She laughed and shook her head. "No, Jim,"
she said, "I seem to have made a failure of going away to school. I didn't
get me a man. No one asked me, you see."
Both the woman and the old man became silent. Over the tops of the young
corn they could see down the hillside into the distant town. Clara wondered
if the man she was to marry was there. The idea of a marriage with her
had perhaps been suggested to his mind also. Her father, she decided, was
capable of that. He was evidently ready to go to any length to see her
safely married. She wondered why. When Jim Priest began to talk, striving
to explain his question, his words fitted oddly into the thoughts she was
having in regard to herself. "Now about marriage," he began, "you see now,
I never done it. I didn't get married at all. I don't know why. I wanted to
and I didn't. I was afraid to ask, maybe. I guess if you do it you're sorry
you did and if you don't you're sorry you didn't."
Jim went back to his team, and Clara stood by the fence and watched him
go down the long field and turn to come back along another of the paths
between the corn rows. When the horses came to where she stood, he stopped
again and looked at her. "I guess you'll get married pretty soon now,"
he said. The horses started on again and he held the cultivating machine
with one hand and looked back over his shoulder at her. "You're one of the
marrying kind," he called.
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