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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tillie: A Mennonite Maid
+by Helen Reimensnyder Martin
+
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+Title: Tillie: A Mennonite Maid
+
+Author: Helen Reimensnyder Martin
+
+Release Date: December, 2003  [EBook #4760]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on March 13, 2002]
+
+Date last updated: February 9, 2008
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, TILLIE: A MENNONITE MAID ***
+
+
+
+
+Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+TILLIE A MENNONITE MAID
+
+A STORY OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH
+
+BY HELEN REIMENSNYDER MARTIN
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    I "OH, I LOVE HER! I LOVE HER!"
+   II "I'M GOING TO LEARN YOU ONCE!"
+  III "WHAT'S HURTIN' YOU, TILLIE?"
+   IV "THE DOC" COMBINES BUSINESS AND PLEASURE
+    V "NOVELS AIN'T MORAL, DOC!"
+   VI JAKE GETZ IN A QUANDARY
+  VII "THE LAST DAYS OF PUMP-EYE"
+ VIII MISS MARGARET'S ERRAND
+   IX "I'LL DO MY DARN BEST, TEACHER!"
+    X ADAM SCHUNK'S FUNERAL
+   XI "POP! I FEEL TO BE PLAIN"
+  XII ABSALOM KEEPS COMPANY
+ XIII EZRA HERR, PEDAGOGUE
+  XIV THE HARVARD GRADUATE
+   XV THE WACKERNAGELS AT HOME
+  XVI THE WACKERNAGELS "CONVERSE"
+ XVII THE TEACHER MEETS ABSALOM
+XVIII TILLIE REVEALS HERSELF
+  XIX TILLIE TELLS A LIE
+   XX TILLIE IS "SET BACK"
+  XXI "I'LL MARRY HIM TO-MORROW!"
+ XXII THE DOC CONCOCTS A PLOT
+XXIII SUNSHINE AND SHADOW
+ XXIV THE REVOLT OF TILLIE
+  XXV GETZ "LEARNS" TILLIE
+ XXVI TILLIE'S LAST FIGHT
+
+
+
+
+
+TILLIE A MENNONITE MAID
+
+A STORY OF THE PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+"OH, I LOVE HER! I LOVE HER!"
+
+
+Tillie's slender little body thrilled with a peculiar ecstasy as
+she stepped upon the platform and felt her close proximity to the
+teacher--so close that she could catch the sweet, wonderful
+fragrance of her clothes and see the heave and fall of her bosom.
+Once Tillie's head had rested against that motherly bosom. She had
+fainted in school one morning after a day and evening of hard,
+hard work in her father's celery-beds, followed by a chastisement
+for being caught with a "story-book"; and she had come out of her
+faint to find herself in the heaven of sitting on Miss Margaret's
+lap, her head against her breast and Miss Margaret's soft hand
+smoothing her cheek and hair. And it was in that blissful moment
+that Tillie had discovered, for the first time in her young
+existence, that life could be worth while. Not within her memory
+had any one ever caressed her before, or spoken to her tenderly,
+and in that fascinating tone of anxious concern.
+
+Afterward, Tillie often tried to faint again in school; but, such
+is Nature's perversity, she never could succeed.
+
+School had just been called after the noon recess, and Miss
+Margaret was standing before her desk with a watchful eye on the
+troops of children crowding in from the playground to their seats,
+when the little girl stepped to her side on the platform.
+
+This country school-house was a dingy little building in the heart
+of Lancaster County, the home of the Pennsylvania Dutch. Miss
+Margaret had been the teacher only a few months, and having come
+from Kentucky and not being "a Millersville Normal," she differed
+quite radically from any teacher they had ever had in New Canaan.
+Indeed, she was so wholly different from any one Tillie had ever
+seen in her life, that to the child's adoring heart she was
+nothing less than a miracle. Surely no one but Cinderella had ever
+been so beautiful! And how different, too, were her clothes from
+those of the other young ladies of New Canaan, and, oh, so much
+prettier--though not nearly so fancy; and she didn't "speak her
+words" as other people of Tillie's acquaintance spoke. To Tillie
+it was celestial music to hear Miss Margaret say, for instance,
+"buttah" when she meant butter-r-r, and "windo" for windah. "It
+gives her such a nice sound when she talks," thought Tillie.
+
+Sometimes Miss Margaret's ignorance of the dialect of the
+neighborhood led to complications, as in her conversation just now
+with Tillie.
+
+"Well?" she inquired, lifting the little girl's chin with her
+forefinger as Tillie stood at her side and thereby causing that
+small worshiper to blush with radiant pleasure. "What is it,
+honey?"
+
+Miss Margaret always made Tillie feel that she LIKED her. Tillie
+wondered how Miss Margaret could like HER! What was there to like?
+No one had ever liked her before.
+
+"It wonders me!" Tillie often whispered to herself with throbbing
+heart.
+
+"Please, Miss Margaret," said the child, "pop says to ast you will
+you give me the darst to go home till half-past three this after?"
+
+"If you go home till half-past three, you need not come back,
+honey--it wouldn't be worth while, when school closes at four."
+
+"But I don't mean," said Tillie, in puzzled surprise, "that I want
+to go home and come back. I sayed whether I have the darst to go
+home till half-past three. Pop he's went to Lancaster, and he'll
+be back till half-past three a'ready, and he says then I got to be
+home to help him in the celery-beds."
+
+Miss Margaret held her pretty head on one side, considering, as
+she looked down into the little girl's upturned face. "Is this a
+conundrum, Tillie? How your father be in Lancaster now and yet be
+home until half-past three? It's uncanny. Unless," she added, a
+ray of light coming to her,--"unless 'till' means BY. Your father
+will be home BY half-past three and wants you then?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am. I can't talk just so right," said Tillie
+apologetically, "like what you can. Yes, sometimes I say my we's
+like my w's, yet!"
+
+Miss Margaret laughed. "Bless your little heart!" she said,
+running her fingers through Tillie's hair. "But you would rather
+stay in school until four, wouldn't you, than go home to help your
+father in the celery-beds?"
+
+"Oh, yes, ma'am," said Tillie wistfully, "but pop he has to get
+them beds through till Saturday market a'ready, and so we got to
+get 'em done behind Thursday or Friday yet."
+
+"If I say you can't go home?"
+
+Tillie colored all over her sensitive little face as, instead of
+answering, she nervously worked her toe into a crack in the
+platform.
+
+"But your father can't blame YOU, honey, if I won't let you go
+home."
+
+"He wouldn't stop to ast me was it my fault, Miss Margaret. If I
+wasn't there on time, he'd just--"
+
+"All right, dear, you may go at half-past three, then," Miss
+Margaret gently said, patting the child's shoulder. "As soon as
+you have written your composition."
+
+"Yes, ma'am, Miss Margaret."
+
+It was hard for Tillie, as she sat at her desk that afternoon, to
+fix her wandering attention upon the writing of her composition,
+so fascinating was it just to revel idly in the sense of the touch
+of that loved hand that had stroked her hair, and the tone of that
+caressing voice that had called her "honey."
+
+Miss Margaret always said to the composition classes, "Just try to
+write simply of what you see or feel, and then you will be sure to
+write a good 'composition.'"
+
+Tillie was moved this afternoon to pour out on paper all that she
+"felt" about her divinity. But she had some misgivings as to the
+fitness of this.
+
+She dwelt upon the thought of it, however, dreamily gazing out of
+the window near which she sat, into the blue sky of the October
+afternoon--until presently her ear was caught by the sound of Miss
+Margaret's voice speaking to Absalom Puntz, who stood at the foot
+of the composition class, now before her on the platform.
+
+"You may read your composition, Absalom."
+
+Absalom was one of "the big boys," but though he was sixteen years
+old and large for his age, his slowness in learning classed him
+with the children of twelve or thirteen. However, as learning was
+considered in New Canaan a superfluous and wholly unnecessary
+adjunct to the means of living, Absalom's want of agility in
+imbibing erudition never troubled him, nor did it in the least
+call forth the pity or contempt of his schoolmates.
+
+Three times during the morning session he had raised his hand to
+announce stolidly to his long-suffering teacher, "I can't think of
+no subjeck"; and at last Miss Margaret had relaxed her Spartan
+resolution to make him do his own thinking and had helped him out.
+
+"Write of something that is interesting you just at present. Isn't
+there some one thing you care more about than other things?" she
+had asked.
+
+Absalom had stared at her blankly without replying.
+
+"Now, Absalom," she had said desperately, "I think I know one
+thing you have been interested in lately--write me a composition
+on Girls."
+
+Of course the school had greeted the advice with a laugh, and Miss
+Margaret had smiled with them, though she had not meant to be
+facetious.
+
+Absalom, however, had taken her suggestion seriously.
+
+"Is your composition written, Absalom?" she was asking as Tillie
+turned from the window, her contemplation of her own composition
+arrested by the sound of the voice which to her was the sweetest
+music in the world.
+
+"No'm," sullenly answered Absalom. "I didn't get it through till
+it was time a'ready."
+
+"But, Absalom, you've been at it this whole blessed day! You've
+not done another thing!"
+
+"I wrote off some of it."
+
+"Well," sighed Miss Margaret, "let us hear what you have done."
+
+Absalom unfolded a sheet of paper and laboriously read:
+
+"GIRLS
+
+"The only thing I took particular notice to, about Girls, is that
+they are always picking lint off each other, still."
+
+He stopped and slowly folded his paper.
+
+"But go on," said Miss Margaret. "Read it all.'
+
+"That's all the fu'ther I got."
+
+Miss Margaret looked at him for an instant, then suddenly lifted
+the lid of her desk, evidently to search for something. When she
+closed it her face was quite grave.
+
+"We'll have the reading-lesson now," she announced.
+
+Tillie tried to withdraw her attention from the teacher and fix it
+on her own work, but the gay, glad tone in which Lizzie Harnish
+was reading the lines,
+
+     "When thoughts
+  Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
+  Over thy spirit--"
+
+hopelessly checked the flow of her ideas.
+
+This class was large, and by the time Absalom's turn to read was
+reached, "Thanatopsis" had been finished, and so the first stanza
+of "The Bells" fell to him. It had transpired in the reading of
+"Thanatopsis" that a grave and solemn tone best suited that poem,
+and the value of this intelligence was made manifest when, in a
+voice of preternatural solemnity, he read:
+
+"What a world of merriment their melody foretells!"
+
+Instantly, when he had finished his "stanza," Lizzie raised her
+hand to offer a criticism. "Absalom, he didn't put in no
+gestures."
+
+Miss Margaret's predecessor had painstakingly trained his reading-
+classes in the Art of Gesticulation in Public Speaking, and Miss
+Margaret found the results of his labors so entertaining that she
+had never been able to bring herself to suppress the monstrosity.
+
+"I don't like them gestures," sulkily retorted Absalom.
+
+"Never mind the gestures," Miss Margaret consoled him--which
+indifference on her part seemed high treason to the well-trained
+class.
+
+"I'll hear you read, now, the list of synonyms you found in these
+two poems," she added. "Lizzie may read first."
+
+While the class rapidly leafed their readers to find their lists
+of synonyms, Miss Margaret looked up and spoke to Tillie,
+reminding her gently that that composition would not be written by
+half-past three if she did not hasten her work.
+
+Tillie blushed with embarrassment at being caught in an idleness
+that had to be reproved, and resolutely bent all her powers to her
+task.
+
+She looked about the room for a subject. The walls were adorned
+with the print portraits of "great men,"--former State
+superintendents of public instruction in Pennsylvania,--and with
+highly colored chromo portraits of Washington, Lincoln, Grant, and
+Garfield. Then there were a number of framed mottos: "Education
+rules in America," "Rely on yourself," "God is our hope," "Dare to
+say No," "Knowledge is power," "Education is the chief defense of
+nations."
+
+But none of these things made Tillie's genius to burn, and again
+her eyes wandered to the window and gazed out into the blue sky;
+and after a few moments she suddenly turned to her desk and
+rapidly wrote down her "subject"--"Evening."
+
+The mountain of the opening sentence being crossed, the rest went
+smoothly enough, for Tillie wrote it from her heart.
+
+"EVENING.
+
+"I love to take my little sisters and brothers and go out, still,
+on a hill-top when the sun is setting so red in the West, and the
+birds are singing around us, and the cows are coming home to be
+milked, and the men are returning from their day's work.
+
+"I would love to play in the evening if I had the dare, when the
+children are gay and everything around me is happy.
+
+"I love to see the flowers closing their buds when the shades of
+evening are come. The thought has come to me, still, that I hope
+the closing of my life may come as quiet and peaceful as the
+closing of the flowers in the evening.
+
+"MATILDA MARIA GETZ."
+
+Miss Margaret was just calling for Absalom's synonyms when Tillie
+carried her composition to the desk, and Absalom was replying with
+his customary half-defiant sullenness.
+
+"My pop he sayed I ain't got need to waste my time gettin' learnt
+them cinnamons. Pop he says what's the use learnin' TWO words
+where [which] means the selfsame thing--one's enough."
+
+Absalom's father was a school director and Absalom had grown
+accustomed, under the rule of Miss Margaret's predecessors, to
+feel the force of the fact in their care not to offend him.
+
+"But your father is not the teacher here--I am," she cheerfully
+told him. "So you may stay after school and do what I require."
+
+Tillie felt a pang of uneasiness as she went back to her seat.
+Absalom's father was very influential and, as all the township
+knew, very spiteful. He could send Miss Margaret away, and he
+would do it, if she offended his only child, Absalom. Tillie
+thought she could not bear it at all if Miss Margaret were sent
+away. Poor Miss Margaret did not seem to realize her own danger.
+Tillie felt tempted to warn her. It was only this morning that the
+teacher had laughed at Absalom when he said that the Declaration
+of Independence was "a treaty between the United States and
+England,"--and had asked him, "Which country, do you think,
+hurrahed the loudest, Absalom, when that treaty was signed?" And
+now this afternoon she "as much as said Absalom's father should
+mind to his own business!" It was growing serious. There had never
+been before a teacher at "William Penn school-house who had not
+judiciously "showed partiality" to Absalom.
+
+"And he used to be dummer yet [stupider even] than what he is
+now," thought Tillie, remembering vividly a school entertainment
+that had been given during her own first year at school, when
+Absalom, nine years old, had spoken his first piece. His pious
+Methodist grandmother had endeavored to teach him a little hymn to
+speak on the great occasion, while his frivolous aunt from the
+city of Lancaster had tried at the same time to teach him "Bobby
+Shafto." New Canaan audiences were neither discriminating nor
+critical, but the assembly before which little Absalom had risen
+to "speak his piece off," had found themselves confused when he
+told them that
+
+  "On Jordan's bank the Baptist stands,
+    Silver buckles on his knee."
+
+Tillie would never forget her own infantine agony of suspense as
+she sat, a tiny girl of five, in the audience, listening to
+Absalom's mistakes. But Eli Darmstetter, the teacher, had not
+scolded him.
+
+Then there was the time that Absalom had forced a fight at recess
+and had made little Adam Oberholzer's nose bleed--it was little
+Adam (whose father was not at that time a school director) that
+had to stay after school; and though every one knew it wasn't
+fair, it had been accepted without criticism, because even the
+young rising generation of New Canaan understood the impossibility
+and folly of quarreling with one's means of earning money.
+
+But Miss Margaret appeared to be perfectly blind to the perils of
+her position. Tillie was deeply troubled about it.
+
+At half-past three, when, at a nod from Miss Margaret the little
+girl left her desk to go home, a wonderful thing happened--Miss
+Margaret gave her a story-book.
+
+"You are so fond of reading, Tillie, I brought you this. You may
+take it home, and when you have read it, bring it back to me, and
+I'll give you something else to read."
+
+Delighted as Tillie was to have the book for its own sake, it was
+yet greater happiness to handle something belonging to Miss
+Margaret and to realize that Miss Margaret had thought so much
+about her as to bring it to her.
+
+"It's a novel, Tillie. Have you ever read a novel?"
+
+"No'm. Only li-bries."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Sunday-school li-bries. Us we're Evangelicals, and us children we
+go to the Sunday-school, and I still bring home li-bry books. Pop
+he don't uphold to novel-readin'. I have never saw a novel yet."
+
+"Well, this book won't injure you, Tillie. You must tell me all
+about it when you have read it. You will find it so interesting,
+I'm afraid you won't be able to study your lessons while you are
+reading it."
+
+Outside the school-room, Tillie looked at the title,--Ivanhoe,"--
+and turned over the pages in an ecstasy of anticipation.
+
+"Oh! I love her! I love her!" throbbed her little hungry heart.
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+"I'M GOING TO LEARN YOU ONCE!"
+
+
+Tillie was obliged, when about a half-mile from her father's farm,
+to hide her precious book. This she did by pinning her petticoat
+into a bag and concealing the book in it. It was in this way that
+she always carried home her "li-bries" from Sunday-school, for all
+story-book reading was prohibited by her father. It was
+uncomfortable walking along the highroad with the book knocking
+against her legs at every step, but that was not so painful as her
+father's punishment would be did he discover her bringing home a
+"novel"! She was not permitted to bring home even a school-book,
+and she had greatly astonished Miss Margaret, one day at the
+beginning of the term, by asking, "Please, will you leave me let
+my books in school? Pop says I darsen't bring 'em home."
+
+"What you can't learn in school, you can do without," Tillie's
+father had said. "When you're home you'll work fur your wittles."
+
+Tillie's father was a frugal, honest, hard-working, and very
+prosperous Pennsylvania Dutch farmer, who thought he religiously
+performed his parental duty in bringing up his many children in
+the fear of his heavy hand, in unceasing labor, and in almost
+total abstinence from all amusement and self-indulgence. Far from
+thinking himself cruel, he was convinced that the oftener and the
+more vigorously he applied "the strap," the more conscientious a
+parent was he.
+
+His wife, Tillie's stepmother, was as submissive to his authority
+as were her five children and Tillie. Apathetic, anemic,
+overworked, she yet never dreamed of considering herself or her
+children abused, accepting her lot as the natural one of woman,
+who was created to be a child-bearer, and to keep man well fed and
+comfortable. The only variation from the deadly monotony of her
+mechanical and unceasing labor was found in her habit of
+irritability with her stepchild. She considered Tillie "a dopple"
+(a stupid, awkward person); for though usually a wonderful little
+household worker, Tillie, when very much tired out, was apt to
+drop dishes; and absent-mindedly she would put her sunbonnet
+instead of the bread into the oven, or pour molasses instead of
+batter on the griddle. Such misdemeanors were always plaintively
+reported by Mrs. Getz to Tillie's father, who, without fail,
+conscientiously applied what he considered the undoubted cure.
+
+In practising the strenuous economy prescribed by her husband,
+Mrs. Getz had to manoeuver very skilfully to keep her children
+decently clothed, and Tillie in this matter was a great help to
+her; for the little girl possessed a precocious skill in combining
+a pile of patches into a passably decent dress or coat for one of
+her little brothers or sisters. Nevertheless, it was invariably
+Tillie who was slighted in the small expenditures that were made
+each year for the family clothing. The child had always really
+preferred that the others should have "new things" rather than
+herself--until Miss Margaret came; and now, before Miss Margaret's
+daintiness, she felt ashamed of her own shabby appearance and
+longed unspeakably for fresh, pretty clothes. Tillie knew
+perfectly well that her father had plenty of money to buy them for
+her if he would. But she never thought of asking him or her
+stepmother for anything more than what they saw fit to give her.
+
+The Getz family was a perfectly familiar type among the German
+farming class of southeastern Pennsylvania. Jacob Getz, though
+spoken of in the neighborhood as being "wonderful near," which
+means very penurious, and considered by the more gentle-minded
+Amish and Mennonites of the township to be "overly strict" with
+his family and "too ready with the strap still," was nevertheless
+highly respected as one who worked hard and was prosperous, lived
+economically, honestly, and in the fear of the Lord, and was
+"laying by."
+
+The Getz farm was typical of the better sort to be found in that
+county. A neat walk, bordered by clam shells, led from a wooden
+gate to the porch of a rather large, and severely plain frame
+house, facing the road. Every shutter on the front and sides of
+the building was tightly closed, and there was no sign of life
+about the place. A stranger, ignorant of the Pennsylvania Dutch
+custom of living in the kitchen and shutting off the "best
+rooms,"--to be used in their mustiness and stiff unhomelikeness on
+Sunday only,--would have thought the house temporarily empty. It
+was forbiddingly and uncompromisingly spick-and-span.
+
+A grass-plot, ornamented with a circular flower-bed, extended a
+short distance on either side of the house. But not too much land
+was put to such unproductive use; and the small lawn was closely
+bordered by a corn-field on the one side and on the other by an
+apple orchard. Beyond stretched the tobacco--and wheat-fields, and
+behind the house were the vegetable garden and the barn-yard.
+
+Arrived at home by half-past three, Tillie hid her "Ivanhoe" under
+the pillow of her bed when she went up-stairs to change her faded
+calico school dress for the yet older garment she wore at her
+work.
