Page:Henry Ford's Own Story.djvu/57

 It was a courtship which did not run any too smoothly. Henry was not the only Greenfield farmer's son who admired Clara Bryant, and she was minded to divide her favor evenly among them until some indefinite time in the future, when, as she said, "she would see." Often enough Henry found another horse tied to the hitching post, and another young man inside the house making himself agreeable to Clara.

Then, welcomed heartily enough by her big, jovial father, he would spend the evening talking politics with him while Clara and his rival popped corn or roasted apples on the hearth.

But Henry built that winter a light sleigh, painted red, balanced on cushiony springs, slipping over the snow on smooth steel runners. No girl in Greenfield could have resisted the offer of a ride in it.

In the evenings when the moon was full Clara and Henry, warmly wrapped in fur robes, flashed down the snowy roads in a chime of sleighbells. The fields sparkled white on either hand, here and there lights gleamed from farm houses. Then the sleigh slipped into the woods, still and dark, except where the topmost branches shone silver in the moonlight, and the road stretched ahead like a path of white velvet. Their passing made no sound on the soft snow.

There were skating parties, too, where Henry and Clara, mittened hand in hand, swept over the ice in long, smooth flight, their skates ringing.