On a warm spring Sunday night during the year in which Clara Butterworth came back to Bidwell to live, Hugh made what was for him an almost desperate effort to approach the school teacher. It had been a rainy afternoon and Hugh had spent a part of it in the house. He came over from his shop at noon and went to his room. When she was at home the school teacher occupied a room next his own. The mother who seldom left the house had on that day gone to the country to visit a brother. The daughter got dinner for herself and Hugh and he tried to help her wash the dishes. A plate fell out of his hands and its breaking seemed to break the silent, embarrassed mood that had possession of them. For a few minutes they were children and acted like children. Hugh picked up another plate and the school teacher told him to put it down. He refused. “You're as awkward as a puppy. How you ever manage to do anything over at that shop of yours is more than I know.” Hugh tried to keep hold of the plate which the school teacher tried to snatch away and for a few minutes they struggled laughing. Her cheeks were flushed and Hugh thought she looked bewitching. An impulse he had never had before came to him. He wanted to shout at the top of his lungs, throw the plate at the ceiling, sweep all of the dishes off the table and hear them crash on the floor, play like some huge animal loose in a tiny world. He looked at Rose and his hands trembled from the strength of the strange impulse. As he stood staring she took the plate out of his hand and went into the kitchen. Not knowing what else to do he put on his hat and went for a walk. Later he went to the shop and tried to work, but his hand trembled when he tried to hold a tool and the hay-loading apparatus on which he was at work seemed suddenly a very trivial and unimportant thing.