Clara sat in a deep window that looked out across a little gully
where in the spring a small stream ran down along the edge of the barnyard.
She was then a quiet child and loved to sit for hours unobserved and
undisturbed. At her back was the kitchen with the warm, rich smells and the
soft, quick, persistent footsteps of her mother. Her eyes closed and she
slept. Then she awoke. Before her lay a world into which her fancy could
creep out. Across the stream before her eyes went a small, wooden bridge
and over this in the spring horses went away to the fields or to sheds
where they were hitched to milk or ice wagons. The sound of the hoofs of
the horses pounding on the bridge was like thunder, harnesses rattled,
voices shouted. Beyond the bridge was a path leading off to the left and
along the path were three small houses where hams were smoked. Men came
from the wagon sheds bearing the meat on their shoulders and went into the
little houses. Fires were lighted and smoke crawled lazily up through the
roofs. In a field that lay beyond the smoke houses a man came to plow. The
child, curled into a little, warm ball in the window seat, was happy. When
she closed her eyes fancies came like flocks of white sheep running out of
a green wood. Although she was later to become a tomboy and run wild over
the farm and through the barns, and although all her life she loved the
soil and the sense of things growing and of food for hungry mouths being
prepared, there was in her, even as a child, a hunger for the life of the
spirit.
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