Tom struck the horse with the whip and drove rapidly along the road. Even when the climb became difficult he would not let the horse walk, but kept cracking the whip over his back. “I'm a different man than I was when you went away,” he declared. “You might as well know it, I'm the big man in this town. It comes pretty near being my town when you come right down to it. I'm going to take care of every one in Bidwell and give every one a chance to make money, but it's my town now pretty near and you might as well know it.”
Embarrassed by his own words, Tom talked to cover his embarrassment. Something he wanted very much to say got itself said. “I'm glad you went to school and fitted yourself to be a lady,” he began. “I want you should marry pretty soon now. I don't know whether you met any one at school there or not. If you did and he's all right, it's all right with me. I don't want you should marry an ordinary man, but a smart one, an educated man, a gentleman. We Butterworths are going to be bigger and bigger people here. If you get married to a good man, a smart one, I'll build a house for you; not just a little house but a big place, the biggest place Bidwell ever seen.” They came to the farm and Tom stopped the buggy in the road. He shouted to a man in the barnyard who came running for her bags. When she had got out of the buggy he immediately turned the horse about and drove rapidly away. Her aunt, a large, moist woman, met her on the steps leading to the front door, and embraced her warmly. The words her father had just spoken ran a riotous course through Clara's brain. She realized that for a year she had been thinking of marriage, had been wanting some man to approach and talk of marriage, but she had not thought of the matter in the way her father had put it. The man had spoken of her as though she were a possession of his that must be disposed of. He had a personal interest in her marriage. It was in someway not a private matter, but a family affair. It was her father's idea, she gathered, that she was to go into marriage to strengthen what he called his position in the community, to help him be some vague thing he called a big man. She wondered if he had some one in mind and could not avoid being a little curious as to who it could be. It had never occurred to her that her marriage could mean anything to her father beyond the natural desire of the parent that his child make a happy marriage. She began to grow angry at the thought of the way in which her father had approached the subject, but was still curious to know whether he had gone so far as to have some one in mind for the role of husband, and thought she would try to find out from her aunt. The strange farm hand came into the house with her bags and she followed him upstairs to what had always been her own room. Her aunt came puffing at her heels. The farm hand went away and she began to unpack, while the older woman, her face very red, sat on the edge of the bed. “You ain't been getting engaged to a man down there where you been to school, have you, Clara?” she asked.