with a firm, business-like air. Coming
out of the land of dreams, she took on something of the determined air
of Kate Chanceller. She stared at her father and an onlooker might have
thought them two strangers, meeting for the purpose of discussing some
business arrangement. A flavor of something like suspicion hung over them.
They got into Tom's buggy, and as Main Street was torn up for the purpose
of laying a brick pavement and digging a new sewer, they drove by a
roundabout way through residence streets until they got into Medina Road.
Clara looked at her father and felt suddenly very alert and on her guard.
It seemed to her that she was far removed from the green, unsophisticated
girl who had so often walked in Bidwell's streets; that her mind and spirit
had expanded tremendously in the three years she had been away; and she
wondered if her father would realize the change in her. Either one of two
reactions on his part might, she felt, make her happy. The man might turn
suddenly and taking her hand receive her into fellowship, or he might
receive her as a woman and his daughter by kissing her.
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