+
+If she had not been obliged to change her dress, she would have
+been puzzled to know how to hide her book, for she could not,
+without creating suspicion, have gone up-stairs in the daytime. In
+New Canaan one never went up-stairs during the day, except at the
+rare times when obliged to change one's clothes. Every one washed
+at the pump and used the one family roller-towel hanging on the
+porch. Miss Margaret, ever since her arrival in the neighborhood,
+had been the subject of wide-spread remark and even suspicion,
+because she "washed up-stairs" and even sat up-stairs!--in her
+bedroom! It was an unheard-of proceeding in New Canaan.
+
+Tillie helped her father in the celery-beds until dark; then,
+weary, but excited at the prospect of her book, she went in from
+the fields and up-stairs to the little low-roofed bed-chamber
+which she shared with her two half-sisters. They were already in
+bed and asleep, as was their mother in the room across the hall,
+for every one went to bed at sundown in Canaan Township, and got
+up at sunrise.
+
+Tillie was in bed in a few minutes, rejoicing in the feeling of
+the book under her pillow. Not yet dared she venture to light a
+candle and read it--not until she should hear her father's heavy
+snoring in the room across the hall.
+
+The candles which she used for this surreptitious reading of
+Sunday-school "li-bries" and any other chance literature which
+fell in her way, were procured with money paid to her by Miss
+Margaret for helping her to clean the school-room on Friday
+afternoons after school. Tillie would have been happy to help her
+for the mere joy of being with her, but Miss Margaret insisted
+upon paying her ten cents for each such service.
+
+The little girl was obliged to resort to a deep-laid plot in order
+to do this work for the teacher. It had been her father's custom--
+ever since, at the age of five, she had begun to go to school--to
+"time" her in coming home at noon and afternoon, and whenever she
+was not there on the minute, to mete out to her a dose of his
+ever-present strap.
+
+"I ain't havin' no playin' on the way home, still! When school is
+done, you come right away home then, to help me or your mom, or I
+'ll learn you once!"
+
+But it happened that Miss Margaret, in her reign at "William Perm"
+school-house, had introduced the innovation of closing school on
+Friday afternoons at half-past three instead of four, and Tillie,
+with bribes of candy bought with part of her weekly wage of ten
+cents, secured secrecy as to this innovation from her little
+sister and brother who went to school with her--making them play
+in the school-grounds until she was ready to go home with them.
+
+Before Miss Margaret had come to New Canaan, Tillie had done her
+midnight reading by the light of the kerosene lamp which, after
+every one was asleep, she would bring up from the kitchen to her
+bedside. But this was dangerous, as it often led to awkward
+inquiries as to the speedy consumption of the oil. Candles were
+safer. Tillie kept them and a box of matches hidden under the
+mattress.
+
+It was eleven o'clock when at last the child, trembling with
+mingled delight and apprehension, rose from her bed, softly closed
+her bedroom door, and with extremely judicious carefulness lighted
+her candle, propped up her pillow, and settled down to read as
+long as she should be able to hold her eyes open. The little
+sister at her side and the one in the bed at the other side of the
+room slept too soundly to be disturbed by the faint flickering
+light of that one candle.
+
+To-night her stolen pleasure proved more than usually engrossing.
+At first the book was interesting principally because of the fact,
+so vividly present with her, that Miss Margaret's eyes and mind
+had moved over every word and thought which, she was now
+absorbing. But soon her intense interest in the story excluded
+every other idea--even the fear of discovery. Her young spirit was
+"out of the body" and following, as in a trance, this tale, the
+like of which she had never before read.
+
+The clock down-stairs in the kitchen struck twelve--one--two, but
+Tillie never heard it. At half-past two o'clock in the morning,
+when the tallow candle was beginning to sputter to its end, she
+still was reading, her eyes bright as stars, her usually pale face
+flushed with excitement, her sensitive lips parted in breathless
+interest--when, suddenly, a stinging blow of "the strap" on her
+shoulders brought from her a cry of pain and fright.
+
+"What you mean, doin' somepin like, this yet!" sternly demanded
+her father. "What fur book's that there?"
+
+He took the book from her hands and Tillie cowered beneath the
+covers, the wish flashing through her mind that the book could
+change into a Bible as he looked at it!--which miracle would
+surely temper the punishment that in a moment she knew would be
+meted out to her.
+
+"'Iwanhoe'--a novel! A NOVEL!" he said in genuine horror. "Tillie,
+where d'you get this here!"
+
+Tillie knew that if she told lies she would go to hell, but she
+preferred to burn in torment forever rather than betray Miss
+Margaret; for her father, like Absalom's, was a school director,
+and if he knew Miss Margaret read novels and lent them to the
+children, he would surely force her out of "William Penn."
+
+"I lent it off of Elviny Dinkleberger!" she sobbed.
+
+"You know I tole you a'ready you darsen't bring books home! And
+you know I don't uphold to novel-readin'! I 'll have to learn you
+to mind better 'n this! "Where d' you get that there candle?"
+
+"I--bought it, pop."
+
+"Bought? Where d'you get the money!"
+
+Tillie did not like the lies she had to tell, but she knew she had
+already perjured her soul beyond redemption and one lie more or
+less could not make matters worse.
+
+"I found it in the road."
+
+"How much did you find?"
+
+"Fi' cents."
+
+"You hadn't ought to spent it without astin' me dare you. Now I'm
+goin' to learn you once! Set up."
+
+Tillie obeyed, and the strap fell across her shoulders. Her
+outcries awakened the household and started the youngest little
+sister, in her fright and sympathy with Tillie, to a high-pitched
+wailing. The rest of them took the incident phlegmatically, the
+only novelty about it being the strange hour of its happening.
+
+But the hardest part of her punishment was to follow.
+
+"Now this here book goes in the fire!" her father announced when
+at last his hand was stayed. "And any more that comes home goes
+after it in the stove, I'll see if you 'll mind your pop or not!"
+
+Left alone in her bed, her body quivering, her little soul hot
+with shame and hatred, the child stifled her sobs in her pillow,
+her whole heart one bleeding wound.
+
+How could she ever tell Miss Margaret? Surely she would never like
+her any more!--never again lay her hand on her hair, or praise her
+compositions, or call her "honey," or, even, perhaps, allow her to
+help her on Fridays!--and what, then, would be the use of living?
+If only she could die and be dead like a cat or a bird and not go
+to hell, she would take the carving-knife and kill herself! But
+there was hell to be taken into consideration. And yet, could hell
+hold anything worse than the loss of Miss Margaret's kindness? HOW
+could she tell her of that burned-up book and endure to see her
+look at her with cold disapproval? Oh, to make such return for her
+kindness, when she so longed with all her soul to show her how
+much she loved her!
+
+For the first time in all her school-days, Tillie went next
+morning with reluctance to school.
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+"WHAT'S HURTIN' YOU, TILLIE?"
+
+
+She meant to make her confession as soon as she reached the
+school-house--and have it over--but Miss Margaret was busy writing
+on the blackboard, and Tillie felt an immense relief at the
+necessary postponement of her ordeal to recess time.
+
+The hours of that morning were very long to her heavy heart, and
+the minutes dragged to the time of her doom--for nothing but
+blackness lay beyond the point of the acknowledgment which must
+turn her teacher's fondness to dislike.
+
+She saw Miss Margaret's eyes upon her several times during the
+morning, with that look of anxious concern which had so often fed
+her starved affections. Yes, Miss Margaret evidently could see
+that she was in trouble and she was feeling sorry for her. But,
+alas, when she should learn the cause of her misery, how surely
+would that look turn to coldness and displeasure!
+
+Tillie felt that she was ill preparing the way for her dread
+confession in the very bad recitations she made all morning. She
+failed in geography--every question that came to her; she failed
+to understand Miss Margaret's explanation of compound interest,
+though the explanation was gone over a third time for her especial
+benefit; she missed five words in spelling and two questions in
+United States history!
+
+"Tillie, Tillie!" Miss Margaret solemnly shook her head, as she
+closed her book at the end of the last recitation before recess.
+"Too much 'Ivanhoe,' I'm afraid! Well, it's my fault, isn't it?"
+
+The little girl's blue eyes gazed up at her with a look of such
+anguish, that impulsively Miss Margaret drew her to her side, as
+the rest of the class moved away to their seats.
+
+"What's the matter, dear?" she asked. "Aren't you well? You look
+pale and ill! What is it, Tillie?"
+
+Tillie's overwrought heart could bear no more. Her head fell on
+Miss Margaret's shoulder as she broke into wildest crying. Her
+body quivered with her gasping sobs and her little hands clutched
+convulsively at Miss Margaret's gown.
+
+"You poor little thing!" whispered Miss Margaret, her arms about
+the child; "WHAT'S the matter with you, honey? There, there, don't
+cry so--tell me what's the matter."
+
+It was such bliss to be petted like this--to feel Miss Margaret's
+arms about her and hear that loved voice so close to her!--for the
+last time! Never again after this moment would she be liked and
+caressed! Her heart was breaking and she could not answer for her
+sobbing.
+
+"Tillie, dear, sit down here in my chair until I send the other
+children out to recess--and then you and I can have a talk by
+ourselves, "Miss Margaret said, leading the child a step to her
+arm-chair on the platform. She stood beside the chair, holding
+Tillie's throbbing head to her side, while she tapped the bell
+which dismissed the children.
+
+"Now," she said, when the door had closed on the last of them and
+she had seated herself and drawn Tillie to her again, "tell me
+what you are crying for, little girlie."
+
+"Miss Margaret!" Tillie's words came in hysterical, choking gasps;
+"you won't never like me no more when I tell you what's happened,
+Miss Margaret!"
+
+"Why, dear me, Tillie, what on earth is it?"
+
+"I didn't mean to do it, Miss Margaret! And I'll redd up for you,
+Fridays, still, till it's paid for a'ready, Miss Margaret, if
+you'll leave me, won't you, please? Oh, won't you never like me no
+more?"
+
+"My dear little goosie, what IS the matter with you? Come," she
+said, taking the little girl's hand reassuringly in both her own,
+"tell me, child."
+
+A certain note of firmness in her usually drawling Southern voice
+checked a little the child's hysterical emotion. She gulped the
+choking lump in her throat and answered.
+
+"I was readin' 'Ivanhoe' in bed last night, and pop woke up, and
+seen my candle-light, and he conceited he'd look once and see what
+it was, and then he seen me, and he don't uphold to novel-readin',
+and he--he--"
+
+"Well?" Miss Margaret gently urged her faltering speech.
+
+"He whipped me and--and burnt up your Book!"
+
+"Whipped you again!" Miss Margaret's soft voice indignantly
+exclaimed. "The br--" she checked herself and virtuously closed
+her lips. "I'm so sorry, Tillie, that I got you into such a
+scrape!"
+
+Tillie thought Miss Margaret could not have heard her clearly.
+
+"He--burnt up your book yet, Miss Margaret!" she found voice to
+whisper again.
+
+"Indeed! I ought to make him pay for it!"
+
+"He didn't know it was yourn, Miss Margaret--he don't uphold to
+novel-readin', and if he'd know it was yourn he'd have you put out
+of William Penn, so I tole him I lent it off of Elviny
+Dinkleberger--and I'll help you Fridays till it's paid for
+a'ready, if you'll leave me, Miss Margaret!"
+
+She lifted pleading eyes to the teacher's face, to see therein a
+look of anger such as she had never before beheld in that gentle
+countenance--for Miss Margaret had caught sight of the marks of
+the strap on Tillie's bare neck, and she was flushed with
+indignation at the outrage. But Tillie, interpreting the anger to
+be against herself, turned as white as death, and a look of such
+hopeless woe came into her face that Miss Margaret suddenly
+realized the dread apprehension torturing the child.
+
+"Come here to me, you poor little thing!" she tenderly exclaimed,
+drawing the little girl into her lap and folding her to her heart.
+"I don't care anything about the BOOK, honey! Did you think I
+would? There, there--don't cry so, Tillie, don't cry. _I_ love
+you, don't you know I do!"--and Miss Margaret kissed the child's
+quivering lips, and with her own fragrant handkerchief wiped the
+tears from her cheeks, and with her soft, cool fingers smoothed
+back the hair from her hot forehead.
+
+And this child, who had never known the touch of a mother's hand
+and lips, was transported in that moment from the suffering of the
+past night and morning, to a happiness that made this hour stand
+out to her, in all the years that followed, as the one supreme
+experience of her childhood.
+
+Ineffable tenderness of the mother heart of woman!
+
+That afternoon, when Tillie got home from school,--ten minutes
+late according to the time allowed her by her father,--she was
+quite unable to go out to help him in the field. Every step of the
+road home had been a dragging burden to her aching limbs, and the
+moment she reached the farm-house, she tumbled in a little heap
+upon the kitchen settee and lay there, exhausted and white, her
+eyes shining with fever, her mouth parched with thirst, her head
+throbbing with pain--feeling utterly indifferent to the
+consequences of her tardiness and her failure to meet her father
+in the field.
+
+"Ain't you feelin' good?" her stepmother phlegmatically inquired
+from across the room, where she sat with a dish-pan in her lap,
+paring potatoes for supper.
+
+"No, ma'am," weakly answered Tillie.
+
+"Pop 'll be looking fur you out in the field."
+
+Tillie wearily closed her eyes and did not answer.
+
+Mrs. Getz looked up from her pan and let her glance rest for an
+instant upon the child's white, pained face. "Are you feelin' too
+mean to go help pop?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am. I--can't!" gasped Tillie, with a little sob.
+
+"You ain't lookin' good," the woman reluctantly conceded. "Well,
+I'll leave you lay a while. Mebbe pop used the strap too hard last
+night. He sayed this dinner that he was some uneasy that he used
+the strap so hard--but he was that wonderful spited to think you'd
+set up readin' a novel-book in the night-time yet! You might of
+knew you'd ketch an awful lickin' fur doin' such a dumm thing like
+what that was. Sammy!" she called to her little eight-year-old
+son, who was playing on the kitchen porch, "you go out and tell
+pop Tillie she's got sick fur me, and I'm leavin' her lay a while.
+Now hurry on, or he'll come in here to see, once, ain't she home
+yet, or what. Go on now!"
+
+Sammy departed on his errand, and Mrs. Getz diligently resumed her
+potato-paring.
+
+"I don't know what pop'll say to you not comin' out to help," she
+presently remarked.
+
+Tillie's head moved restlessly, but she did not speak. She was
+past caring what her father might say or do.
+
+Mrs. Getz thoughtfully considered a doubtful potato, and,
+concluding at length to discard it, "I guess," she said, throwing
+it back into the pan, "I'll let that one; it's some poor. Do you
+feel fur eatin' any supper?" she asked. "I'm havin' fried smashed-
+potatoes and wieners [Frankfort sausages]. Some days I just don't
+know what to cook all."
+
+Tillie's lips moved, but gave no sound.
+
+"I guess you're right down sick fur all; ain't? I wonder if pop'll
+have Doc in. He won't want to spend any fur that. But you do look
+wonderful bad. It's awful onhandy comin' just to-day. I did feel
+fur sayin' to pop I'd go to the rewiwal to-night, of he didn't
+mind. It's a while back a'ready since I was to a meetin'--not even
+on a funeral. And they say they do now make awful funny up at
+Bethel rewiwal this week. I was thinkin' I'd go once. But if you
+can't redd up after supper and help milk and put the childern to
+bed, I can't go fur all."
+
+No response from Tillie.
+
+Mrs. Getz sighed her disappointment as she went on with her work.
+Presently she spoke again. "This after, a lady agent come along.
+She had such a complexion lotion. She talked near a half-hour. She
+was, now, a beautiful conversationist! I just set and listened.
+Then she was some spited that I wouldn't buy a box of complexion
+lotion off of her. But she certainly was, now, a beautiful
+conversationist!"
+
+The advent of an agent in the neighborhood was always a noteworthy
+event, and Tillie's utterly indifferent reception of the news that
+to-day one had "been along" made Mrs. Getz look at her
+wonderingly.
+
+"Are you too sick to take interest?" she asked.
+
+The child made no answer. The woman rose to put her potatoes on
+the stove.
+
+It was an hour later when, as Tillie still lay motionless on the
+settee, and Mrs. Getz was dishing up the supper and putting it on
+the table, which stood near the wall at one end of the kitchen,
+Mr. Getz came in, tired, dirty, and hungry, from the celery-beds.
+
+The child opened her eyes at the familiar and often dreaded step,
+and looked up at him as he came and stood over her.
+
+"What's the matter? What's hurtin' you, Tillie?" he asked, an
+unwonted kindness in his voice as he saw how ill the little girl
+looked.
+
+"I don'--know," Tillie whispered, her heavy eyelids falling again.
+
+"You don' know! You can't be so worse if you don' know what's
+hurtin' you! Have you fever, or the headache, or whatever?"
+
+He laid his rough hand on her forehead and passed it over her
+cheek.
+
+"She's some feverish," he said, turning to his wife, who was busy
+at the stove. "Full much so!"
+
+"She had the cold a little, and I guess she's took more to it,"
+Mrs. Getz returned, bearing the fried potatoes across the kitchen
+to the table.
+
+"I heard the Doc talkin' there's smallpox handy to us, only a mile
+away at New Canaan," said Getz, a note of anxiety in his voice
+that made the sick child wearily marvel. Why was he anxious about
+her? she wondered. It wasn't because he liked her, as Miss
+Margaret did. He was afraid of catching smallpox himself, perhaps.
+Or he was afraid she would be unable to help him to-morrow, and
+maybe for many days, out in the celery-beds. That was why he spoke
+anxiously--not because he liked her and was sorry.
+
+No bitterness was mingled with Tillie's quite matter-of-fact
+acceptance of these conclusions.
+
+"It would be a good much trouble to us if she was took down with
+the smallpox," Mrs. Getz's tired voice replied.
+
+"I guess not as much as it would be to HER," the father said, a
+rough tenderness in his voice, and something else which Tillie
+vaguely felt to be a note of pain.
+
+"Are you havin' the Doc in fur her, then?" his wife asked.
+
+"I guess I better, mebbe," the man hesitated. His thrifty mind
+shrank at the thought of the expense.
+
+He turned again to Tillie and bent over her.
+
+"Can't you tell pop what's hurtin' you, Tillie?"
+
+"No--sir."
+
+Mr. Getz looked doubtfully and rather helplessly at his wife.
+"It's a bad sign, ain't, when they can't tell what's hurtin'"em?"
+
+"I don't know what fur sign that is when they don't feel nothin',"
+she stoically answered, as she dished up her Frankfort sausages.
+
+"If a person would just know oncet!" he exclaimed anxiously.
+"Anyhow, she's pretty much sick--she looks it so! I guess I better
+mebbe not take no risks. I'll send fur Doc over. Sammy can go,
+then."
+
+"All right. Supper's ready now. You can come eat."
+
+She went to the door to call the children in front the porch and
+the lawn; and Mr. Getz again bent over the child.
+
+"Can you eat along, Tillie?"
+
+Tillie weakly shook her head.
+
+"Don't you feel fur your wittles?"
+
+"No--sir."
+
+"Well, well. I'll send fur the Doc, then, and he can mebbe give
+you some pills, or what, to make you feel some better; ain't?" he
+said, again passing his rough hand over her forehead and cheek,
+with a touch as nearly like a caress as anything Tillie had ever
+known from him. The tears welled up in her eyes and slowly rolled
+over her white face, as she felt this unwonted expression of
+affection.
+
+Her father turned away quickly and went to the table, about which
+the children were gathering.
+
+"Where's Sammy?" he asked his wife. "I'm sendin' him fur the Doc
+after supper."
+
+"Where? I guess over," she motioned with her head as she lifted
+the youngest, a one-year-old boy, into his high chair. "Over" was
+the family designation for the pump, at which every child of a
+suitable age was required to wash his face and hands before coming
+to the table.
+
+While waiting for the arrival of the doctor, after supper, Getz
+ineffectually tried to force Tillie to eat something. In his
+genuine anxiety about her and his eagerness for "the Doc's"
+arrival, he quite forgot about the fee which would have to be paid
+for the visit.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"THE DOC" COMBINES BUSINESS AND PLEASURE
+
+
+Miss Margaret boarded at the "hotel" of New Canaan. As the only
+other regular boarder was the middle-aged, rugged, unkempt little
+man known as "the Doc," and as the transient guests were very few
+and far between, Miss Margaret shared the life of the hotel-
+keeper's family on an intimate and familiar footing.
+
+The invincible custom of New Canaan of using a bedroom only at
+night made her unheard-of inclination to sit in her room during
+the day or before bedtime the subject of so much comment and
+wonder that, feeling it best to yield to the prejudice, she
+usually read, sewed, or wrote letters in the kitchen, or, when a
+fire was lighted, in the combination dining-room and sitting-room.
