"We do take you into our plans, your father
and me, eh?" he said. "You must be careful not to give us away when you
talk to that inventor."
From his shop window Hugh stared at the backs of the heads of the three
people. The top of Tom Butterworth's buggy had been let down, and when he
talked Alfred Buckley leaned forward and his head disappeared. Hugh thought
Clara must look like the kind of woman men meant when they spoke of a lady.
The farmer's daughter had an instinct for clothes, and Hugh's mind got the
idea of gentility by way of the medium of clothes. He thought the dress
she had worn the most stylish thing he had ever seen. Clara's friend Kate
Chanceller, while mannish in her dress, had an instinct for style and had
taught Clara some valuable lessons. "Any woman can dress well if she knows
how," Kate had declared. She had taught Clara how to study and emphasize by
dress the good points of her body. Beside Clara, Rose McCoy looked dowdy
and commonplace.
Hugh went to the rear of his shop to where there was a water-tap and washed
his hands. Then he went to a bench and tried to take up the work he had
been doing. Within five minutes he went to wash his hands again. He went
out of the shop and stood beside the small stream that rippled along
beneath willow bushes and disappeared under the bridge beneath Turner's
Pike, and then went back for his coat and quit work for the day.
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