"If you or Henry want any money, I can let
you have all you want," he wrote, and did not resist the temptation to tell
her something of what the Governor had said of his work and his mind.
"Anyway they must think I amount to something whether I do or not," he said
wistfully.
Having awakened to his own importance in the life about him, Hugh wanted
direct, human appreciation. After the failure of the effort both he and
Rose had made to break through the wall of embarrassment and reserve that
kept them apart, he knew pretty definitely that he wanted a woman, and
the idea, once fixed in his mind, grew to gigantic proportions. All women
became interesting, and he looked with hungry eyes at the wives of the
workmen who sometimes came to the shop door to pass a word with their
husbands, at young farm girls who drove along Turner's Pike on summer
afternoons, town girls who walked in the Bidwell Main Street in the
evening, at fair women and dark women. As he wanted a woman more
consciously and determinedly he became more afraid of individual women. His
success and his association with the workmen in his shop had made him less
self-conscious in the presence of men, but the women were different. In
their presence he was ashamed of his secret thoughts of them.
On the day when he was left alone with Clara, Tom Butterworth and Alfred
Buckley stayed at the back of the shop for nearly twenty minutes.
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