+
+It was the evening of the day of Tillie's confession about
+"Ivanhoe," and Miss Margaret, after the early supper-hour of the
+country hotel, had gone to the sitting-room, removed the chenille
+cover from the centre-table, uncorked the bottle of fluid sold at
+the village store as ink, but looking more like raspberryade, and
+settled herself to write, to one deeply interested in everything
+which interested her, an account of her day and its episode with
+the little daughter of Jacob Getz.
+
+This room in which she sat, like all other rooms of the district,
+was too primly neat to be cozy or comfortable. It contained a
+bright new rag carpet, a luridly painted wooden settee, a sewing-
+machine, and several uninviting wooden chairs. Margaret often
+yearned to pull the pieces of furniture out from their stiff,
+sentinel-like stations against the wall and give to the room that
+divine touch of homeyness which it lacked. But she did not dare
+venture upon such a liberty.
+
+Very quickly absorbed in her letter-writing, she did not notice
+the heavy footsteps which presently sounded across the floor and
+paused at her chair.
+
+"Now that there writin'--" said a gruff voice at her shoulder;
+and, startled, she quickly turned in her chair, to find the other
+boarder, "the Doc," leaning on the back of it, his shaggy head
+almost on a level with her fair one.
+
+"That there writin'," pursued the doctor, continuing to hold his
+fat head in unabashed proximity to her own and to her letter, "is
+wonderful easy to read. Wonderful easy."
+
+Miss Margaret promptly covered her letter with a blotter, corked
+the raspberry-ade, and rose.
+
+"Done a'ready?" asked the doctor.
+
+"For the present, yes."
+
+"See here oncet, Teacher!"
+
+He suddenly fixed her with his small, keen eyes as he drew from
+the pocket of his shabby, dusty coat a long, legal-looking paper.
+
+"I have here," he said impressively, "an important dokiment,
+Teacher, concerning of which I desire to consult you
+perfessionally."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"You just stay settin'; I'll fetch a chair and set aside of you
+and show it to you oncet."
+
+He drew a chair up to the table and Margaret reluctantly sat down,
+feeling annoyed and disappointed at this interruption of her
+letter, yet unwilling, in the goodness of her heart, to snub the
+little man.
+
+The doctor bent near to her and spoke confidentially.
+
+"You see, them swanged fools in the legislature has went to work
+and passed a act--ag'in' my protest, mind you--compellin' doctors
+to fill out blanks answerin' to a lot of darn-fool questions 'bout
+one thing and 'nother, like this here."
+
+He had spread open on the table the paper he had drawn from his
+pocket. It was soiled from contact with his coat and his hands,
+and Margaret, instead of touching the sheet, pressed it down with
+the handle of her pen.
+
+The doctor noticed the act and laughed. "You're wonderful easy
+kreistled [disgusted]; ain't? I took notice a'ready how when
+things is some dirty they kreistle you, still. But indeed,
+Teacher," he gravely added, "it ain't healthy to wash so much and
+keep so clean as what you do. It's weakenin'. That's why city
+folks ain't so hearty--they get right into them big, long tubs
+they have built in their houses up-stairs! I seen one oncet in at
+Doc Hess's in Lancaster. I says to him when I seen it, 'You
+wouldn't get me into THAT--it's too much like a coffin!' I says.
+'It would make a body creepy to get in there.' And he says, 'I'd
+feel creepy if I DIDN'T get in.' 'Yes,' I says,'that's why you're
+so thin. You wash yourself away,' I says."
+
+"What's it all about?" Miss Margaret abruptly asked, examining the
+paper.
+
+"These here's the questions," answered the doctor, tracing them
+with his thick, dirty forefinger; "and these here's the blank
+spaces fur to write the answers into. Now you can write better 'n
+me, Teacher; and if you'll just take and write in the answers fur
+me, why, I'll do a favor fur you some time if ever you ast it off
+of me. And if ever you need a doctor, just you call on me, and I'm
+swanged if I charge you a cent!"
+
+Among the simple population of New Canaan the Doc was considered
+the most blasphemous man in America, but there seemed to be a sort
+of general impression in the village that his profanity was, in
+some way, an eccentricity of genius.
+
+"Thank you," Miss Margaret responded to his offer of free medical
+services. "I'll fill out the paper for you with pleasure."
+
+She read aloud the first question of the list. '"Where did you
+attend lectures?'"
+
+Her pen suspended over the paper, she looked at him inquiringly.
+"Well?" she asked.
+
+"Lekshures be blowed!" he exclaimed. "I ain't never 'tended no
+lekshures!"
+
+"Oh!" said Miss Margaret, nodding conclusively. "Well, then, let
+us pass on to the next question. 'To what School of Medicine do
+you belong?'"
+
+"School?" repeated the doctor; "I went to school right here in
+this here town--it's better 'n thirty years ago, a'ready."
+
+"No," Miss Margaret explained, "that's not the question. 'To what
+School of MEDICINE do you belong?' Medicine, you know," she
+repeated, as though talking to a deaf person.
+
+"Oh," said the doctor, "medicine, is it? I never have went to
+none," he announced defiantly. "I studied medicine in old Doctor
+Johnson's office and learnt it by practisin' it. That there's the
+only way to learn any business. Do you suppose you could learn a
+boy carpenterin' by settin' him down to read books on sawin'
+boards and a-lekshurin' him on drivin' nails? No more can you make
+a doctor in no such swanged-fool way like that there!"
+
+"But," said Margaret, "the question means do you practise
+allopathy, homeopathy, hydropathy, osteopathy,--or, for instance,
+eclecticism? Are you, for example, a homeopathist?"
+
+"Gosh!" said the doctor, looking at her admiringly, "I'm blamed if
+you don't know more big words than I ever seen in a spellin'-book
+or heard at a spellin'-bee! Home-o-pathy? No, sir! When I give a
+dose to a patient, still, he 'most always generally finds it out,
+and pretty gosh-hang quick too! When he gits a dose of my herb
+bitters he knows it good enough. Be sure, I don't give babies, and
+so forth, doses like them. All such I treat, still, according to
+home-o-pathy, and not like that swanged fool, Doc Hess, which only
+last week he give a baby a dose fitten only fur a field-hand--and
+HE went to college!--Oh, yes!--and heerd lekshures too! Natural
+consequence, the baby up't and died fur 'em. But growed folks they
+need allopathy."
+
+"Then," said Margaret, "you might be called an eclectic?"
+
+"A eclectic?" the doctor inquiringly repeated, rubbing his nose.
+"To be sure, I know in a general way what a eclectic IS, and so
+forth. But what would YOU mean, anyhow, by a eclectic doctor, so
+to speak, heh?"
+
+"An eclectic," Margaret explained, "is one who claims to adopt
+whatever is good and reject whatever is bad in every system or
+school of medicine."
+
+"If that ain't a description of me yet!" exclaimed the doctor,
+delighted. "Write 'em down, Teacher! I'm a--now what d'you call
+'em?"
+
+"You certainly are a what-do-you-call-'em!" thought Margaret--but
+she gravely repeated, "An eclectic," and wrote the name in the
+blank space.
+
+"And here I've been practism' that there style of medicine fur
+fifteen years without oncet suspicioning it! That is," he quickly
+corrected himself, in some confusion, "I haven't, so to speak,
+called it pretty often a eclectic, you see, gosh hang it! and--YOU
+understand, don't you, Teacher?"
+
+Margaret understood very well indeed, but she put the question by.
+
+The rest of the blank was filled with less difficulty, and in a
+few minutes the paper was folded and returned to the doctor's
+pocket.
+
+"I'm much obliged to you, Teacher," he said heartily. "And mind,
+now," he added, leaning far back in his chair, crossing his legs,
+thrusting his thumbs into his vest pockets, and letting his eyes
+rest upon her, "if ever you want a doctor, I ain't chargin' you
+nothin'; and leave me tell you somethin'," he said, emphasizing
+each word by a shake of his forefinger, "Jake Getz and Nathaniel
+Puntz they're the two school directors that 'most always makes
+trouble fur the teacher. And I pass you my word that if they get
+down on you any, and want to chase you off your job, I'm standin'
+by you--I pass you my word!"
+
+"Thank you. But what would they get down on me for?"
+
+"Well, if Jake Getz saw you standin' up for his childern against
+his lickin' 'em or makin' 'em work hard; or if you wanted to make
+'em take time to learn their books at home when he wants 'em to
+work--or some such--he'd get awful down on you. And Nathaniel
+Puntz he 's just the conTRARY--he wants his n' spoiled--he's got
+but the one."
+
+Miss Margaret recalled with a little thrill the loyalty with which
+Tillie had tried to save her from her father's anger by telling
+him that Elviny Dinkleberger had lent her "Ivanhoe." "I suppose I
+had a narrow escape there," she thought. "Poor little Tillie! She
+is so conscientious--I can fancy what that lie cost her!"
+
+Gathering up her stationery, she made a movement to rise--but the
+doctor checked her with a question.
+
+"Say! Not that I want to ast questions too close--but what was you
+writin', now, in that letter of yourn, about Jake Getz?"
+
+Miss Margaret was scarcely prepared for the question. She stared
+at the man for an instant, then helplessly laughed at him.
+
+"Well," he said apologetically, "I don't mean to be inquisitive
+that way--but sometimes I speak unpolite too--fur all I've saw
+high society a'ready!" he added, on the defensive. "Why, here one
+time I went in to Lancaster City to see Doc Hess, and he wouldn't
+have it no other way but I should stay and eat along. 'Och,' I
+says, 'I don't want to, I'm so common that way, and I know yous
+are tony and it don't do. I'll just pick a piece [have luncheon]
+at the tavern,' I says. But no, he says I was to come eat along.
+So then I did. And his missus she was wonderful fashionable, but
+she acted just that nice and common with me as my own mother or my
+wife yet. And that was the first time I have eat what the noos-
+papers calls a course dinner. They was three courses. First they
+was soup and nothin' else settin' on the table, and then a colored
+young lady come in with such a silver pan and such a flat, wide
+knife, and she scraped the crumbs off between every one of them
+three courses. I felt awful funny. I tell you they was tony. I
+sayed to the missus, 'I hadn't ought to of came here. I'm not
+grand enough like yous'; but she sayed, 'It's nothing of the kind,
+and you're always welcome.' Yes, she made herself that nice and
+common!" concluded the doctor. "So you see I have saw high
+society."
+
+"Yes," Miss Margaret assented.
+
+"Say!" he suddenly put another question to her. "Why don't you get
+married?"
+
+"Well," she parried, "why don't YOU?"
+
+"I was married a'ready. My wife she died fur me. She was layin'
+three months. She got so sore layin'. It was when we was stoppin'
+over in Chicago yet. That's out in Illinois. Then, when she died,
+--och," he said despondently, "there fur a while I didn't take no
+interest in nothin' no more. When your wife dies, you don't feel
+fur nothin'. Yes, yes," he sighed, "people have often troubles!
+Oh," he granted, "I went to see other women since. But," shaking
+his head in discouragement, "it didn't go. I think I'm better off
+if I stay single. Yes, I stay single yet. Well," he reconsidered
+the question, his head on one side as he examined the fair lady
+before him, "if I could get one to suit me oncet."
+
+Miss Margaret grew alarmed. But the doctor complacently continued,
+"When my wife died fur me I moved fu'ther west, and I got out as
+fur as Utah yet. That's where they have more 'n one wife. I
+thought, now, that there was a poor practice! One woman would do
+ME. Say!" he again fixed her with his eye.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Do you like your job?"
+
+"Well," she tentatively answered, "it's not uninteresting."
+
+"Would you ruther keep your job than quit and get married?"
+
+"That depends--"
+
+"Or," quickly added the doctor, "you might jus keep on teachin'
+the school after you was married, if you married some one livin'
+right here. Ain't? And if you kep' on the right side of the School
+Board. Unlest you'd ruther marry a town fellah and give up your
+job out here. Some thinks the women out here has to work too hard;
+but if they married a man where [who] was well fixed," he said,
+insinuatingly, "he could hire fur 'em [keep a servant]. Now,
+there's me. I'm well fixed. I got money plenty."
+
+"You are very fortunate," said Miss Margaret, sympathetically.
+
+"Yes, ain't? And I ain't got no one dependent on me, neither. No
+brothers, no sisters, no--wife--" he looked at her with an
+ingratiating smile. "Some says I'm better off that way, but
+sometimes I think different. Sometimes I think I'd like a wife
+oncet."
+
+"Yes?" said Miss Margaret.
+
+"Um--m," nodded the doctor. "Yes, and I'm pretty well fixed. I
+wasn't always so comfortable off. It went a long while till I got
+to doin' pretty good, and sometimes I got tired waitin' fur my
+luck to come. It made me ugly dispositioned, my bad luck did.
+That's how I got in the way of addicting to profane language. I
+sayed, still, I wisht, now, the good Lord would try posperity on
+me fur a while--fur adwersity certainly ain't makin' me a child of
+Gawd, I sayed. But now," he added, rubbing his knees with
+satisfaction," I'm fixed nice. Besides my doctor's fees, I got ten
+acres, and three good hommies that'll be cows till a little while
+yet. And that there organ in the front room is my property. Bought
+it fifteen years ago on the instalment plan. I leave missus keep
+it settin' in her parlor fur style that way. Do you play the
+organ?"
+
+"I CAN," was Miss Margaret's qualified answer.
+
+"I always liked music--high-class music--like 'Pinnyfore.' That's
+a nopery I heard in Lancaster there one time at the rooft-garden.
+That was high-toned music, you bet. No trash about that. Gimme
+somepin nice and ketchy. That's what I like. If it ain't ketchy, I
+don't take to it. And so," he added admiringly, "you can play the
+organ too!"
+
+"That's one of my distinguished accomplishments," said Miss
+Margaret,
+
+"Well, say!" The doctor leaned forward and took her into his
+confidence. "I don't mind if my wife is smart, so long as she
+don't bother ME any!"
+
+With this telling climax, the significance of which Miss Margaret
+could hardly mistake, the doctor fell back again in his chair, and
+regarded with complacency the comely young woman before him.
+
+But before she could collect her shocked wits to reply, the
+entrance of Jake Getz's son, Sammy, interrupted them. He had come
+into the house at the kitchen door, and, having announced the
+object of his errand to the landlady, who, by the way, was his
+father's sister, he was followed into the sitting-room by a
+procession, consisting of his aunt, her husband, and their two
+little daughters.
+
+Sammy was able to satisfy but meagerly the eager curiosity or
+interest of the household as to Tillie's illness, and his aunt,
+cousins, and uncle presently returned to their work in the kitchen
+or out of doors, while the doctor rose reluctantly to go to the
+stables to hitch up.
+
+"Pop says to say you should hurry," said Sammy.
+
+"There's time plenty," petulantly answered the doctor. "I
+conceited I'd stay settin' with you this evening," he said
+regretfully to Miss Margaret. "But a doctor can't never make no
+plans to stay no-wheres! Well!" he sighed, "I'll go round back now
+and hitch a while."
+
+"Sammy," said Miss Margaret, when she found herself alone with the
+child, "wasn't your mother afraid YOU would get ill, coming over
+here, on such a cool evening, barefooted?" "Och, no; she leaves me
+let my shoes off near till it snows already. The teacher we had
+last year he used to do worse 'n that yet!--HE'D WASH HIS FEET IN
+THE WINTER-TIME!" said Sammy, in the tone of one relating a deed
+of valor. "I heard Aunty Em speak how he washed 'em as much as
+oncet a week, still, IN WINTER! The Doc he sayed no wonder that
+feller took cold!"
+
+Miss Margaret gazed at the child with a feeling of fascination.
+"But, Sammy," she said wonderingly, "your front porches get a
+weekly bath in winter--do the people of New Canaan wash their
+porches oftener than they wash themselves?"
+
+"Porches gets dirty," reasoned Sammy. "Folks don't get dirty in
+winter-time. Summer's the time they get dirty, and then they mebbe
+wash in the run."
+
+"Oh!" said Miss Margaret.
+
+During the six weeks of her life in Canaan, she had never once
+seen in this or any other household the least sign of any toilet
+appointments, except a tin basin at the pump, a roller-towel on
+the porch, and a small mirror in the kitchen. Tooth-brushes, she
+had learned, were almost unknown in the neighborhood, nearly every
+one of more than seventeen years wearing "store-teeth." It was a
+matter of much speculation to her that these people, who thought
+it so essential to keep their houses, especially their front
+porches, immaculately scrubbed, should never feel an equal
+necessity as to their own persons.
+
+The doctor came to the door and told Sammy he was ready. "I
+wouldn't do it to go such a muddy night like what this is," he
+ruefully declared to Miss Margaret, "if I didn't feel it was
+serious; Jake Getz wouldn't spend any hirin' a doctor, without it
+was some serious. I'm sorry I got to go."
+
+"Good-night, Sammy," said Miss Margaret. "Give Tillie my love; and
+if she is not able to come to school to-morrow, I shall go to see
+her."
+
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+"NOVELS AIN'T MORAL, DOC!"
+
+
+Tillie still lay on the kitchen settee, her father sitting at her
+side, when the doctor and Sammy arrived. The other children had
+all been put to bed, and Mrs. Getz, seated at the kitchen table,
+was working on a pile of mending by the light of a small lamp.
+
+The doctor's verdict, when he had examined his patient's tongue,
+felt her pulse, and taken her temperature, was not clear.
+
+"She's got a high fever. That's 'a all the fu'ther I can go now.
+What it may turn to till morning, I can't tell TILL morning. Give
+her these powders every hour, without she's sleeping. That's the
+most that she needs just now."
+
+"Yes, if she can keep them powders down," said Mr. Getz,
+doubtfully. "She can't keep nothin' with her."
+
+"Well, keep on giving them, anyhow. She's a pretty sick child."
+
+"You ain't no fears of smallpox, are you?" Mrs. Getz inquired.
+"Mister was afraid it might mebbe be smallpox," she said,
+indicating her husband by the epithet.
+
+"Not that you say that I sayed it was!" Mr. Getz warned the
+doctor. "We don't want no report put out! But is they any
+symptoms?"
+
+"Och, no," the doctor reassured them. "It ain't smallpox. What did
+you give her that she couldn't keep with her?"
+
+"I fed some boiled milk to her."
+
+"Did she drink tea?" he inquired, looking profound.
+
+"We don't drink no store tea," Mrs. Getz answered him. "We drink
+peppermint tea fur supper, still. Tillie she didn't drink none
+this evening. Some says store tea's bad fur the nerves. I ain't
+got no nerves," she went on placidly. "Leastways, I ain't never
+felt none, so fur. Mister he likes the peppermint."
+
+"And it comes cheaper," said Mister.
+
+"Mebbe you've been leavin' Tillie work too much in the hot sun out
+in the fields with you?" the doctor shot a keen glance at the
+father; for Jake Getz was known to all Canaan Township as a man
+that got more work out of his wife and children than any other
+farmer in the district.
+
+"After school, some," Mr. Getz replied. "But not fur long at a
+time, fur it gets late a'ready till she gets home. Anyhow, it's
+healthy fur her workin' in the fields. I guess," he speculated,
+"it was her settin' up in bed readin' last night done it. I don't
+know right how long it went that she was readin' before I seen the
+light, but it was near morning a'ready, and she'd burned near a
+whole candle out."
+
+"And mebbe you punished her?" the doctor inquired, holding his
+hand to Tillie's temples.
+
+"Well," nodded Mr. Getz, "I guess she won't be doin' somepin like
+that soon again. I think, still, I mebbe used the strap too hard,
+her bein' a girl that way. But a body's got to learn 'em when
+they're young, you know. And here it was a NOVEL-book! She
+borrowed the loan of it off of Elviny Dinkleberger! I chucked it
+in the fire! I don't uphold to novel-readin'!"
+
+"Well, now," argued the doctor, settling back in his chair,
+crossing his legs, and thrusting his thumbs into the arm-holes of
+his vest, "some chance times I read in such a 'Home Companion'
+paper, and here this winter I read a piece in nine chapters. I
+make no doubt that was a novel. Leastways, I guess you'd call it a
+novel. And that piece," he said impressively, "wouldn't hurt
+nobody! It learns you. That piece," he insisted, "was got up by a
+moral person."
+
+"Then I guess it wasn't no novel, Doc," Mr. Getz firmly
+maintained. "Anybody knows novels ain't moral. Anyhow, I ain't
+havin' none in my house. If I see any, they get burnt up."
+
+"It's a pity you burnt it up, Jake. I like to come by somepin like
+that, still, to pass the time when there ain't much doin'. How did
+Elviny Dinkleberger come by such a novel?"
+
+"I don't know. If I see her pop, I 'll tell him he better put a
+stop to such behaviors."
+
+Tillie stirred restlessly on her pillow.
+
+"What was the subjeck of that there novel, Tillie?" the doctor
+asked.
+
+"Its subjeck was 'Iwanhoe,'" Mr. Getz answered. "Yes, I chucked it
+right in the stove."
