In town in the presence of the men
she was sure were attacking her character, she had been angry, ready to
fight. Now she wanted to put her head on Hugh's shoulder and cry.
They came to the bridge near where the road turned and led to her father's
house. It was the same bridge to which she had come with the school teacher
and to which John May had followed, looking for a fight. Clara stopped.
She did not want any one at the house to know that Hugh had walked home
with her. "Father is so set on my getting married, he would go to see him
to-morrow," she thought. She put her arms upon the rail of the bridge and
bending over buried her face between them. Hugh stood behind her, turning
his head from side to side and rubbing his hands on his trouser legs,
beside himself with embarrassment. There was a flat, swampy field beside
the road and not far from the bridge, and after a moment of silence
the voices of a multitude of frogs broke the stillness. Hugh became
overwhelmingly sad. The notion that he was a big man and deserved to have a
woman to live with and understand him went entirely away. For the moment he
wanted to be a boy and put his head on the shoulder of the woman. He did
not look at Clara but at himself. In the dim light his hands, nervously
fumbling about, his long, loosely-put-together body, everything connected
with his person, seemed ugly and altogether unattractive.
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