Page:Poor White.djvu/170

 same thing over again," he thought bitterly, " like mother, like daughter they are both of the same stripe." Getting quickly out of his chair he had fol- lowed the young man into the road and had discharged him. " Go, to-night. I don't want to see you on the place again," he said. In the darkness before the girl's room he thought of many bitter things he wanted to say. He forgot she was a girl and talked to her as he might have talked to a mature, sophisticated, and guilty woman. " Come," he said, " I want to know the truth. If you have been with that farm hand you are starting young. Has anything happened between you?" Clara walked to the door and confronted her father. The hatred of him, born in that hour and that never left her, gave her strength. She did not know what he was talking about, but had a keen sense of the fact that he, like the stupid, young man in the shed, was try- ing to violate something very precious in her nature. " I don't know what you are talking about," she said calmly, " but I know this. I am no longer a child. Within the last week I've become a woman. If you don't want me in your house, if you don't like me any more, say so and I'll go away." The two people stood in the darkness and tried to look at each other. Clara was amazed by her own strength and by the words that had come to her. The words had clarified something. She felt that if her father would but take her into his arms or say some kindly understanding word, all could be forgotten. Life could be started over again. In the future she would understand much that she had not understood. She and her father could draw close to each other.