+
+"'Iwanhoe'!" exclaimed the doctor. "Why, Elviny must of borrowed
+the loan of that off of Teacher--I seen Teacher have it."
+
+Tillie turned pleading eyes upon his face, but he did not see her.
+
+"Do you mean to say," demanded Mr. Getz, "that Teacher lends
+NOVELS to the scholars!"
+
+"Och!" said the doctor, suddenly catching the frantic appeal of
+Tillie's eyes, and answering it with ready invention, "what am I
+talkin' about! It was Elviny lent it to Aunty Em's little Rebecca
+at the HOtel, and Teacher was tellin' Rebecca she mustn't read it,
+but give it back right aways to Elviny."
+
+"Well!" said Mr. Getz, "a teacher that would lend novels to the
+scholars wouldn't stay long at William Penn if MY wote could put
+her out! And there 's them on the Board that thinks just like what
+I think!"
+
+"To be sure!" the doctor soothed him. "TO be sure! Yes," he
+romanced, "Rebecca she lent that book off of Elviny Dinkleberger,
+and Teacher she tole Rebecca to give it back."
+
+"I'll speak somepin to Elviny's pop, first time I see him, how
+Elviny's lendin' a novel to the scholars!" affirmed Mr. Getz.
+
+"You needn't trouble," said the doctor, coolly. "Elviny's pop he
+GIVE Elviny that there book last Christmas. I don't know what
+he'll think, Jake, at your burnin' it up."
+
+Tillie was gazing at the doctor, now, half in bewilderment, half
+in passionate gratitude.
+
+"If Tillie did get smallpox," Mrs. Getz here broke in, "would she
+mebbe have to be took to the pest-house?"
+
+Tillie started, and her feverish eyes sought in the face of the
+doctor to know what dreadful place a "pest-house" might be.
+
+"Whether she'd have to be took to the pest-house?" the doctor
+inquiringly repeated. "Yes, if she took the smallpox. But she
+ain't takin' it. You needn't worry."
+
+"Doctors don't know near as much now as what they used to, still,"
+Mr. Getz affirmed. "They didn't HAVE to have no such pest-houses
+when I was a boy. Leastways, they didn't have 'em. And they didn't
+never ketch such diseases like 'pendycitis and grip and them."
+
+"Do you mean to say, Jake Getz, that you pass it as your opinion
+us doctors don't know more now than what they used to know thirty
+years ago, when you was a boy?"
+
+"Of course they don't," was the dogmatic rejoinder. "Nor nobody
+knows as much now as they did in ancient times a'ready. I mean
+back in Bible times."
+
+"Do you mean to say," hotly argued the doctor, "that they had
+automobiles in them days?"
+
+"To be sure I do! Automobiles and all the other lost sciences!"
+
+"Well," said the doctor, restraining his scorn with a mighty
+effort, "I'd like to see you prove it oncet!"
+
+"I can prove it right out of the Bible! Do you want better proof
+than that, Doc? The Bible says in so many words, 'There's nothing
+new under the sun.' There! You can't come over that there, can
+you? You don't consider into them things enough, Doc. You ain't a
+religious man, that 's the trouble!"
+
+"I got religion a plenty, but I don't hold to no SICH dumm
+thoughts!"
+
+"Did you get your religion at Bethel rewiwal?" Mrs. Getz quickly
+asked, glancing up from the little stocking she was darning, to
+look with some interest at the doctor. "I wanted to go over oncet
+before the rewiwal's done. But now Tillie's sick, mebbe I won't
+get to go fur all. When they have rewiwals at Bethel they always
+make so! And," she added, resuming her darning, "I like to see 'em
+jump that way. My, but they jump, now, when they get happy! But I
+didn't get to go this year yet."
+
+"Well, and don't you get affected too?" the doctor asked, "and go
+out to the mourners' bench?"
+
+"If I do? No, I go just to see 'em jump," she monotonously
+repeated. "I wasn't never conwerted. Mister he's a hard
+Evangelical, you know."
+
+"And what does he think of your unconwerted state?" the doctor
+jocularly inquired.
+
+"What he thinks? There's nothing to think," was the stolid answer.
+
+"Up there to Bethel rewiwal," said Mr. Getz, "they don't stay
+conwerted. Till rewiwal's over, they're off church again."
+
+"It made awful funny down there this two weeks back," repeated
+Mrs. Getz. "They jumped so. Now there's the Lutherans, they don't
+make nothin' when they conwert themselves. They don't jump nor
+nothin'. I don't like their meetin's. It's onhandy Tillie got sick
+fur me just now. I did want to go oncet. Here 's all this mendin'
+she could have did, too. She 's handier at sewin' than what I am,
+still. I always had so much other work, I never come at sewin',
+and I 'm some dopplig at it."
+
+"Yes?--yes," said the doctor, rising to go. "Well, Tillie, good-
+by, and don't set up nights any more readin' novels," he laughed.
+
+"She ain't likely to," said her father. "My childern don't
+generally do somepin like that again after I once ketch 'em at it.
+Ain't so, Tillie? Well, then, Doc, you think she ain't serious?"
+
+"I said I can't tell till I've saw her again a'ready."
+
+"How long will it go till you come again?"
+
+"Well," the doctor considered, "it looks some fur fallin' weather
+--ain't? If it rains and the roads are muddy till morning, so 's I
+can't drive fast, I won't mebbe be here till ten o'clock."
+
+"Oh, doctor," whispered Tillie, in a tone of distress, "can't I go
+to school? Can't I? I'll be well enough, won't I? It's Friday to-
+morrow, and I--I want to go!" she sobbed. "I want to go to Miss
+Margaret!"
+
+"No, you can't go to school to-morrow, Tillie," her father said,
+"even if you're some better; I'm keepin' you home to lay still one
+day anyhow."
+
+"But I don't want to stay home!" the child exclaimed, casting off
+the shawl with which her father had covered her and throwing out
+her arms. "I want to go to school! I want to, pop!" she sobbed,
+almost screaming. "I want to go to Miss Margaret! I will, I will!"
+
+"Tillie--Tillie!" her father soothed her in that unwonted tone of
+gentleness that sounded so strange to her. His face had turned
+pale at her outcries, delirious they seemed to him, coming from
+his usually meek and submissive child. "There now," he said,
+drawing the cover over her again; "now lay still and be a good
+girl, ain't you will?"
+
+"Will you leave me go to school to-morrow?" she pleaded piteously.
+"DARE I go to school to-morrow?"
+
+"No, you dassent, Tillie. But if you're a good girl, mebbe I 'll
+leave Sammy ast Teacher to come to see you after school."
+
+"Oh, pop!" breathed the child ecstatically, as in supreme
+contentment she sank back again on her pillow. "I wonder will she
+come? Do you think she will come to see me, mebbe?"
+
+"To be sure will she."
+
+"Now think," said the doctor, "how much she sets store by Teacher!
+And a lot of 'em's the same way--girls AND boys."
+
+"I didn't know she was so much fur Teacher," said Mr. Getz. "She
+never spoke nothin'."
+
+"She never spoke nothin' to me about it neither," said Mrs. Getz.
+
+"Well, I 'll give you all good-by, then," said the doctor; and he
+went away.
+
+On his slow journey home through the mud he mused on the
+inevitable clash which he foresaw must some day come between the
+warm-hearted teacher (whom little Tillie so loved, and who so
+injudiciously lent her "novel-books") and the stern and
+influential school director, Jacob Getz.
+
+"There MY chanct comes in," thought the doctor; "there's where I
+mebbe put in my jaw and pop the question--just when Jake Getz is
+makin' her trouble and she's gettin' chased off her job. I passed
+my word I'd stand by her, and, by gum, I 'll do it! When she's out
+of a job--that's the time she 'll be dead easy! Ain't? She's the
+most allurin' female I seen since my wife up't and died fur me!"
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+JAKE GETZ IN A QUANDARY
+
+
+Tillie's illness, though severe while it lasted, proved to be a
+matter of only a few days' confinement to bed; and fortunately for
+her, it was while she was still too weak and ill to be called to
+account for her misdeed that her father discovered her deception
+as to the owner of "Ivanhoe." At least he found out, in talking
+with Elviny Dinkleberger and her father at the Lancaster market,
+that the girl was innocent of ever having owned or even seen the
+book, and that, consequently, she had of course never lent it
+either to Rebecca Wackernagel at the hotel or to Tillie.
+
+Despite his rigorous dealings with his family (which, being the
+outcome of the Pennsylvania Dutch faith in the Divine right of the
+head of the house, were entirely conscientious), Jacob Getz was
+strongly and deeply attached to his wife and children; and his
+alarm at Tillie's illness, coming directly upon his severe
+punishment of her, had softened him sufficiently to temper his
+wrath at finding that she had told him what was not true.
+
+What her object could have been in shielding the real owner of the
+book he could not guess. His suspicions did not turn upon the
+teacher, because, in the first place, he would have seen no reason
+why Tillie should wish to shield her, and, in the second, it was
+inconceivable that a teacher at William Penn should set out so to
+pervert the young whom trusting parents placed under her care.
+There never had been a novel-reading teacher at William Penn. The
+Board would as soon have elected an opium-eater.
+
+WHERE HAD TILLIE OBTAINED THAT BOOK? And why had she put the blame
+on Elviny, who was her little friend? The Doc, evidently, was in
+league with Tillie! What could it mean? Jake Getz was not used to
+dealing with complications and mysteries. He pondered the case
+heavily.
+
+When he went home from market, he did not tell Tillie of his
+discovery, for the doctor had ordered that she be kept quiet.
+
+Not until a week later, when she was well enough to be out of bed,
+did he venture to tell her he had caught her telling a falsehood.
+
+He could not know that the white face of terror which she turned
+to him was fear for Miss Margaret and not, for once, apprehension
+of the strap.
+
+"I ain't whippin' you this time," he gruffly said, "if you tell me
+the truth whose that there book was."
+
+Tillie did not speak. She was resting in the wooden rocking-chair
+by the kitchen window, a pillow at her head and a shawl over her
+knees. Her stepmother was busy at the table with her Saturday
+baking; Sammy was giving the porch its Saturday cleaning, and the
+other children, too little to work, were playing outdoors; even
+the baby, bundled up in its cart, was out on the grass-plot.
+
+"Do you hear me, Tillie? Whose book was that there?"
+
+Tillie's head hung low and her very lips were white. She did not
+answer.
+
+"You 're goin' to act stubborn to ME!" her father incredulously
+exclaimed, and the woman at the table turned and stared in dull
+amazement at this unheard-of defiance of the head of the family.
+"Tillie!" he grasped her roughly by the arm and shook her. "Answer
+to me!"
+
+Tillie's chest rose and fell tumultuously. Bat she kept her eyes
+downcast and her lips closed.
+
+"Fur why don't you want to tell, then?"
+
+"I--can't, pop!"
+
+"Can't! If you wasn't sick I 'd soon learn you if you can't! Now
+you might as well tell me right aways, fur I'll make you tell me
+SOME time!"
+
+Tillie's lips quivered and the tears rolled slowly over her white
+cheeks.
+
+"Fur why did you say it was Elviny?"
+
+"She was the only person I thought to say."
+
+"But fur why didn't you say the person it WAS? Answer to me!" he
+commanded.
+
+Tillie curved her arm over her face and sobbed. She was still too
+weak from her fever to bear the strain of this unequal contest of
+wills.
+
+"Well," concluded her father, his anger baffled and impotent
+before the child's weakness, "I won't bother you with it no more
+NOW. But you just wait till you 're well oncet! We'll see then if
+you'll tell me what I ast you or no!"
+
+"Here's the Doc," announced Mrs. Getz, as the sound of wheels was
+heard outside the gate.
+
+"Well," her husband said indignantly as he rose and went to the
+door, "I just wonder what he's got to say fur hisself, lyin' to me
+like what he done!"
+
+"Hello, Jake!" was the doctor's breezy greeting as he walked into
+the kitchen, followed by a brood of curious little Getzes, to whom
+the doctor's daily visits were an exciting episode. "Howdy-do,
+missus," he briskly addressed the mother of the brood, pushing his
+hat to the back of his head in lieu of raising it. "And how's the
+patient?" he inquired with a suddenly professional air and tone.
+"Some better, heh? HEH? Been cryin'! What fur?" he demanded,
+turning to Mr. Getz. "Say, Jake, you ain't been badgerin' this kid
+again fur somepin? She'll be havin' a RElapse if you don't leave
+her be!"
+
+"It's YOU I'm wantin' to badger, Doc Weaver!" retorted Mr. Getz.
+"What fur did you lie to me about that there piece entitled
+'Iwanhoe'?"
+
+"You and your 'Iwanhoe' be blowed! Are you tormentin' this here
+kid about THAT yet? A body'd think you'd want to change that
+subjec', Jake Getz!"
+
+"Not till I find from you, Doc, whose that there novel-book was,
+and why you tole me it was Elviny Dinkleberger's!"
+
+"That's easy tole," responded the doctor. "That there book
+belonged to--"
+
+"No, Doc, no, no!" came a pleading cry from Tillie. "Don't tell,
+Doc, please don't tell!"
+
+"Never you mind, Tillie, THAT'S all right. Look here, Jake Getz!"
+The doctor turned his sharp little eyes upon the face of the
+father grown dark with anger at his child's undutiful
+interference. "You're got this here little girl worked up to the
+werge of a RElapse! I tole you she must be kep' quiet and not
+worked up still!"
+
+"All right. I'm leavin' HER alone--till she's well oncet! You just
+answer fur YOURself and tell why you lied to me!"
+
+"Well, Jake, it was this here way. That there book belonged to ME
+and Tillie lent it off of me. That's how! Ain't Tillie?"
+
+Mr. Getz stared in stupefied wonder, while Mrs. Getz, too, looked
+on with a dull interest, as she leaned her back against the sink
+and dried her hands upon her apron.
+
+As for Tillie, a great throb of relief thrilled through her as she
+heard the doctor utter this Napoleonic lie--only to be followed
+the next instant by an overwhelming sense of her own wickedness in
+thus conniving with fraud. Abysses of iniquity seemed to yawn at
+her feet, and she gazed with horror into their black depths. How
+could she ever again hold up her head.
+
+But--Miss Margaret, at least, was safe from the School Board's
+wrath and indignation, and how unimportant, compared with that,
+was her own soul's salvation!
+
+"Why didn't Tillie say it was yourn?" Mr. Getz presently found
+voice to ask.
+
+"I tole her if she left it get put out I am addicted to novel
+readin'," said the doctor glibly, and with evident relish, "it
+might spoil my practice some. And Tillie she's that kind-hearted
+she was sorry far me!"
+
+"And so you put her up to say it was Elviny's! You put her up to
+tell lies to her pop!"
+
+"Well, I never thought you 'd foller it up any, Jake, and try to
+get ELVINY into trouble."
+
+"Doc, I always knowed you was a blasPHEmer and that you didn't
+have no religion. But I thought you had anyhow morals. And I
+didn't think, now, you was a coward that way, to get behind a
+child and lie out of your own evil deeds!"
+
+"I'm that much a coward and a blasPHEmer, Jake, that I 'm goin' to
+add the cost of that there book of mine where you burnt up, to
+your doctor's bill, unlest you pass me your promise you 'll drop
+this here subjec' and not bother Tillie with it no more."
+
+The doctor had driven his victim into a corner. To yield a point
+in family discipline or to pay the price of the property he had
+destroyed--one of the two he must do. It was a most untoward
+predicament for Jacob Getz.
+
+"You had no right to lend that there Book to Tillie, Doc, and I
+ain't payin' you a cent fur it!" he maintained.
+
+"I jus' mean, Jake, I 'll make out my bill easy or stiff accordin'
+to the way you pass your promise."
+
+"If my word was no more better 'n yours, Doe, my passin' my
+promise wouldn't help much!"
+
+"That's all right, Jake. I don't set up to be religious and moral.
+I ain't sayed my prayers since I am old enough a'ready to know how
+likely I was, still, to kneel on a tack!"
+
+"It's no wonder you was put off of church!" was the biting retort.
+
+"Hold up there, Jake. I wasn't put off. I WENT off. I took myself
+off of church before the brethren had a chanct to PUT me off."
+
+"Sammy!" Mr. Getz suddenly and sharply admonished his little son,
+who was sharpening his slate-pencil on the window-sill with a
+table-knife, "you stop right aways sharpenin' that pencil! You
+dassent sharpen your slate-pencils, do you hear? It wastes 'em
+so!"
+
+Sammy hastily laid down the knife and thrust the pencil into his
+pocket.
+
+Mr. Getz turned again to the doctor and inquired irritably, "What
+is it to YOU if I teach my own child to mind me or not, I'd like
+to know?"
+
+"Because she's been bothered into a sickness with this here thing
+a'ready, and it 's time it stopped now!"
+
+"It was you started it, leavin' her lend the book off of you!"
+
+"That's why I feel fur sparin' her some more trouble, seein' I was
+the instrument in the hands of Providence fur gettin' her into all
+this here mess. See?"
+
+"I can't be sure when TO know if you're lyin' or not," said Mr.
+Getz helplessly.
+
+"Mebbe you can't, Jake. Sometimes I'm swangfid if I'm sure, still,
+myself. But there's one thing you KIN be cocksure of--and that's
+a big doctor-bill unlest you do what I sayed."
+
+"Now that I know who she lent the book off of there ain't nothin'
+to bother her about," sullenly granted Mr. Getz. "And as fur
+punishment--she's had punishment a-plenty, I guess, in her bein'
+so sick."
+
+"All right," the doctor said magnanimously. "There's one thing I
+'ll give you, Jake: you're a man of your word, if you ARE a Dutch
+hog!"
+
+"A--WHATEVER?" Mr. Getz angrily demanded.
+
+"And I don't see," the doctor complacently continued, rising and
+pulling his hat down to his eyebrows, preparatory to leaving,
+"where Tillie gets her fibbin' from. Certainly not from her pop."
+
+"I don't mind her ever tellin' me no lie before."
+
+"Och, Jake, you drive your children to lie to you, the way you
+bring 'em up to be afraid of you. They GOT to lie, now and again,
+to a feller like you! Well, well," he soothingly added as he saw
+the black look in the father's face at the airing of such views in
+the presence of his children, "never mind, Jake, it 's all in the
+day's work!"
+
+He turned for a parting glance at Tillie. "She 's better. She 'll
+be well till a day or two, now, and back to school--IF she's kep'
+quiet, and her mind ain't bothered any. Now, GOOD-by to yous."
+
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+"THE LAST DAY OF PUMP-EYE"
+
+
+For a long time after her unhappy experiences with "Ivanhoe"
+Tillie did not again venture to transgress against her father's
+prohibition of novels. But her fear of the family strap, although
+great, did not equal the keenness of her mental hunger, and was
+not sufficient, therefore, to put a permanent check upon her
+secret midnight reading, though it did lead her to take every
+precaution against detection. Miss Margaret continued to lend her
+books and magazines from time to time, and in spite of the child's
+reluctance to risk involving the teacher in trouble with the
+School Board through her father, she accepted them. And so during
+all this winter, through her love for books and her passionate
+devotion to her teacher, the little girl reveled in feasts of
+fancy and emotion and this term at school was the first season of
+real happiness her young life had ever known.
+
+Once on her return from school the weight of a heavy volume had
+proved too great a strain on her worn and thin undergarment during
+the long walk home; the skirt had torn away from the band, and as
+she entered the kitchen, her stepmother discovered the book.
+Tillie pleaded with her not to tell her father, and perhaps she
+might have succeeded in gaining a promise of secrecy had it not
+happened that just at the critical moment her father walked into
+the kitchen.
+
+Of course, then the book was handed over to him, and Tillie with
+it.
+
+"Did you lend this off the Doc again?" her father sternly
+demanded, the fated book in one hand and Tillie's shoulder grasped
+in the other.
+
+Tillie hated to utter the lie. She hoped she had modified her
+wickedness a bit by answering with a nod of her head.
+
+"What's he mean, throwin' away so much money on books?" Mr. Getz
+took time in his anger to wonder. He read the title, "'Last Days
+of Pump-eye.' Well!" he exclaimed, "this here's the last HOUR of
+this here 'Pump-eye'! In the stove she goes! I don't owe the Doc
+no doctor's bill NOW, and I'd like to see him make me pay him fur
+these here novels he leaves you lend off of him!"
+
+"Please, please, pop!" Tillie gasped, "don't burn it. Give it back
+to--him! I won't read it--I won't bring home no more books of--
+hisn! Only, please, pop, don't burn it--please!"
+
+For answer, he drew her with him as he strode to the fireplace.
+"I'm burnin' every book you bring home, do you hear?" he
+exclaimed; but before he could make good his words, the kitchen
+door was suddenly opened, and Sammy's head was poked in, with the
+announcement, "The Doc's buggy's comin' up the road!" The door
+banged shut again, but instantly Tillie wrenched her shoulder free
+from her father's hand, flew out of doors and dashed across the
+"yard" to the front gate. Her father's voice followed her, calling
+to her from the porch to "come right aways back here!" Unheeding,
+she frantically waved to the doctor in his approaching buggy.
