"You ain't like me. You don't just think about
things. You do 'em. You'll be getting yourself married before very long.
You are one of the kind that does."
CHAPTER XI
If many things had happened to Clara Butterworth in the three years since
that day when John May so rudely tripped her first hesitating girlish
attempt to run out to life, things had also happened to the people she
had left behind in Bidwell. In so short a space of time her father, his
business associate Steve Hunter, Ben Peeler the town carpenter, Joe
Wainsworth the harness maker, almost every man and woman in town had become
something different in his nature from the man or woman bearing the same
name she had known in her girlhood.
Ben Peeler was forty years old when Clara went to Columbus to school. He
was a tall, slender, stoop-shouldered man who worked hard and was much
respected by his fellow townsmen. Almost any afternoon he might have been
seen going through Main Street, wearing his carpenter's apron and with a
carpenter's pencil stuck under his cap and balanced on his ear. He went
into Oliver Hall's hardware store and came out with a large package of
nails under his arm. A farmer who was thinking of building a new barn
stopped him in front of the post-office and for a half hour the two men
talked of the project. Ben put on his glasses, took the pencil out of his
cap and made some notation on the back of the package of nails.
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