Page:Poor White.djvu/184

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

bus was rapidly becoming an industrial city, she talked of the meaning of capital and labor and the effect of changing conditions on the lives of men and women. To Kate, Clara could talk as to a man, but the antago- nism that so often exists between men and women did not come into and spoil their companionship. In the evening when Clara went to Kate's house her aunt sent a carriage to bring her home at nine. Kate rode home with her. They got to the Woodburn house and went in. Kate was bold and free with the Woodburns, as with her brother and Clara. " Come," she said laugh- ing, " put away your figures and your knitting. Let's talk." She sat in a large chair with her legs crossed and talked with Henderson Woodburn of the affairs of the plow company. The two got into a discussion of the relative merits of the free trade and protection ideas. Then the two older people went to bed and Kate talked to Clara. " Your uncle is an old duffer," she said. " He knows nothing about the meaning of what he's doing in life." When she started home afoot across the city, Clara was alarmed for her safety. " You must get a cab or let me wake up uncle's man; something may happen," she said. Kate laughed and went off, striding along the street like a man. Some- times she thrust her hands into her skirt pockets, that were like the trouser pockets of a man, and it was dif- ficult for Clara to remember that she was a woman. In Kate's presence she became bolder than she had ever been with any one. One evening she told the story of the thing that had happened to her that afternoon long before on the farm, the afternoon when, her mind hav- ing been inflamed by the words of Jim Priest regarding the sap that goes up the tree and by the warm sensu-

[170]