+Sammy, with a bevy of small brothers and sisters, to whom, no less
+than to their parents, the passing of a "team" was an event not to
+be missed, were all crowded close to the fence.
+
+"Some one sick again?" inquired the doctor as he drew up at
+Tillie's side.
+
+"No, Doc--but," Tillie could hardly get her breath to speak,
+"pop's goin' to burn up 'Last Days of Pompeii'; it's Miss
+Margaret's, and he thinks it's yourn; come in and take it, "Doc--
+PLEASE--and give it back to Miss Margaret, won't you?"
+
+"Sure!" The doctor was out of his buggy at her side in an instant.
+
+"Oh!" breathed Tillie, "here's pop comin' with the book!"
+
+"See me fix him!" chuckled the doctor. "He's so dumm he'll b'lee'
+most anything. If I have much more dealin's with your pop, Tillie,
+I'll be ketchin' on to how them novels is got up myself. And then
+mebbe I'll LET doctorin', and go to novel-writin'!"
+
+The doctor laughed with relish of his own joke, as Mr. Getz, grim
+with anger, stalked up to the buggy.
+
+"Look-ahere!" His voice was menacing as he held out the open book
+for Tillie's inspection, and the child turned cold as she read on
+the fly-leaf,
+
+"Margaret Lind.
+
+"From A. C. L.
+
+Christmas, 18--"
+
+"You sayed the Doc give it to you! Did you lend that other 'n' off
+of Teacher too? Answer to me! I'll have her chased off of William
+Penn! I'll bring it up at next Board meetin'!"
+
+"Hold your whiskers, Jake, or they'll blow off! You're talkin'
+through your hat! Don't be so dumm! Teacher she gev me that there
+book because she passed me her opinion she don't stand by novel-
+readin'. She was goin' to throw out that there book and I says I'd
+take it if she didn't want it. So then I left Tillie borrow the
+loan of it."
+
+"So that's how you come by it, is it?" Mr. Getz eyed the doctor
+with suspicion. "How did you come by that there 'Iwanhoe'?"
+
+"That there I bought at the second-hand book-store in there at
+Lancaster one time. I ain't just so much fur books, but now and
+again I like to buy one too, when I see 'em cheap."
+
+"Well, here!" Mr. Getz tossed the book into tie buggy. "Take your
+old 'Pump-eye.' And clear out. If I can't make you stop tryin' to
+spoil my child fur me, I can anyways learn her what she'll get
+oncet, if she don't mind!"
+
+Again his hand grasped Tillie's shoulder as he turned her about to
+take her into the house.
+
+"You better watch out, Jake Getz, or you 'll have another doctor's
+bill to pay!" the doctor warningly called after him. "That girl of
+yourn ain't strong enough to stand your rough handlin', and you'll
+find it out some day--to your regret! You'd better go round back
+and let off your feelin's choppin' wood fur missus, stead of
+hittin' that little girl, you big dopple!"
+
+Mr. Getz stalked on without deigning to reply, thrusting Tillie
+ahead of him. The doctor jumped into his buggy and drove off.
+
+His warning, however, was not wholly lost upon the father.
+Tillie's recent illness had awakened remorse for the severe
+punishment he had given her on the eve of it; and it had also
+touched his purse; and so, though she did not escape punishment
+for this second and, therefore, aggravated offense, it was meted
+out in stinted measure. And indeed, in her relief and thankfulness
+at again saving Miss Margaret, the child scarcely felt the few
+light blows which, in order that parental authority be maintained,
+her father forced himself to inflict upon her.
+
+In spite of these mishaps, however, Tillie continued to devour all
+the books she could lay hold of and to run perilous risks for the
+sake of the delight she found in them.
+
+Miss Margaret stood to her for an image of every heroine of whom
+she read in prose or verse, and for the realization of all the
+romantic day-dreams in which, as an escape from the joyless and
+sordid life of her home, she was learning to live and move and
+have her being.
+
+Therefore it came to her as a heavy blow indeed when, just after
+the Christmas holidays, her father announced to her on the first
+morning of the reopening of school, "You best make good use of
+your time from now on, Tillie, fur next spring I'm takin' you out
+of school."
+
+Tillie's face turned white, and her heart thumped in her breast so
+that she could not speak.
+
+"You're comin' twelve year old," her father continued, "and you're
+enough educated, now, to do you. Me and mom needs you at home."
+
+It never occurred to Tillie to question or discuss a decision of
+her father's. When he spoke it was a finality and one might as
+well rebel at the falling of the snow or rain. Tillie's woe was
+utterly hopeless.
+
+Her dreary, drooping aspect in the next few days was noticed by
+Miss Margaret.
+
+"Pop's takin' me out of school next spring," she heart-brokenly
+said when questioned. "And when I can't see you every day, Miss
+Margaret, I won't feel for nothin' no more. And I thought to get
+more educated than what I am yet. I thought to go to school till I
+was anyways fourteen."
+
+So keenly did Miss Margaret feel the outrage and wrong of Tillie's
+arrested education, when her father could well afford to keep her
+in school until she was grown, if he would; so stirred was her
+warm Southern blood at the thought of the fate to which poor
+Tillie seemed doomed--the fate of a household drudge with not a
+moment's leisure from sunrise to night for a thought above the
+grubbing existence of a domestic beast of burden (thus it all
+looked to this woman from Kentucky), that she determined, cost
+what it might, to go herself to appeal to Mr. Getz.
+
+"He will have me 'chased off of William Penn,'" she ruefully told
+herself. "And the loss just now of my munificent salary of thirty-
+five dollars a month would be inconvenient. 'The Doc' said he
+would 'stand by' me. But that might be more inconvenient still!"
+she thought, with a little shudder. "I suppose this is an
+impolitic step for me to take. But policy 'be blowed,' as the
+doctor would say! What are we in this world for but to help one
+another? I MUST try to help little Tillie--bless her!"
+
+So the following Monday afternoon after school, found Miss
+Margaret, in a not very complacent or confident frame of mind,
+walking with Tillie and her younger brother and sister out over
+the snow-covered road to the Getz farm to face the redoubtable
+head of the family.
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+MISS MARGARET'S ERRAND
+
+
+It was half-past four o'clock when they reached the farm-house,
+and they found the weary, dreary mother of the family cleaning
+fish at the kitchen sink, one baby pulling at her skirts, another
+sprawling on the floor at her feet.
+
+Miss Margaret inquired whether she might see Mr. Getz.
+
+"If you kin? Yes, I guess," Mrs. Getz dully responded. "Sammy, you
+go to the barn and tell pop Teacher's here and wants to speak
+somepin to him. Mister's out back," she explained to Miss
+Margaret, "choppin' wood."
+
+Sammy departed, and Miss Margaret sat down in the chair which
+Tillie brought to her. Mrs. Getz went on with her work at the
+sink, while Tillie set to work at once on a crock of potatoes
+waiting to be pared.
+
+"You are getting supper very early, aren't you?' Miss Margaret
+asked, with a friendly attempt to make conversation.
+
+"No, we're some late. And I don't get it ready yet, I just start
+it. We're getting strangers fur supper."
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"Yes. Some of Mister's folks from East Bethel."
+
+"And are they strangers to you?"
+
+Mrs. Getz paused in her scraping of the fish to consider the
+question.
+
+"If they're strangers to us? Och, no. We knowed them this long
+time a'ready. Us we're well acquainted. But to be sure they don't
+live with us, so we say strangers is comin'. You don't talk like
+us; ain't?"
+
+"N--not exactly."
+
+"I do think now (you must excuse me sayin' so) but you do talk
+awful funny," Mrs. Getz smiled feebly.
+
+"I suppose I do," Miss Margaret sympathetically replied.
+
+Mr. Getz now came into the room, and Miss Margaret rose to greet
+him.
+
+"I'm much obliged to meet you," he said awkwardly as he shook
+hands with her.
+
+He glanced at the clock on the mantel, then turned to speak to
+Tillie.
+
+"Are yous home long a'ready?" he inquired.
+
+"Not so very long," Tillie answered with an apprehensive glance at
+the clock.
+
+"You're some late," he said, with a threatening little nod as he
+drew up a chair in front of the teacher.
+
+"It's my fault," Miss Margaret hastened to say, "I made the
+children wait to bring me out here."
+
+"Well," conceded Mr. Getz, "then we'll leave it go this time."
+
+Miss Margaret now bent her mind to the difficult task of
+persuading this stubborn Pennsylvania Dutchman to accept her views
+as to what was for the highest and best good of his daughter.
+Eloquently she pointed out to him that Tillie being a child of
+unusual ability, it would be much better for her to have an
+education than to be forced to spend her days in farm-house
+drudgery.
+
+But her point of view, being entirely novel, did not at all appeal
+to him.
+
+"I never thought to leave her go to school after she was twelve.
+That's long enough fur a girl; a female don't need much book-
+knowledge. It don't help her none to keep house fur her mister."
+
+"But she could become a teacher and then she could earn money,"
+Miss Margaret argued, knowing the force of this point with Mr.
+Getz.
+
+"But look at all them years she'd have to spend learnin' herself
+to be intelligent enough fur to be a teacher, when she might be
+helpin' me and mom."
+
+"But she could help you by paying board here when she becomes the
+New Canaan teacher."
+
+"That's so too," granted Mr. Getz; and Margaret grew faintly
+hopeful.
+
+"But," he added, after a moment's heavy weighing of the matter,
+"it would take too long to get her enough educated fur to be a
+teacher, and I'm one of them," he maintained, "that holds a child
+is born to help the parent, and not contrarywise--that the parent
+must do everything fur the child that way."
+
+"If you love your children, you must wish for their highest good,"
+she suggested, "and not trample on their best interests."
+
+"But they have the right to work for their parents," he insisted.
+"You needn't plague me to leave Tillie stay in school, Teacher. I
+ain't leavin' her!"
+
+"Do you think you have a right to bring children into the world
+only to crush everything in them that is worth while?" Margaret
+dared to say to him, her face flushed, her eyes bright with the
+intensity of her feelings.
+
+"That's all blamed foolishness!" Jake Getz affirmed.
+
+"Do you think that your daughter, when she is grown and realizes
+all that she has lost, will 'rise up and call you blessed'?" she
+persisted.
+
+"Do I think? Well, what I think is that it's a good bit more
+particular that till she's growed she's been learnt to work and
+serve them that raised her. And what I think is that a person
+ain't fit to be a teacher of the young that sides along with the
+childern ag'in' their parents."
+
+Miss Margaret felt that it was time she took her leave.
+
+"Look-ahere oncet, Teacher!" Mr. Getz suddenly said, fixing on her
+a suspicious and searching look, "do you uphold to novel-readin'?"
+
+Miss Margaret hesitated perceptibly. She must shield Tillie even
+more than herself. "What a question to ask of the teacher at
+William Penn!" she gravely answered.
+
+"I know it ain't such a wery polite question," returned Mr. Getz,
+half apologetically. "But the way you side along with childern
+ag'in' their parents suspicions me that the Doc was lyin' when he
+sayed them novel-books was hisn. Now was they hisn or was they
+yourn?"
+
+Miss Margaret rose with a look and air of injury. "'Mr. Getz, no
+one ever before asked me such questions. Indeed," she said, in a
+tone of virtuous primness, "I can't answer such questions."
+
+"All the same," sullenly asserted Mr. Getz, "I wouldn't put it a-
+past you after the way you passed your opinion to me this after!"
+
+"I must be going," returned Miss Margaret with dignity.
+
+Mrs. Getz came forward from the stove with a look and manner of
+apology for her husband's rudeness to the visitor.
+
+"What's your hurry? Can't you stay and eat along? We're not
+anyways tired of you."
+
+"Thank you. But they will be waiting for me at the hotel," said
+Miss Margaret gently.
+
+Tillie, a bit frightened, also hovered near, her wistful little
+face pale. Miss Margaret drew her to her and held her at her side,
+as she looked up into the face of Mr. Getz.
+
+"I am very, very sorry, Mr. Getz, that my visit has proved so
+fruitless. You don't realize what a mistake you are making."
+
+"That ain't the way a teacher had ought to talk before a scholar
+to its parent!" indignantly retorted Mr. Getz. "And I'm pretty
+near sure it was all the time YOU where lent them Books to Tillie
+--corruptin' the young! I can tell you right now, I ain't votin'
+fur you at next election! And the way I wote is the way two other
+members always wotes still--and so you'll lose your job at William
+Penn! That's what you get fur tryin' to interfere between a parent
+and a scholar! I hope it'll learn you!"
+
+"And when is the next election?" imperturbably asked Miss
+Margaret.
+
+"Next month on the twenty-fifth of February. Then you'll see
+oncet!"
+
+"According to the terms of my agreement with the Board I hold my
+position until the first of April unless the Board can show
+reasons why it should be taken from me. What reasons can you
+show?"
+
+"That you side along with the--"
+
+"That I try to persuade you not to take your child out of school
+when you can well afford to keep her there. That's what you have
+to tell the Board."
+
+Mr. Getz stared at her, rather baffled. The children also stared
+in wide-eyed curiosity, realizing with wonder that Teacher was
+"talkin' up to pop!" It was a novel and interesting spectacle.
+
+"Well, anyways," continued Mr. Getz, rallying, "I'll bring it up
+in Board meeting that you mebbe leave the scholars borry the loan
+of novels off of you."
+
+"But you can't prove it. I shall hold the Board to their contract.
+They can't break it."
+
+Miss Margaret was taking very high ground, of which, in fact, she
+was not at all sure.
+
+Mr. Getz gazed at her with mingled anger and fascination. Here was
+certainly a new species of woman! Never before had any teacher at
+William Penn failed to cringe to his authority as a director.
+
+"This much I KIN say," he finally declared. "Mebbe you kin hold us
+to that there contract, but you won't, anyways, be elected to come
+back here next term! That's sure! You'll have to look out fur
+another place till September a'ready. And we won't give you no
+recommend, neither, to get yourself another school with!"
+
+Just here it was that Miss Margaret had her triumph, which she was
+quite human enough to thoroughly enjoy.
+
+"You won't have a chance to reelect me, for I am going to resign
+at the end of the term. I am going to be married the week after
+school closes."
+
+Never had Mr. Getz felt himself so foiled. Never before had any
+one subject in any degree to his authority so neatly eluded a
+reckoning at his hands. A tingling sensation ran along his arm and
+he had to restrain his impulse to lift it, grasp this slender
+creature standing so fearlessly before him, and thoroughly shake
+her.
+
+"Who's the party?" asked Mrs. Getz, curiously. "It never got put
+out that you was promised. I ain't heard you had any steady
+comp'ny. To be sure, some says the Doc likes you pretty good. Is
+it now, mebbe, the Doc? But no," she shook her head; "Mister's
+sister Em at the hotel would have tole me. Is it some one where
+lives around here?"
+
+"I don't mind telling you," Miss Margaret graciously answered,
+realizing that her reply would greatly increase Mr. Getz's sense
+of defeat. "It is Mr. Lansing, a nephew of the State
+Superintendent of schools and a professor at the Millersville
+Normal School."
+
+"Well, now just look!" Mrs. Getz exclaimed wonderingly. "Such a
+tony party! The State Superintendent's nephew! That's even a more
+way-up person than what the county superintendent is! Ain't? Well,
+who'd 'a' thought!"
+
+"Miss Margaret!" Tillie breathed, gazing up at her, her eyes wide
+and strained with distress, "if you go away and get married, won't
+I NEVER see you no more?"
+
+"But, dear, I shall live so near--at the Normal School only a few
+miles away. You can come to see me often."
+
+"But pop won't leave me, Miss Margaret--it costs too expensive to
+go wisiting, and I got to help with the work, still. O Miss
+Margaret!" Tillie sobbed, as Margaret sat down and held the
+clinging child to her, "I'll never see you no more after you go
+away!"
+
+"Tillie, dear!" Margaret tried to soothe her. "I 'll come to see
+YOU, then, if you can't come to see me. Listen, Tillie,--I've just
+thought of something."
+
+Suddenly she put the little girl from her and stood up.
+
+"Let me take Tillie to live with me next fall at the Normal
+School. Won't you do that, Mr. Getz!" she urged him. "She could go
+to the preparatory school, and if we stay at Millersville, Dr.
+Lansing and I would try to have her go through the Normal School
+and graduate. Will you consent to it, Mr. Getz?"
+
+"And who'd be payin' fur all this here?" Mr. Getz ironically
+inquired.
+
+"Tillie could earn her own way as my little maid--helping me keep
+my few rooms in the Normal School building and doing my mending
+and darning for me. And you know after she was graduated she could
+earn her living as a teacher."
+
+Margaret saw the look of feverish eagerness with which Tillie
+heard this proposal and awaited the outcome.
+
+Before her husband could answer, Mrs. Getz offered a weak protest.
+
+"I hear the girls hired in town have to set away back in the
+kitchen and never dare set front--always away back, still. Tillie
+wouldn't like that. Nobody would."
+
+"But I shall live in a small suite of rooms at the school--a
+library, a bedroom, a bath-room, and a small room next to mine
+that can be Tillie's bedroom. We shall take our meals in the
+school dining-room."
+
+"Well, that mebbe she wouldn't mind. But 'way back she wouldn't be
+satisfied to set. That's why the country girls don't like to hire
+in town, because they dassent set front with the missus. Here last
+market-day Sophy Haberbush she conceited she'd like oncet to hire
+out in town, and she ast me would I go with her after market to
+see a lady that advertised in the newspaper fur a girl, and I
+sayed no, I wouldn't mind. So I went along. But Sophy she wouldn't
+take the place fur all. She ast the lady could she have her
+country company, Sundays--he was her company fur four years now
+and she wouldn't like to give him up neither. She tole the lady
+her company goes, still, as early as eleven. But the lady sayed
+her house must be darkened and locked at half-past ten a'ready.
+She ast me was I Sophy's mother and I sayed no, I'm nothin' to her
+but a neighbor woman. And she tole Sophy, when they eat, still,
+Sophy she couldn't eat along. I guess she thought Sophy Haberbush
+wasn't good enough. But she's as good as any person. Her mother's
+name is Smith before she was married, and them Smiths was well
+fixed. She sayed Sophy'd have to go in and out the back way and
+never out the front. Why, they say some of the town people's that
+proud, if the front door-bell rings and the missus is standin'
+right there by it, she won't open that there front door but wants
+her hired girl to come clear from the kitchen to open it. Yes, you
+mightn't b'lee me, but I heerd that a'ready. And Mary Hertzog she
+tole me when she hired out there fur a while one winter in town,
+why, one day she went to the missus and she says, 'There's two
+ladies in the parlor and I tole 'em you was helpin' in the
+kitchen,' and the missus she ast her, 'What fur did you tell 'em
+that? Why, I'm that ashamed I don't know how to walk in the
+parlor!' And Mary she ast the colored gentleman that worked there,
+what, now, did the missus mean?--and he sayed, 'Well, Mary, you've
+a heap to learn about the laws of society. Don't you know you must
+always leave on the ladies ain't doin' nothin'?' Mary sayed that
+colored gentleman was so wonderful intelligent that way. He'd been
+a restaurant waiter there fur a while and so was throwed in with
+the best people, and he was, now, that tony and high-minded! Och,
+I wouldn't hire in town! To be sure, Mister can do what he wants.
+Well," she added, "it's a quarter till five--I guess I'll put the
+peppermint on a while. Mister's folks'll be here till five."
+
+She moved away to the stove, and Margaret resumed her assault upon
+the stubborn ignorance of the father.
+
+"Think, Mr. Getz, what a difference all this would make in
+Tillie's life," she urged.
+
+"And you'd be learnin' her all them years to up and sass her pop
+when she was growed and earnin' her own livin'!" he objected.
+
+"I certainly would not."
+
+"And all them years till she graduated she'd be no use to us where
+owns her," he said, as though his child were an item of live stock
+on the farm.
+
+"She could come home to you in the summer vacations," Margaret
+suggested.
+
+"Yes, and she'd come that spoilt we couldn't get no work out of
+her. No, if I hire her out winters, it'll be where I kin draw her
+wages myself--where's my right as her parent. What does a body
+have childern fur? To get no use out of 'em? It ain't no good
+you're plaguin' me. I ain't leavin' her go. Tillie!" he commanded
+the child with a twirl of his thumb and a motion of his head; "go
+set the supper-table!"
+
+Margaret laid her arm about Tillie's shoulder. "Well, dear," she
+said sorrowfully, "we must give it all up, I suppose. But don't
+lose heart, Tillie. I shall not go out of your life. At least we
+can write to each other. Now," she concluded, bending and kissing
+her, "I must go, but you and I shall have some talks before you
+stop school, and before I go away from New Canaan."
