"I want you should
marry pretty soon now. I don't know whether you met any one at school there
or not. If you did and he's all right, it's all right with me. I don't
want you should marry an ordinary man, but a smart one, an educated man, a
gentleman. We Butterworths are going to be bigger and bigger people here.
If you get married to a good man, a smart one, I'll build a house for you;
not just a little house but a big place, the biggest place Bidwell ever
seen." They came to the farm and Tom stopped the buggy in the road. He
shouted to a man in the barnyard who came running for her bags. When she
had got out of the buggy he immediately turned the horse about and drove
rapidly away. Her aunt, a large, moist woman, met her on the steps leading
to the front door, and embraced her warmly. The words her father had just
spoken ran a riotous course through Clara's brain. She realized that for
a year she had been thinking of marriage, had been wanting some man to
approach and talk of marriage, but she had not thought of the matter in the
way her father had put it. The man had spoken of her as though she were a
possession of his that must be disposed of. He had a personal interest in
her marriage. It was in someway not a private matter, but a family affair.
It was her father's idea, she gathered, that she was to go into marriage
to strengthen what he called his position in the community, to help him
be some vague thing he called a big man.
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