She was not embarrassed, but
could feel his embarrassment and enjoyed it. He made formal speeches.
"Well, the night is fine," he said. Clara hugged the thought that he was
uncomfortable. "He has taken me for a green country girl, impressed with
him because he is from the city and dressed in fine clothes," she thought.
Sometimes her father stayed away five or ten minutes and she did not say a
word. When her father returned Alfred Buckley shook hands with him and then
turned to Clara, apparently now quite at his ease. "We have bored you, I'm
afraid," he said. He took her hand and leaning over, kissed the back of it
ceremoniously. Her father looked away. Clara went upstairs and sat by the
window. She could hear the two men continuing their talk in the road before
the house. After a time the front door banged, her father came into the
house and the visitor drove away. Everything became quiet and for a long
time she could hear the hoofs of Alfred Buckley's horse beating a rapid
tattoo on the road that led down into town.
Clara thought of Hugh McVey. Alfred Buckley had spoken of him as a
backwoodsman with a streak of genius. He constantly harped on the notion
that he and Tom could use the man for their own ends, and she wondered if
both of the men were making as great a mistake about the inventor as they
were about her. In the silent summer night, when the sound of the horse's
hoofs had died away and when her father had quit stirring about the house,
she heard another sound.
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