+
+She pressed her lips to Tillie's in a long kiss, while the child
+clung to her in passionate devotion. Mr. Getz looked on with dull
+bewilderment. He knew, in a vague way, that every word the teacher
+spoke to the child, no less than those useless caresses, was
+"siding along with the scholar ag'in' the parent," and yet he
+could not definitely have stated just how. He was quite sure that
+she would not dare so to defy him did she not know that she had
+the whip-handle in the fact that she did not want her "job" next
+year, and that the Board could not, except for definite offenses,
+break their contract with her. It was only in view of these
+considerations that she played her game of "plaguing" him by
+championing Tillie. Jacob Getz was incapable of recognizing in the
+teacher's attitude toward his child an unselfish interest and
+love.
+
+So, in dogged, sullen silence, he saw this extraordinary young
+woman take her leave and pass out of his house.
+
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+"I'LL DO MY DARN BEST, TEACHER!"
+
+
+It soon "got put out" in New Canaan that Miss Margaret was
+"promised," and the doctor was surprised to find how much the news
+depressed him.
+
+"I didn't know, now, how much I was stuck on her! To think I can't
+have her even if I do want her" (up to this time he had had
+moments now and then of not feeling absolutely sure of his
+inclination), "and that she's promised to one of them tony
+Millersville Normal professors! If it don't beat all! Well," he
+drew a long, deep sigh as, lounging back in his buggy, he let his
+horse jog at his own gait along the muddy country road, "I jus'
+don't feel fur NOTHIN' to-day. She was now certainly a sweet
+lady," he thought pensively, as though alluding to one who had
+died. "If there's one sek I do now like, it's the female--and she
+was certainly a nice party!"
+
+In the course of her career at William Penn, Miss Margaret had
+developed such a genuine fondness for the shaggy, good-natured,
+generous, and unscrupulous little doctor, that before she
+abandoned her post at the end of the term, and shook the dust of
+New Canaan from her feet, she took him into her confidence and
+begged him to take care of Tillie.
+
+"She is an uncommon child, doctor, and she must--I am determined
+that she must--be rescued from the life to which that father of
+hers would condemn her. You must help me to bring it about."
+
+"Nothin' I like better, Teacher, than gettin' ahead of Jake Getz,"
+the doctor readily agreed. "Or obligin' YOU. To tell you the
+truth,--and it don't do no harm to say it now,--if you hadn't been
+promised, I was a-goin' to ast you myself! You took notice I gave
+you an inwitation there last week to go buggy-ridin' with me. That
+was leadin' up to it. After that Sunday night you left me set up
+with you, I never conceited you was promised a'ready to somebody
+else--and you even left me set with my feet on your chair-rounds!"
+The doctor's tone was a bit injured.
+
+"Am I to understand," inquired Miss Margaret, wonderingly, "that
+the permission to sit with one's feet on the rounds of a lady's
+chair is taken in New Canaan as an indication of her favor--and
+even of her inclination to matrimony?"
+
+"It's looked to as meanin' gettin' down to BIZ!" the doctor
+affirmed.
+
+"Then," meekly, "I humbly apologize."
+
+"That's all right," generously granted the doctor, "if you didn't
+know no better. But to be sure, I'm some disappointed."
+
+"I'm sorry for that!"
+
+"Would you of mebbe said yes, if you hadn't of been promised
+a'ready to one of them tony Millersville Normal professors," the
+doctor inquired curiously--"me bein' a professional gentleman that
+way?"
+
+"I'm sure," replied this daughter of Eve, who wished to use the
+doctor in her plans for Tillie, "I should have been highly
+honored."
+
+The rueful, injured look on the doctor's face cleared to flattered
+complacency. "Well," he said, "I'd like wery well to do what you
+ast off of me fur little Tillie Getz. But, Teacher, what can a
+body do against a feller like Jake Getz? A body can't come between
+a man and his own offspring."
+
+"I know it," replied Margaret, sadly. "But just keep a little
+watch over Tillie and help her whenever you see that you can.
+Won't you? Promise me that you will. You have several times helped
+her out of trouble this winter. There may be other similar
+opportunities. Between us, doctor, we may be able to make
+something of Tillie."
+
+The doctor shook his head. "I'll do my darn best, Teacher, but
+Jake Getz he's that wonderful set. A little girl like Tillie
+couldn't never make no headway with Jake Getz standin' in her
+road. But anyways, Teacher, I pass you my promise I'll do what I
+can."
+
+Miss Margaret's parting advice and promises to Tillie so fired the
+girl's ambition and determination that some of the sting and
+anguish of parting from her who stood to the child for all the
+mother-love that her life had missed, was taken away in the
+burning purpose with which she found herself imbued, to bend her
+every thought and act in all the years to come to the reaching of
+that glorious goal which her idolized teacher set before her.
+
+"As soon as you are old enough," Miss Margaret admonished her,
+"you must assert yourself. Take your rights--your right to an
+education, to some girlish pleasures, to a little liberty. No
+matter what you have to suffer in the struggle, FIGHT IT OUT, for
+you will suffer more in the end if you let yourself be defrauded
+of everything which makes it worth while to have been born. Don't
+let yourself be sacrificed for those who not only will never
+appreciate it, but who will never be worth it. I think I do you no
+harm by telling you that you are worth all the rest of your family
+put together. The self-sacrifice which pampers the selfishness of
+others is NOT creditable. It is weak. It is unworthy. Remember
+what I say to you--make a fight for your rights, just as soon as
+you are old enough--your right to be a woman instead of a chattel
+and a drudge. And meantime, make up for your rebellion by being as
+obedient and helpful and affectionate to your parents as you can
+be, without destroying yourself."
+
+Such sentiments and ideas were almost a foreign language to
+Tillie, and yet, intuitively, she understood the import of them.
+In her loneliness, after Miss Margaret's departure, she treasured
+and brooded over them day and night; and very much as the
+primitive Christian courted martyrdom, her mind dwelt, with ever-
+growing resolution, upon the thought of the heroic courage with
+which, in the years to come, she would surely obey them.
+
+Miss Margaret had promised Tillie that she would write to her, and
+the child, overlooking the serious difficulties in the way, had
+eagerly promised in return, to answer her letters.
+
+Once a week Mr. Getz called for mail at the village store, and
+Miss Margaret's first letter was laboriously read by him on his
+way out to the farm.
+
+He found it, on the whole, uninteresting, but he vaguely gathered
+from one or two sentences that the teacher, even at the distance
+of five miles, was still trying to "plague" him by "siding along
+with his child ag'in' her parent."
+
+"See here oncet," he said to Tillie, striding to the kitchen stove
+on his return home, the letter in his hand: "this here goes after
+them novel-books, in the fire! I ain't leavin' that there woman
+spoil you with no such letters like this here. Now you know!"
+
+The gleam of actual wickedness in Tillie's usually soft eyes, as
+she saw that longed-for letter tossed into the flames, would have
+startled her father had he seen it. The girl trembled from head to
+foot and turned a deathly white.
+
+"I hate you, hate you, hate you!" her hot heart was saying as she
+literally glared at her tormentor. "I'll never forget this--never,
+never; I'll make you suffer for it--I will, I will!"
+
+But her white lips were dumb, and her impotent passion, having no
+other outlet, could only tear and bruise her own heart as all the
+long morning she worked in a blind fury at her household tasks.
+
+But after dinner she did an unheard-of thing. Without asking
+permission, or giving any explanation to either her father or her
+stepmother, she deliberately abandoned her usual Saturday
+afternoon work of cleaning up (she said to herself that she did
+not care if the house rotted), and dressing herself, she walked
+straight through the kitchen before her stepmother's very eyes,
+and out of the house.
+
+Her father was out in the fields when she undertook this high-
+handed step; and her mother was so dumb with amazement at such
+unusual behavior that she offered but a weak protest.
+
+"What'll pop say to your doin' somepin like this here!" she called
+querulously after Tillie as she followed her across the kitchen to
+the door. "He'll whip you, Tillie; and here's all the sweepin' to
+be did--"
+
+There was a strange gleam in Tillie's eyes before which the woman
+shrank and held her peace. The girl swept past her, almost walked
+over several of the children sprawling on the porch, and went out
+of the gate and up the road toward the village.
+
+"What's the matter of her anyways?" the woman wonderingly said to
+herself as she went back to her work. "Is it that she's so spited
+about that letter pop burnt up? But what's a letter to get spited
+about? There was enough worse things'n that that she took off her
+pop without actin' like this. Och, but he'll whip her if he gets
+in here before she comes back. Where's she goin' to, I wonder!
+Well, I never did! I would not be HER if her pop finds how she
+went off and let her work! I wonder shall I mebbe tell him on her
+or not, if he don't get in till she's home a'ready?"
+
+She meditated upon this problem of domestic economy as she
+mechanically did her chores, her reflections on Tillie taking an
+unfriendly color as she felt the weight of her stepdaughter's
+abandoned tasks added to the already heavy burden of her own.
+
+It was to see the doctor that Tillie had set out for the village
+hotel. He was the only person in all her little world to whom she
+felt she could turn for help in her suffering. Her "Aunty Em," the
+landlady at the hotel, was, she knew, very fond of her; but Tillie
+never thought of appealing to her in her trouble.
+
+"I never thought when I promised Miss Margaret I'd write to her
+still where I'd get the stamps from, and the paper and envelops,"
+Tillie explained to the doctor as they sat in confidential
+consultation in the hotel parlor, the child's white face of
+distress a challenge to his faithful remembrance of his promise to
+the teacher. "And now I got to find some way to let her know I
+didn't see her letter to me. Doc, will you write and tell her for
+me?" she pleaded.
+
+"My hand-writin' ain't just so plain that way, Tillie. But I'll
+give you all the paper and envelops and stamps you want to write
+on yourself to her."
+
+"Oh, Doc!" Tillie gazed at him in fervent gratitude. "But mebbe I
+hadn't ought to take 'em when I can't pay you."
+
+"That's all right. If it'll make you feel some easier, you kin pay
+me when you're growed up and teachin'. Your Miss Margaret she's
+bound to make a teacher out of you--or anyways a educated person.
+And then you kin pay me when you're got your nice education to
+make your livin' with."
+
+"That's what we'll do then!" Tillie joyfully accepted this
+proposal. "I'll keep account and pay you back every cent, Doc,
+when I'm earnin' my own livin'."
+
+"All right. That's settled then. Now, fur your gettin' your
+letters, still, from Teacher. How are we goin' to work that there?
+I'll tell you, Tillie!" he slapped the table as an idea came to
+him. "You write her off a letter and tell her she must write her
+letters to you in a envelop directed to ME. And I'll see as you
+get 'em all right, you bet! Ain't?"
+
+"Oh, Doc!" Tillie was affectionately grateful. "You are so kind to
+me! What would I do without you?" Tears choked her voice, filled
+her eyes, and rolled down her face.
+
+"Och, that's all right," he patted her shoulder. "Ain't no better
+fun goin' fur me than gettin' ahead of that mean old Jake Getz!"
+Tillie drew back a bit shocked; but she did not protest.
+
+Carrying in her bosom a stamped envelop, a sheet of paper and a
+pencil, the child walked home in a very different frame of mind
+from that in which she had started out. She shuddered as she
+remembered how wickedly rebellious had been her mood that morning.
+Never before had such hot and dreadful feelings and thoughts
+burned in her heart and brain. In an undefined way, the growing
+girl realized that such a state of mind and heart was unworthy her
+sacred friendship with Miss Margaret.
+
+"I want to be like her--and she was never ugly in her feelings
+like what I was all morning!"
+
+When she reached home, she so effectually made up for lost time in
+the vigor with which she attacked the Saturday cleaning that Mrs.
+Getz, with unusual forbearance, decided not to tell her father of
+her insubordination.
+
+Tillie wrote her first letter to Miss Margaret, ty stealth, at
+midnight.
+
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+ADAM SCHUNK'S FUNERAL
+
+
+A crucial struggle with her father, to which both Tillie and Miss
+Margaret had fearfully looked forward, came about much sooner than
+Tillie had anticipated. The occasion of it, too, was not at all
+what she had expected and even planned it to be.
+
+It was her conversion, just a year after she had been taken out of
+school, to the ascetic faith of the New Mennonites that
+precipitated the crisis, this conversion being wrought by a sermon
+which she heard at the funeral of a neighboring farmer.
+
+A funeral among the farmers of Lancaster County is a festive
+occasion, the most popular form of dissipation known, bringing the
+whole population forth as in some regions they turn out to a
+circus.
+
+Adam Schank's death, having been caused by his own hand in a fit
+of despair over the loss of some money he had unsuccessfully
+invested, was so sudden and shocking that the effect produced on
+Canaan Township was profound, not to say awful.
+
+As for Tillie, it was the first event of the kind that had ever
+come within her experience, and the religious sentiments in which
+she had been reared aroused in her, in common with the rest of the
+community, a superstitious fear before this sudden and solemn
+calling to judgment of one whom they had all known so familiarly,
+and who had so wickedly taken his own life.
+
+During the funeral at the farm-house, she sat in the crowded
+parlor where the coffin stood, and though surrounded by people,
+she felt strangely alone with this weird mystery of Death which
+for the first time she was realizing.
+
+Her mother was in the kitchen with the other farmers' wives of the
+neighborhood who were helping to prepare the immense quantity of
+food necessary to feed the large crowd that always attended a
+funeral, every one of whom, by the etiquette of the county,
+remained to supper after the services.
+
+Her father, being among the hired hostlers of the occasion, was
+outside in the barn. Mr. Getz was head hostler at every funeral of
+the district, being detailed to assist and superintend the work of
+the other half dozen men employed to take charge of the "teams"
+that belonged to the funeral guests, who came in families,
+companies, and crowds. That so well-to-do a farmer as Jake Getz,
+one who owned his farm "clear," should make a practice of hiring
+out as a funeral hostler, with the humbler farmers who only rented
+the land they tilled, was one of the facts which gave him his
+reputation for being "keen on the penny."
+
+Adam Schunk, deceased, had been an "Evangelical," but his wife
+being a New Mennonite, a sect largely prevailing in southeastern
+Pennsylvania, the funeral services were conducted by two
+ministers, one of them a New Mennonite and the other an
+Evangelical. It was the sermon of the New Mennonite that led to
+Tillie's conversion.
+
+The New Mennonites being the most puritanic and exclusive of all
+sects, earnestly regarding themselves as the custodians of the
+only absolutely true light, their ministers insist on certain
+prerogatives as the condition of giving their services at a
+funeral. A New Mennonite preacher will not consent to preach after
+a "World's preacher"--he must have first voice. It was therefore
+the somber doctrine of fear preached by the Reverend Brother Abram
+Underwocht which did its work upon Tillie's conscience so
+completely that the gentler Gospel set forth afterward by the
+Evangelical brother was scarcely heeded.
+
+The Reverend Brother Abram Underwocht, in the "plain" garb of the
+Mennonite sect, took his place at the foot of the stairway opening
+out of the sitting-room, and gave expression to his own profound
+sense of the solemnity of the occasion by a question introductory
+to his sermon, and asked in a tone of heavy import: "If this ain't
+a blow, what is it?"
+
+Handkerchiefs were promptly produced and agitated faces hidden
+therein.
+
+Why this was a "blow" of more than usual force, Brother Underwocht
+proceeded to explain in a blood-curdling talk of more than an
+hour's length, in which he set forth the New Mennonite doctrine
+that none outside of the only true faith of Christ, as held and
+taught by the New Mennonites, could be saved from the fire which
+cannot be quenched. With the heroism born of deep conviction, he
+stoically disregarded the feelings of the bereaved family, and
+affirmed that the deceased having belonged to one of "the World's
+churches," no hope could be entertained for him, nor could his
+grieving widow look forward to meeting him again in the heavenly
+home to which she, a saved New Mennonite, was destined.
+
+Taking advantage of the fact that at least one third of those
+present were non-Mennonites, Brother Underwoeht followed the usual
+course of the preachers of his sect on such an occasion, and made
+of his funeral sermon an exposition of the whole field of New
+Mennonite faith and practice. Beginning in the Garden of Eden, he
+graphically described that renowned locality as a type of the
+Paradise from which Adam Schunk and others who did not "give
+themselves up" were excluded.
+
+"It must have been a magnificent scenery to Almighty Gawd," he
+said, referring to the beauties of man's first Paradise. "But how
+soon to be snatched by sin from man's mortal vision, when Eve
+started that conversation with the enemy of her soul! Beloved,
+that was an unfortunate circumstance! And you that are still out
+of Christ and in the world, have need to pray fur Gawd's help, his
+aid, and his assistance, to enable you to overcome the enemy who
+that day was turned loose upon the world--that Gawd may see fit to
+have you when you're done here a'ready. Heed the solemn warning of
+this poor soul now laying before you cold in death!
+
+    "'Know that you're a transient creature,
+    Soon to fade and pass away."
+
+"Even Lazarus, where [who] was raised to life, was not raised fur
+never to die no more!"
+
+The only comfort he could offer to this stricken household was
+that HE knew how bad they felt, having had a brother who had died
+with equal suddenness and also without hope, as he "had suosode
+hisself with a gun."
+
+This lengthy sermon was followed by a hymn, sung a line at a time
+at the preacher's dictation:
+
+    "The body we now to the grave will commit,
+    To there see corruption till Jesus sees fit
+    A spirit'al body for it to prepare,
+    Which henceforth then shall immortality wear."
+
+The New Mennonites being forbidden by the "Rules of the Meeting"
+ever to hear a prayer or sermon by one who is not "a member," it
+was necessary, at the end of the Reverend Abram Underwocht's
+sermon, for all the Mennonites present to retire to a room apart
+and sit behind closed doors, while the Evangelical brother put
+forth his false doctrine.
+
+So religiously stirred was Tillie by the occasion that she was
+strongly tempted to rise and follow into the kitchen those who
+were thus retiring from the sound of the false teacher's voice.
+But her conversion not yet being complete, she kept her place.
+
+No doubt it was not so much the character of Brother Underwoclit's
+New Mennonite sermon which effected this state in Tillie as that
+the spiritual condition of the young girl, just awakening to her
+womanhood, with all its mysterious craving, its religious
+brooding, its emotional susceptibility, led her to respond with
+her whole soul to the first appeal to her feelings.
+
+Absorbed in her mournful contemplation of her own deep "conviction
+of sin," she did not heed the singing, led by the Evangelical
+brother, of the hymn,
+
+    "Rock of Ages, clept for me,"
+
+nor did she hear a word of his discourse.
+
+At the conclusion of the house services, and before the journey to
+the graveyard, the supper was served, first to the mourners, and
+then to all those who expected to follow the body to the grave.
+The third table, for those who had prepared the meal, and the
+fourth, for the hostlers, were set after the departure of the
+funeral procession.
+
+Convention has prescribed that the funeral meal shall consist
+invariably of cold meat, cheese, all sorts of stewed dried fruits,
+pickles, "lemon rice" (a dish never omitted), and coffee.
+
+As no one household possesses enough dishes for such an occasion,
+two chests of dishes owned by the Mennonite church are sent to the
+house of mourning whenever needed by a member of the Meeting.
+
+The Mennonites present suffered a shock to their feelings upon the
+appearance of the widow of the deceased Adam Schunk, for--
+unprecedented circumstance!--she wore over her black Mennonite
+hood a crape veil! This was an innovation nothing short of
+revolutionary, and the brethren and sisters, to whom their
+prescribed form of dress was sacred, were bewildered to know how
+they ought to regard such a digression from their rigid customs.
+
+"I guess Mandy's proud of herself with her weil," Tillie's
+stepmother whispered to her as she gave the girl a tray of coffee-
+cups to deliver about the table.
+
+But Tillie's thoughts were inward bent, and she heeded not what
+went on about her. Fear of death and the judgment, a longing to
+find the peace which could come only with an assured sense of her
+salvation, darkness as to how that peace might be found, a sense
+of the weakness of her flesh and spirit before her father's
+undoubted opposition to her "turning plain," as well as his
+certain refusal to supply the wherewithal for her Mennonite garb,
+should she indeed be led of the Spirit to "give herself up,"--all
+these warring thoughts and emotions stamped their lines upon the
+girl's sweet, troubled countenance, as, blind and deaf to her
+surroundings, she lent her helping hand almost as one acting in a
+trance.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+"POP! I FEEL TO BE PLAIN"
+
+
+The psychical and, considering the critical age of the young girl,
+the physiological processes by which Tillie was finally led to her
+conversion it is not necessary to analyze; for the experience is
+too universal, and differs too slightly in individual cases, to
+require comment. Perhaps in Tillie's case it was a more intense
+and permanent emotion than with the average convert. Otherwise,
+deep and earnest though it was with her, it was not unique.
+
+The New Mennonite sermon which had been the instrument to
+determine the channel in which should flow the emotional tide of
+her awakening womanhood, had convinced her that if she would be
+saved, she dare not compromise with the world by joining one of
+those churches as, for instance, the Methodist or the Evangelical,
+which permitted every sort of worldly indulgence,--fashionable
+dress, attendance at the circus, voting at the polls, musical
+instruments, "pleasure-seeking," and many other things which the
+Word of God forbade. She must give herself up to the Lord
+absolutely and entirely, forswearing all the world's allurements.
