All the neighbors came from miles around. The big barns were crowded with their horses and rows of them were tied under the sheds. In the house the quilting frames were spread in the big attic, and all afternoon the women sewed and talked. In the evening the men arrived and then the long supper table was spread with Margaret's cooking--hams, sausages, fried chickens, a whole roast pig, pans of beans and succotash, huge loaves of home-made bread, pats of butter, cheese, cakes, pies, puddings, doughnuts, pitchers of milk and cider--good things which disappeared fast enough before the plying knives and forks, in bursts of laughter, while jokes were called from end to end of the table and young couples blushed under the chaffing of their neighbors. Clara Bryant was one of the guests. Her father was a prosperous farmer who lived eight miles from the Ford place and Henry had scarcely seen her that summer. That night they sat side by side and he noticed the red in her cheeks and the way she laughed. After supper there was corn husking in the big barn, where each young man tried to find the red ears that gave him permission to kiss one of the girls, and still later they danced on the floor of the hay-barn while the fiddler called the figures of the old square dances and the lanterns cast a flickering light on the dusty mounds of hay. The next week Henry might have returned to Detroit and to the waiting project of the watch factory, but he did not. He thought of Clara Bryant and realized that his prejudice against girls was unreasonable. CHAPTER VII THE ROAD TO HYMEN With William Ford's complete recovery and the coming of the long, half-idle winter of the country there was no apparent reason why Henry Ford should not return to his work in the machine shops. The plans for the watch factory, never wholly abandoned, might be carried out. But Henry stayed at home on the farm. Gradually it became apparent to the neighborhood that Ford's boy had got over his liking for city life. Farmers remarked to each other, while they sat in their granaries husking corn, that Henry had come to his senses and knew when he was well off; he'd have his share in as good a farm as any man could want some day; there was no need for him to get out and hustle in Detroit. Probably there were moments when Henry himself shared the prevailing opinion; his interest in mechanics was as great as ever, but--there was Clara Bryant. He made a few trips to Detroit, with an intention which seemed to him earnest enough to revive the plans for the watch factory, but the thought of her was always tugging at his mind, urging him to come back to Greenfield. His efforts came to nothing, and he soon lost interest in them.