Clara had driven into town alone on the day when she received it and later got into her buggy and drove south past the Butterworth farm into the hills. She forgot to go home to lunch or to the evening meal. The horse jogged slowly along, protesting and trying to turn back at every cross road, but she kept on and did not get home until midnight. When she reached the farmhouse her father was waiting. He went with her into the barnyard and helped unhitch the horse. Nothing was said, and after a moment's conversation having nothing to do with the subject that occupied both their minds, she went upstairs and tried to think the matter out. She became convinced that her father had something to do with the proposal of marriage that he knew about it and had waited for her to come home in order to see how it had affected her. Clara wrote a reply that was as non-committal as the proposal itself. “I do not know whether I want to marry you or not. I will have to become acquainted with you. I however thank you for the offer of marriage and when you feel that the right time has come, we will talk about it,” she wrote. After the exchange of letters, Alfred Buckley came to her father's house more often than before, but he and Clara did not become better acquainted. He did not talk to her, but to her father. Although she did not know it, the rumor that she was to marry the New York man had already run about town. She did not know whether her father or Buckley had told the tale. On the front porch of the farmhouse through the summer evenings the two men talked of the progress, of the town and the part they were taking and hoped to take in its future growth. The New York man had proposed a scheme to Tom. He was to go to Hugh and propose a contract giving the two men an option on all his future inventions. As the inventions were completed they were to be financed in New York City, and the two men would give up manufacture and make money much more rapidly as promoters. They hesitated because they were afraid of Steve Hunter, and because Tom was afraid Hugh would not fall in with their plan. “It wouldn't surprise me if Steve already had such a contract with him. He's a fool if he hasn't,” the older man said. Evening after evening the two men talked and Clara sat in the deep shadows at the back of the porch and listened. The enmity that had existed between herself and her father seemed to be forgotten. The man who had asked her to marry him did not look at her, but her father did. Buckley did most of the talking and spoke of New York City business men, already famous throughout the Middle West as giants of finance, as though they were his life-long friends. “They'll put over anything I ask them to,” he declared.