+The New Mennonites alone, of all the Christian sects, lived up to
+this scriptural ideal, and with them Tillie would cast her lot.
+
+This austere body of Christians could not so easily have won her
+heart had it forbidden her cherished ambition, constantly
+encouraged and stimulated by Miss Margaret, to educate herself.
+Fortunately for her peace of mind, the New Mennonites were not,
+like the Amish, "enemies to education," though to be sure, as the
+preacher, Brother Abram Underwocht, reminded her in her private
+talk with him, "To be dressy, or TOO well educated, or stylish,
+didn't belong to Christ and the apostles; they were plain folks."
+
+It was in the lull of work that came, even in the Getz family, on
+Sunday afternoon, that Tillie, summoning to her aid all the fervor
+of her new-found faith, ventured to face the ordeal of opening up
+with her father the subject of her conversion.
+
+He was sitting on the kitchen porch, dozing over a big Bible
+spread open on his knee. The children were playing on the lawn,
+and Mrs. Getz was taking her Sunday afternoon nap on the kitchen
+settee.
+
+Tillie seated herself on the porch step at her father's feet. Her
+eyes were clear and bright, but her face burned, and her heart
+beat heavily in her heaving bosom.
+
+"Pop!" she timidly roused him from his dozing.
+
+"Heh?" he muttered gruffly, opening his eyes and lifting his head.
+
+"Pop, I got to speak somepin to you."
+
+An unusual note in her voice arrested him, and, wide awake now, he
+looked down at her inquiringly.
+
+"Well? What, then?"
+
+"Pop! I feel to be plain."
+
+"YOU! Feel fur turnin' plain! Why, you ain't old enough to know
+the meanin' of it! What d' you want about that there theology?"
+
+"I'm fourteen, pop. And the Spirit has led me to see the light. I
+have gave myself up," she affirmed quietly, but with a quiver in
+her voice.
+
+"You have gave yourself up!" her father incredulously repeated.
+
+"Yes, sir. And I'm loosed of all things that belong to the world.
+And now I feel fur wearin' the plain dress, fur that's according
+to Scripture, which says, 'all is wanity!'"
+
+Never before in her life had Tillie spoken so many words to her
+father at one time, and he stared at her in astonishment.
+
+"Yes, you're growin' up, that's so. I ain't noticed how fast you
+was growin'. It don't seem no time since you was born. But it's
+fourteen years back a'ready--yes, that's so. Well, Tillie, if you
+feel fur joinin' church, you're got to join on to the
+Evangelicals. I ain't leavin' you follow no such nonsense as to
+turn plain. That don't belong to us Getzes. We're Evangelicals
+this long time a'ready."
+
+"Aunty Em was a Getz, and SHE's gave herself up long ago."
+
+"Well, she's the only one by the name Getz that I ever knowed to
+be so foolish! I'm an Evangelical, and what's good enough fur your
+pop will do YOU, I guess!"
+
+"The Evangelicals ain't according to Scripture, pop. They have
+wine at the Communion, and the Bible says, 'Taste not, handle
+not,' and 'Look not upon the wine when it is red.'"
+
+That she should criticize the Evangelicals and pronounce them
+unscriptural was disintegrating to all his ideas of the
+subjection, of children. His sun-burned face grew darker.
+
+"Mebbe you don't twist that there Book! Gawd he wouldn't of
+created wine to be made if it would be wrong fur to look at it!
+You can't come over that, can you? Them Scripture you spoke, just
+mean not to drink to drunkenness, nor eat to gluttonness. But," he
+sternly added, "it ain't fur you to answer up to your pop! I ain't
+leavin' you dress plain--and that's all that's to say!"
+
+"I got to do it, pop," Tillie's low voice answered, "I must obey
+to Christ."
+
+"What you sayin' to me? That you got to do somepin I tole you you
+haven't the dare to do? Are you sayin' that to ME, Tillie? Heh?"
+
+"I got to obey to Christ," she repeated, her face paling.
+
+"You think! Well, we'll see about that oncet! You leave me see you
+obeyin' to any one before your pop, and you'll soon get learnt
+better! How do you bring it out that the Scripture says,
+'Childern, obey your parents'?"
+
+"'Obey your parents in the Lord,'" Tillie amended.
+
+"Well, you'll be obeyin' to the Scripture AND your parent by
+joinin' the Evangelicals. D' you understand?"
+
+"The Evangelicals don't hold to Scripture, pop. They enlist. And
+we don't read of Christ takin' any interest in war."
+
+"Yes, but in the Old Dispensation them old kings did it, and
+certainly they was good men! They're in the Bible!"
+
+"But we're livin' under the New Dispensation. And a many things is
+changed to what they were under the Old. Pop, I can't dress
+fashionable any more."
+
+"Now, look here, Tillie, I oughtn't argy no words with you, fur
+you're my child and you're got the right to mind me just because I
+say it. But can't you see the inconsistentness of the plain
+people? Now a New Mennonite he says his conscience won't leave him
+wear grand [wear worldly dress] but he'll make his livin' in
+Lancaster city by keepin' a jew'lry-store. And yet them Mennonites
+won't leave a sister keep a millinery-shop!"
+
+"But," Tillie tried to hold her ground, "there's watches, pop, and
+clocks that jew'lers sells. They're useful. We got to have watches
+and clocks. Millinery is only pleasing to the eye."
+
+"Well, the women couldn't go bare-headed neither, could they? And
+is ear-rings and such things like them useful? And all them fancy
+things they keep in their dry-goods stores? Och, they're awful
+inconsistent that way! I ain't got no use fur New Mennonites! Why,
+here one day, when your mom was livin' yet, I owed a New Mennonite
+six cents, and I handed him a dime and he couldn't change it out,
+but he sayed he'd send me the four cents. Well, I waited and
+waited, and he never sent it. Then I bought such a postal-card and
+wrote it in town to him yet. And that didn't fetch the four cents
+neither. I wrote to him backward and forward till I had wrote
+three cards a'ready, and then I seen I wouldn't gain nothin' by
+writin' one more if he did pay me, and if he didn't pay I'd lose
+that other cent yet. So I let it. Now that's a New Mennonite fur
+you! Do you call that consistentness?"
+
+"But it's the Word of Gawd I go by, pop, not by the weak
+brethren."
+
+"Well, you'll go by your pop's word and not join to them New
+Mennonites! Now I don't want to hear no more!"
+
+"Won't you buy me the plain garb, pop?"
+
+"Buy you the plain garb! Now look here, Tillie. If ever you ast me
+again to leave you join to anything but the Evangelicals, or speak
+somepin to me about buyin' you the plain garb, I'm usin' the
+strap. Do you hear me?"
+
+"Pop," said Tillie, solemnly, her face very white, "I'll always
+obey to you where I can--where I think it's right to. But if you
+won't buy me the plain dress and cap, Aunty Em Wackernagel's going
+to. She says she never knew what happiness it was to be had in
+this life till she gave herself up and dressed plain and loosed
+herself from all worldly things. And I feel just like her."
+
+"All right--just you come wearin' them Mennonite costumes 'round
+me oncet! I'll burn 'em up like what I burned up them novels where
+you lent off of your teacher! And I'll punish you so's you won't
+try it a second time to do what I tell you you haven't the dare to
+do!"
+
+The color flowed back into Tillie's white face as he spoke. She
+was crimson now as she rose from the porch step and turned away
+from him to go into the house.
+
+Jake Getz realized, as with a sort of dull wonder his eyes
+followed her, that there was a something in his daughter's face
+this day, and in the bearing of her young frame as she walked
+before him, which he was not wont to see, which he did not
+understand, and with which he felt he could not cope. The vague
+sense of uneasiness which it gave him strengthened his resolve to
+crush, with a strong hand, this budding insubordination.
+
+Two uneventful weeks passed by, during which Tillie's quiet and
+dutiful demeanor almost disarmed her father's threatening
+watchfulness of her; so that when, one Sunday afternoon, at four
+o'clock, she returned from a walk to her Aunty Em Wackernagel's,
+clad in the meek garb of the New Mennonites, his amazement at her
+intrepidity was even greater than his anger.
+
+The younger children, in high glee at what to them was a most
+comical transformation in their elder sister, danced around her
+with shrieks of laughter, crying out at the funny white cap which
+she wore, and the prim little three-cornered cape falling over her
+b'osom, designed modestly to cover the vanity of woman's alluring
+form.
+
+Mrs. Getz, mechanically moving about the kitchen to get the
+supper, paused in her work only long enough to remark with stupid
+astonishment, "Did you, now, get religion, Tillie?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am. I've gave myself up."
+
+"Where did you come by the plain dress?"
+
+"Aunty Em bought it for me and helped me make it."
+
+Her father had followed her in from the porch and now came up to
+her as she stood in the middle of the kitchen. The children
+scattered at his approach.
+
+"You go up-stairs and take them clo'es off!" he commanded. "I
+ain't leavin' you wear 'em one hour in this house!"
+
+"I have no others to put on, pop," Tillie gently answered, her
+soft eyes meeting his with an absence of fear which puzzled and
+baffled him.
+
+"Where's your others, then?"
+
+"I've let 'em at Aunty Em's. She took 'em in exchange for my plain
+dress. She says she can use 'em on 'Manda and Rebecca."
+
+"Then you walk yourself right back over to the hotel and get 'em
+back of? of her, and let them clo'es you got on. Go!" he roughly
+pointed to the door.
+
+"She wouldn't give 'em back to me. She'd know I hadn't ought to
+yield up to temptation, and she'd help me to resist by refusing me
+my fashionable clo'es."
+
+"You tell her if you come back home without 'em, I'm whippin' you!
+She'll give 'em to you then."
+
+"She'd say my love to Christ ought not to be so weak but I can
+bear anything you want to do to me, pop. She had to take an awful
+lot off of gran'pop when she turned plain. Pop," she added
+earnestly, "no matter what you do to me, I ain't givin' 'way; I'm
+standin' firm to serve Christ!"
+
+"We'll see oncet!" her father grimly answered, striding across the
+room and taking his strap from its corner in the kitchen cupboard
+he grasped Tillie's slender shoulder and lifted his heavy arm.
+
+And now for the first time in her life his wife interposed a word
+against his brutality.
+
+"Jake!"
+
+In astonishment he turned to her. She was as pale as her
+stepdaughter.
+
+"Jake! If she HAS got religion, you'll have awful bad luck if you
+try to get her away from it!"
+
+"I ain't sayin' she can't get RELIGION if she wants! To be sure, I
+brung her up to be a Christian. But I don't hold to this here
+nonsense of turnin' plain, and I tole her so, and she's got to
+obey to me or I'll learn her!"
+
+"You'll have bad luck if you whip her fur somepin like this here,"
+his wife repeated. "Don't you mind how when Aunty Em turned plain
+and gran'pop he acted to her so ugly that way, it didn't rain fur
+two weeks and his crops was spoilt, and he got that boil yet on
+his neck! Yes, you'll see oncet," she warned him "if you use the
+strap fur somepin like what this is, what you'll mebbe come by
+yet!"
+
+"Och, you're foolish!" he answered, but his tone was not
+confident. His raised arm dropped to his side and he looked
+uneasily into Tillie's face, while he still kept his painful grasp
+of her shoulder.
+
+The soft bright eyes of the young girl met his, not with defiance,
+but with a light in them that somehow brought before his mind the
+look her mother had worn the night she died. Superstition was in
+his blood, and he shuddered inwardly at his uncanny sense of
+mystery before this unfamiliar, illumined countenance of his
+daughter. The exalted soul of the girl cast a spell which even HIS
+unsensitive spirit could keenly feel, and something stirred in his
+breast--the latent sense of affectionate, protecting fatherhood.
+
+Tillie saw and felt this sudden change in him. She lifted her free
+hand and laid it on his arm, her lips quivering. "Father!" she
+half whispered.
+
+She had never called him that before, and it seemed strangely to
+bring home to him what, in this crisis of his child's life, was
+due to her from him, her only living parent.
+
+Suddenly he released her shoulder and tossed away the strap. "I
+see I wouldn't be doin' right to oppose you in this here, Tillie.
+Well, I'm glad, fur all, that I ain't whippin' you. It goes ag'in'
+me to hit you since you was sick that time. You're gettin' full
+big, too, to be punished that there way, fur all I always sayed
+still I'd never leave a child of mine get ahead of me, no matter
+how big they was, so long as they lived off of me. But this here's
+different. You're feelin' conscientious about this here matter,
+and I ain't hinderin' you."
+
+To Tillie's unspeakable amazement, he laid his hand on her head
+and held it there for an instant. "Gawd bless you, my daughter,
+and help you to serve the Lord acceptable!"
+
+So that crisis was past.
+
+But Tillie knew, that night, as she rubbed witch-hazel on her sore
+shoulder, that a far worse struggle was before her. In seeking to
+carry out the determination that burned in her heart to get an
+education, no aid could come to her as it had to-day, from her
+father's sense of religious awe. Would she be able, she wondered,
+to stand firm against his opposition when, a second time, it came
+to an issue between them?
+
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+ABSALOM KEEPS COMPANY
+
+
+Tillie wrote to Miss Margaret (she could not learn to call her
+Mrs. Lansing) how that she had "given herself up and turned
+plain," and Miss Margaret, seeing how sacred this experience was
+to the young girl, treated the subject with all respect and even
+reverence.
+
+The correspondence between these two, together with the books
+which from time to time came to the girl from her faithful friend,
+did more toward Tillie's growth and development along lines of
+which her parents had no suspicion, than all the schooling at
+William Penn, under the instruction of the average "Millersville
+Normal," could ever have accomplished.
+
+And her tongue, though still very provincial, soon lost much of
+its native dialect, through her constant reading and study.
+
+Of course whenever her father discovered her with her books he
+made her suffer.
+
+"You're got education enough a'ready," he would insist. "And too
+much fur your own good. Look at me--I was only educated with a
+Testament and a spelling-book and a slate. We had no such a
+blackboards even, to recite on. And do _I_ look as if I need to
+know any more 'n what I know a'ready?"
+
+Tillie bore her punishments like a martyr--and continued
+surreptitiously to read and to study whenever and whatever she
+could; and not even the extreme conscientiousness of a New
+Mennonite faltered at this filial disobedience. She obeyed her
+father implicitly, however tyrannical he was, to the point where
+he bade her suppress and kill all the best that God had given her
+of mind and heart. Then she revolted; and she never for an instant
+doubted her entire justification in eluding or defying his
+authority.
+
+There was another influence besides her books and Miss Margaret's
+letters which, unconsciously to herself, was educating Tillie at
+this time. Her growing fondness for stealing off to the woods not
+far from the farm, of climbing to the hill-top beyond the creek,
+or walking over the fields under the wide sky--not only in the
+spring and summer, but at all times of the year--was yielding her
+a richness, a depth and breadth, of experience that nothing else
+could have given her.
+
+A nature deeply sensitive to the mysterious appeal of sky and
+green earth, of deep, shady forest and glistening water, when
+unfolding in daily touch with these things, will learn to see life
+with a broader, saner mind and catch glimpses and vistas of truth
+with a clearer vision than can ever come to one whose most
+susceptible years are spent walled in and overtopped by the houses
+of the city that shut out and stifle "the larger thought of God."
+And Tillie, in spite of her narrowing New Mennonite "convictions,"
+did reach through her growing love for and intimacy with Nature a
+plane of thought and feeling which was immeasurably above her
+perfunctory creed.
+
+Sometimes the emotions excited by her solitary walks gave the
+young girl greater pain than happiness--yet it was a pain she
+would not have been spared, for she knew, though the knowledge was
+never formulated in her thought, that in some precious, intimate
+way her suffering set her apart and above the villagers and
+farming people about her--those whose placid, contented eyes never
+strayed from the potato-patch to the distant hills, or lifted
+themselves from the goodly tobacco-fields to the wide blue
+heavens.
+
+Thus, cramped and crushing as much of her life was, it had--as all
+conditions must have--its compensations; and many of the very
+circumstances which at the time seemed most unbearable brought
+forth in later years rich fruit.
+
+And so, living under her father's watchful eye and relentless
+rule,--with long days of drudgery and outward acquiescence in his
+scheme of life that she devote herself, mind, body, and soul, to
+the service of himself, his wife, and their children, and in
+return to be poorly fed and scantily clad,--Tillie nevertheless
+grew up in a world apart, hidden to the sealed vision of those
+about her; as unknown to them in her real life as though they had
+never looked upon her face; and while her father never for an
+instant doubted the girl's entire submission to him, she was day
+by day waxing stronger in her resolve to heed Miss Margaret's
+constant advice and make a fight for her right to the education
+her father had denied her, and for a life other than that to which
+his will would consign her.
+
+There were dark times when her steadfast purpose seemed impossible
+of fulfilment. But Tillie felt she would rather die in the
+struggle than become the sort of apathetic household drudge she
+beheld in her stepmother--a condition into which it would be so
+easy to sink, once she loosed her wagon from its star.
+
+It was when Tillie was seventeen years old--a slight, frail girl,
+with a look in her eyes as of one who lives in two worlds--that
+Absalom Puntz, one Sunday evening in the fall of the year, saw her
+safe home from meeting and asked permission to "keep comp'ny" with
+her.
+
+Now that morning Tillie had received a letter from Miss Margaret
+(sent to her, as always, under cover to the doctor), and Absalom's
+company on the way from church was a most unwelcome interruption
+to her happy brooding over the precious messages of love and
+helpfulness which those letters always brought her.
+
+A request for permission to "keep comp'ny" with a young lady meant
+a very definite thing in Canaan Township. "Let's try each other,"
+was what it signified; and acceptance of the proposition involved
+on each side an exclusion of all association with others of the
+opposite sex. Tillie of course understood this.
+
+"But you're of the World's people, Absalom," her soft, sweet voice
+answered him. They were walking along in the dim evening on the
+high dusty pike toward the Getz farm. "And I'm a member of
+meeting. I can't marry out of the meeting."
+
+"This long time a'ready, Tillie, I was thinkin' about givin'
+myself up and turnin' plain," he assured her. "To be sure, I know
+I'd have to, to git you. You've took notice, ain't you, how
+reg'lar I 'tend meeting? Well, oncet me and you kin settle this
+here question of gittin' married, I'm turnin' plain as soon as I
+otherwise [possibly] kin."
+
+"I have never thought about keeping company, Absalom."
+
+"Nearly all the girls around here as old as you has their friend
+a'ready."
+
+Absalom was twenty years old, stoutly built and coarse-featured, a
+deeply ingrained obstinacy being the only characteristic his heavy
+countenance suggested. He still attended the district school for a
+few months of the winter term. His father was one of the richest
+farmers of the neighborhood, and Absalom, being his only child,
+was considered a matrimonial prize.
+
+"Is there nobody left for you but me?" Tillie inquired in a
+matter-of-fact tone. The conjugal relation, as she saw it in her
+father's home and in the neighborhood, with its entirely practical
+basis and utter absence of sentiment, had no attraction or
+interest for her, and she had long since made up her mind that she
+would none of it.
+
+"There ain't much choice," granted Absalom. "But I anyways would
+pick out you, Tillie."
+
+"Why me?"
+
+"I dunno. I take to you. And I seen a'ready how handy you was at
+the work still. Mom says, too, you'd make me a good housekeeper."
+
+Tillie never dreamed of resenting this practical approval of her
+qualifications for the post with which Absalom designed to honor
+her. It was because of her familiarity with such matrimonial
+standards as these that from her childhood up she had determined
+never to marry. From what she gathered of Miss Margaret's married
+life, through her letters, and from what she learned from the
+books and magazines which she read, she knew that out in the great
+unknown world there existed another basis of marriage. But she did
+not understand it and she never thought about it. The strongly
+emotional tide of her girlhood, up to this time, had been absorbed
+by her remarkable love for Miss Margaret and by her earnest
+religiousness.
+
+"There's no use in your wasting your time keeping company with me,
+Absalom. I never intend to marry. I've made up my mind."
+
+"Is it that your pop won't leave you, or whatever?"
+
+"I never asked him. I don't know what he would say."
+
+"Mom spoke somepin about mebbe your pop he'd want to keep you at
+home, you bein' so useful to him and your mom. But I sayed when
+you come eighteen, you're your own boss. Ain't, Tillie?"
+
+"Father probably would object to my marrying because I'm needed at
+home," Tillie agreed. "That's why they wouldn't leave me go to
+school after I was eleven. But I don't want to marry."
+
+"You leave me be your steady friend, Tillie, and I'll soon get you
+over them views," urged Absalom, confidently.
+
+But Tillie shook her head. "It would just waste your time,
+Absalom."
+
+In Canaan Township it would have been considered highly
+dishonorable for a girl to allow a young man to "sit up with her
+Sundays" if she definitely knew she would never marry him. Time
+meant money, and even the time spent in courting must be
+judiciously used.
+
+"I don't mind if I do waste my time settin' up with you Sundays,
+Tillie. I take to you that much, it's something surprising, now!
+Will you give me the dare to come next Sunday?"
+
+"If you don't mind wasting your time--" Tillie reluctantly
+granted.
+
+"It won't be wasted. I'll soon get you to think different to what
+you think now. You just leave me set up with you a couple Sundays
+and see!"
+
+"I know I'll never think any different, Absalom. You must not
+suppose that I will."
+
+"Is it somepin you're got ag'in' me?" he asked incredulously, for
+he knew he was considered a prize. "I'm well-fixed enough, ain't
+I? I'd make you a good purvider, Tillie. And I don't addict to no
+bad habits. I don't chew. Nor I don't drink. Nor I don't swear
+any. The most I ever sayed when I was spited was 'confound it.'"
+
+"It isn't that I have anything against you, Absalom, especially.
+But--look here, Absalom, if you were a woman, would YOU marry?
+What does a woman gain?"
+
+Absalom stared at her in the dusky evening light of the high road.
+To ask of his slow-moving brain that it question the foundations
+of the universe and wrestle with a social and psychological
+problem like this made the poor youth dumb with bewilderment.
+
+"Why SHOULD a woman get married?" Tillie repeated.
+
+"That's what a woman's FUR," Absalom found his tongue to say.
+
+"She loses everything and gains nothing."
+
+"She gets kep'," Absalom argued.
+
+"Like the horses. Only not so carefully. No, thank you, Absalom. I
+can keep myself."
+
+"I'd keep you better 'n your pop keeps you, anyways, Tillie. I'd
+make you a good purvider."
+
+"I won't ever marry," Tillie repeated.
+
+"I didn't know you was so funny," Absalom sullenly answered. "You
+might be glad I want to be your reg'lar friend."
+
+"No," said Tillie, "I don't care about it."
+
+They walked on in silence for a few minutes. Tillie looked away
+into the starlit night and thought of Miss Margaret and wished she
+were alone, that her thoughts might be uninterrupted. Absalom, at
+her side, kicked up the dust with his heavy shoes, as he sulkily
+hung his head.
+
+Presently he spoke again.
+
+"Will you leave me come to see you Sundays, still, if I take my
+chancet that I'm wastin' my time?"
+
+"If you'll leave it that way," Tillie acquiesced, "and not hold me
+to anything."
+
+"All right. Only you won't leave no one else set up with you,
+ain't not?"
+
+"There isn't any one else."
+
+"But some chance time another feller might turn up oncet that
+wants to keep comp'ny with you too."
+
+"I won't promise anything, Absalom. If you want to come Sundays to
+see me and the folks, you can. That's all I'll say."
+
+"I never seen such a funny girl as what you are!" growled Absalom.
+
+Tillie made no reply, and again they went on in silence.
+
+"Say!" It was Absalom who finally spoke.
+
+Tillie's absent, dreamy gaze came down from the stars and rested
+upon his heavy, dull face.
+
+"Ezra Herr he's resigned William Penn. He's gettin' more pay at
+Abra'm Lincoln in Janewille. It comes unhandy, his leavin', now
+the term's just started and most all the applicants took a'ready.
+Pop he got a letter from in there at Lancaster off of
+Superintendent Reingruber and he's sendin' us a applicant out till
+next Saturday three weeks--fur the directors to see oncet if he'll
+do."
+
+Absalom's father was secretary of the Board, and Mr. Getz was the
+treasurer.
+
+"Pop he's goin' over to see your pop about it till to-morrow
+evenin' a'ready if he can make it suit."
+
+"When does Ezra go?" Tillie inquired. The New Mennonite rule which
+forbade the use of all titles had led to the custom in this
+neighborhood, so populated with Mennonites, of calling each one by
+his Christian name.
+
+"Till next Friday three weeks," Absalom replied. "Pop says he
+don't know what to think about this here man Superintendent
+Reingruber's sendin' out. He ain't no Millersville Normal. The
+superintendent says he's a 'Harvard gradyate'--whatever that is,
+pop says! Pop he sayed it ain't familiar with him what that there
+is. And I guess the other directors don't know neither. Pop he
+sayed when we're payin' as much as forty dollars a month we had
+ought, now, to have a Millersville Normal, and nothin' less. Who
+wants to pay forty dollars a month fur such a Harvard gradyate
+that we don't know right what it is."
+
+"What pay will Ezra get at Janeville?" Tillie asked. Her heart
+beat fast as she thought how SHE might, perhaps, in another year
+be the applicant for a vacancy at William Penn.
+
+"Around forty-five dollars," Absalom answered.
+
+"Oh!" Tillie said; "it seems so much, don't it?"
+
+"Fur settin' and doin' nothin' but hearin' off spellin' and
+readin' and whatever, it's too much! Pop says he's goin' to ast
+your pop and the rest of the Board if they hadn't ought to ast
+this here Harvard gradyate to take a couple dollars less, seein'
+he ain't no Millersville Normal."
+
+They had by this time reached the farm, and Tillie, not very
+warmly, asked Absalom whether he would "come in and sit awhile."
+She almost sighed audibly as he eagerly consented.
+
+When he had left at twelve o'clock that night, she softly climbed
+the stairs to her room, careful not to disturb the sleeping
+household. Tillie wondered why it was that every girl of her
+acquaintance exulted in being asked to keep company with a
+gentleman friend. She had found "sitting up" a more fatiguing task
+than even the dreaded Monday's washing which would confront her on
+the morrow.
+
+"Seein' it's the first time me and you set up together, I mebbe
+better not stay just so late," Absalom had explained when, after
+three hours' courting, he had reluctantly risen to take his leave,
+under the firm conviction, as Tillie plainly saw, that she felt as
+sorry to have him go as evidently he was to part from her!
+
+"How late," thought Tillie, "will he stay the SECOND time he sits
+up with me? And what," she wondered, "do other girls see in it?"
+
+The following Sunday night, Absalom came again, and this time he
+stayed until one o'clock, with the result that on the following
+Monday morning Tillie overslept herself and was one hour late in
+starting the washing.
+
+It was that evening, after supper, while Mrs. Getz was helping her
+husband make his toilet for a meeting of the School Board--at
+which the application of that suspicious character, the Harvard
+graduate, was to be considered--that the husband and wife
+discussed these significant Sunday night visits. Mrs. Getz opened
+up the subject while she performed the wifely office of washing
+her husband's neck, his increasing bulk making that duty a rather
+difficult one for him. Standing over him as he sat in a chair in
+the kitchen, holding on his knees a tin basin full of soapy water,
+she scrubbed his fat, sunburned neck with all the vigor and
+enthusiasm that she would have applied to the cleaning of the
+kitchen porch or the scouring of an iron skillet.
+
+A custom prevailed in the county of leaving one's parlor plainly
+furnished, or entirely empty, until the eldest daughter should
+come of age; it was then fitted up in style, as a place to which
+she and her "regular friend" could retire from the eyes of the
+girl's folks of a Sunday night to do their "setting up." The
+occasion of a girl's "furnishing" was a notable one, usually
+celebrated by a party; and it was this fact that led her
+stepmother to remark presently:
+
+"Say, pop, are you furnishin' fur Tillie, now she's comin'
+eighteen years old?"
+
+"I ain't thought about it," Mr. Getz answered shortly. "That front
+room's furnished good enough a'ready. No--I ain't spendin' any!"
+
+"Seein' she's a member and wears plain, it wouldn't cost wery
+expensive to furnish fur her, fur she hasn't the dare to have
+nothin' stylish like a organ or gilt-framed landscapes or sich
+stuffed furniture that way."
+
+"The room's good enough the way it is," repeated Mr. Getz. "I
+don't see no use spendin' on it."
+
+"It needs new paper and carpet. Pop, it'll get put out if you
+don't furnish fur her. The neighbors'll talk how you're so close
+with your own child after she worked fur you so good still. I
+don't like it so well, pop, havin' the neighbors talk."
+
+"Leave 'em talk. Their talkin' don't cost ME nothin'. I AIN'T
+furnishin'!" His tone was obstinate and angry.
+
+His wife rubbed him down with a crash towel as vigorously as she
+had washed him, then fastened his shirt, dipped the family comb in
+the soapy water and began with artistic care to part and comb his
+hair.
+
+"Absalom Puntz he's a nice party, pop. He'll be well-fixed till
+his pop's passed away a'ready."
+
+"You think! Well, now look here, mom!" Mr. Getz spoke with stern
+decision. "Tillie ain't got the dare to keep comp'ny Sundays! It
+made her a whole hour late with the washin' this mornin'. I'm
+tellin' her she's got to tell Absalom Puntz he can't come no
+more."
+
+Mrs. Getz paused with comb poised in air, and her feeble jaw
+dropped in astonishment.
+
+"Why, pop!" she said. "Ain't you leavin' Tillie keep comp'ny?"
+
+"No," affirmed Mr. Getz. "I ain't. What does a body go to the
+bother of raisin' childern FUR? Just to lose 'em as soon as they
+are growed enough to help earn a little? I ain't LEAVIN' Tillie
+get married! She's stayin' at home to help her pop and mom--
+except in winter when they ain't so much work, and mebbe then I'm
+hirin' her out to Aunty Em at the hotel where she can earn a
+little, too, to help along. She can easy earn enough to buy the
+children's winter clo'es and gums and school-books."
+
+"When she comes eighteen, pop, she'll have the right to get
+married whether or no you'd conceited you wouldn't give her the
+dare."
+
+"If I say I ain't buyin' her her aus styer, Absalom Puntz nor no
+other feller would take her."
+
+An "aus styer" is the household outfit always given to a bride by
+her father.
+
+"Well, to be sure," granted Mrs. Getz, "I'd like keepin' Tillie
+home to help me out with the work still. I didn't see how I was
+ever goin' to get through without her. But I thought when Absalom
+Puntz begin to come Sundays, certainly you'd be fur her havin'
+him. I was sayin' to her only this mornin' that if she didn't want
+to dishearten Absalom from comin' to set up with her, she'd have
+to take more notice to him and not act so dopplig with him--like
+as if she didn't care whether or no he made up to her. I tole her
+I'd think, now, she'd be wonderful pleased at his wantin' her, and
+him so well-fixed. Certainly I never conceited you'd be ag'in' it.
+Tillie she didn't answer nothin'. Sometimes I do now think
+Tillie's some different to what other girls is."
+
+"I'd be glad," said Jacob Getz in a milder tone, "if she ain't set
+on havin' him. I was some oneasy she might take it a little hard
+when I tole her she darsent get married."
+
+"Och, Tillie she never takes nothin' hard," Mrs. Getz answered
+easily. "She ain't never ast me you goin' to furnish fur her. She
+don't take no interest. She's so funny that way. I think to
+myself, still, Tillie is, now, a little dumm!"
+
+It happened that while this dialogue was taking place, Tillie was
+in the room above the kitchen, putting the two most recently
+arrived Getz babies to bed; and as she sat near the open register
+with a baby on her lap, every word that passed between her father
+and stepmother was perfectly audible to her.
+
+With growing bitterness she listened to her father's frank avowal
+of his selfish designs. At the same time she felt a thrill of
+exultation, as she thought of the cherished secret locked in her
+breast--hidden the more securely from those with whom she seemed
+to live nearest. How amazed they would be, her stolid,
+unsuspicious parents, when they discovered that she had been
+secretly studying and, with Miss Margaret's help, preparing
+herself for the high calling of a teacher! One more year, now, and
+she would be ready, Miss Margaret assured her, to take the county
+superintendent's examination for a certificate to teach. Then
+good-by to household drudgery and the perpetual self-sacrifice
+that robbed her of all that was worth while in life.
+
+With a serene mind, Tillie rose, with the youngest baby in her
+arms, and tenderly tucked it in its little bed.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+EZRA HERR, PEDAGOGUE
+
+
+It was a few days later, at the supper-table, that Tillie's father
+made an announcement for which she was not wholly unprepared.
+
+"I'm hirin' you out this winter, Tillie, at the hotel. Aunty Em
+says she's leavin' both the girls go to school again this winter
+and she'll need hired help. She'll pay me two dollars a week fur
+you. She'll pay it to me and I'll buy you what you need, still,
+out of it. You're goin' till next Monday."
+
+Tillie's heart leaped high with pleasure at this news. She was
+fond of her Aunty Em; she knew that life at the country hotel
+would be varied and interesting in comparison with the dull,
+grubbing existence of her own home; she would have to work very
+hard, of course, but not so hard, so unceasingly, as under her
+father's eye; and she would have absolute freedom to devote her
+spare time to her books. The thought of escaping from her father's
+watchfulness, and the prospect of hours of safe and uninterrupted
+study, filled her with secret joy.
+
+"I tole Aunty Em she's not to leave you waste no time readin';
+when she don't need you, you're to come home and help mom still.
+Mom she says she can't get through the winter sewin' without you.
+Well, Aunty Em she says you can sew evenin's over there at the
+HOtel, on the childern's clo'es. Mom she can easy get through the
+other work without you, now Sallie's goin' on thirteen. Till
+December a'ready Sally'll be thirteen. And the winter work's easy
+to what the summer is. In summer, to be sure, you'll have to come
+home and help me and mom. But in winter I'm hirin' you out."
+
+"But Sally ain't as handy as what Tillie is," said Mrs. Getz,
+plaintively. "And I don't see how I'm goin' to get through oncet
+without Tillie."
+
+"Sally's got to LEARN to be handier, that's all. She's got to get
+learnt like what I always learnt Tillie fur you."
+
+Fire flashed in Tillie's soft eyes--a momentary flame of shame and
+aversion; if her blinded father had seen and understood, he would
+have realized how little, after all, he had ever succeeded in
+"learning" her the subservience he demanded of his children.
+
+As for the warning to her aunt, she knew that it would be ignored;
+that Aunty Em would never interfere with the use she made of the
+free time allowed her, no matter what her father's orders were to
+the contrary.
+
+"And you ain't to have Absalom Puntz comin' over there Sundays
+neither," her father added. "I tole Aunty Em like I tole you the
+other day, I ain't leavin' you keep comp'ny. I raised you, now you
+have the right to work and help along a little. It's little enough
+a girl can earn anyways."
+
+Tillie made no comment. Her silence was of course understood by
+her father to mean submission; while her stepmother felt in her
+heart a contempt for a meekness that would bear, without a word of
+protest, the loss of a steady friend so well-fixed and so
+altogether desirable as Absalom Puntz.
+
+In Absalom's two visits Tillie had been sufficiently impressed
+with the steadiness of purpose and obstinacy of the young man's
+character to feel appalled at the fearful task of resisting his
+dogged determination to marry her. So confident he evidently was
+of ultimately winning her that at times Tillie found herself quite
+sharing his confidence in the success of his courting, which her
+father's interdict she knew would not interfere with in the least.
+She always shuddered at the thought of being Absalom's wife; and a
+feeling she could not always fling off, as of some impending doom,
+at times buried all the high hopes which for the past seven years
+had been the very breath of her life.
+
+Tillie had one especially strong reason for rejoicing in the
+prospect of going to the village for the winter. The Harvard
+graduate, if elected, would no doubt board at the hotel, or
+necessarily near by, and she could get him to lend her books and
+perhaps to give her some help with her studies.
+
+The village of New Canaan and all the township were curious to see
+this stranger. The school directors had felt that they were
+conceding a good deal in consenting to consider the application of
+sueh an unknown quantity, when they could, at forty dollars a
+month, easily secure the services of a Millersville Normal. But
+the stress that had been brought to bear upon them by the county
+superintendent, whose son had been a classmate of the candidate,
+had been rather too strong to be resisted; and so the "Harvard
+gradyate man" was coming.
+
+That afternoon Tillie had walked over in a pouring rain to William
+Penn to carry "gums" and umbrellas to her four younger brothers
+and sisters, and she had realized, with deep exultation, while
+listening to Ezra Herr's teaching, that she was already far better
+equipped than was Ezra to do the work he was doing,--and HE was a
+Millersville Normal!
+
+It happened that Ezra was receiving a visit from a committee of
+Janeville school directors, and he had departed from his every-day
+mechanical style of teaching in favor of some fancy methods which
+he had imbibed at the Normal School during his attendance at the
+spring term, and which he reserved for use on occasions like the
+present. Tillie watched him with profound attention, but hardly
+with profound respect.
+
+"Childern," Ezra said, with a look of deep thought, as he
+impressively paced up and down before the class of small boys and
+girls ranged on the platform, "now, childern, what's this reading
+lesson ABOUT?"
+
+"'Bout a apple-tree!" answered several eager little voices.
+
+"Yes," said Ezra. "About an apple-tree. Correct. Now, childern--
+er--what grows on apple-trees, heh?"
+
+"Apples!" answered the intelligent class.
+
+"Correct. Apples. And--now--what was it that came to the apple-
+tree?"
+
+"A little bird."
+
+"Yes. A bird came to the apple tree. Well--er," he floundered for
+a moment, then, by a sudden inspiration, "what can a bird do?"
+
+"Fly! and sing!"
+
+"A bird can fly and sing," Ezra nodded. "Very good. Now, Sadie,
+you dare begin. I 'll leave each one read a werse."
+
+The next recitation was a Fourth Reader lesson consisting of a
+speech of Daniel Webster's, the import of which not one of the
+children, if indeed the teacher himself, had the faintest
+suspicion. And so the class was permitted to proceed, without
+interruption, in its labored conning of the massive eloquence of
+that great statesman; and the directors presently took their
+departure in the firm conviction that in Ezra Herr they had made a
+good investment of the forty-five dollars a month appropriated to
+their town out of the State treasury, and they agreed, on their
+way back to Janeville, that New Canaan was to be pitied for having
+to put up with anything so unheard-of as "a Harvard gradyate or
+whatever," after having had the advantages of an educator like
+Ezra Herr.
+
+And Tillie, as she walked home with her four brothers and sisters,
+hoped, for the sake of her own advancement, that a Harvard
+graduate was at least not LESS intelligent than a Millersville
+Normal.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE HARVARD GRADUATE
+
+
+That a man holding a Harvard degree should consider so humble an
+educational post as that of New Canaan needs a word of
+explanation.
+
+Walter Fairchilds was the protege of his uncle, the High Church
+bishop of a New England State, who had practically, though not
+legally, adopted him, upon the death of his father, when the boy
+was fourteen years old, his mother having died at his birth.
+
+It was tacitly understood by Walter that his uncle was educating
+him for the priesthood. His life, from the time the bishop took
+charge of him until he was ready for college, was spent in Church
+boarding-schools.
+
+A spiritually minded, thoughtful boy, of an emotional temperament
+which responded to every appeal of beauty, whether of form, color,
+sound, or ethics, Walter easily fell in with his uncle's designs
+for him, and rivaled him in the fervor of his devotion to the
+esthetic ritual of his Church.
+
+His summer vacations were spent at Bar Harbor with the bishop's
+family, which consisted of his wife and two anemic daughters. They
+were people of limited interests, who built up barriers about
+their lives on all sides; social hedges which excluded all
+humanity but a select and very dull, uninteresting circle;
+intellectual walls which never admitted a stray unconventional
+idea; moral demarcations which nourished within them the Mammon of
+self-righteousness, and theological harriers which shut out the
+sunlight of a broad charity.
+
+Therefore, when in the course of his career at Harvard, Walter
+Fairchilds discovered that intellectually he had outgrown not only
+the social creed of the divine right of the well-born, in which
+these people had educated him, but their theological creed as
+well, the necessity of breaking the fact to them, of wounding
+their affection for him, of disappointing the fond and cherished
+hope with which for years his uncle had spent money upon his
+education--the ordeal which he had to face was a fiery one.
+
+When, in deepest sorrow, and with all the delicacy of his
+sensitive nature, he told the bishop of his changed mental
+attitude toward the problem of religion, it seemed to him that in
+his uncle's reception of it the spirit of the Spanish Inquisitors
+was revived, so mad appeared to him his horror of this heresy and
+his conviction that he, Walter, was a poison in the moral
+atmosphere, which must be exterminated at any cost.
+
+In this interview between them, the bishop stood revealed to him
+in a new character, and yet Walter seemed to realize that in his
+deeper consciousness he had always known him for what he really
+was, though all the circumstances of his conventional life had
+conduced to hide his real self. He saw, now, how the
+submissiveness of his own dreamy boyhood had never called into
+active force his guardian's native love of domineering; his
+intolerance of opposition; the pride of his exacting will. But on
+the first provocation of circumstances, these traits stood boldly
+forth.
+
+"Is it for this that I have spent my time and money upon you--to
+bring up an INFIDEL?" Bishop Fairchilds demanded, when he had in
+part recovered from the first shock of amazement the news had
+given him.
+
+"I am not an infidel even if I have outgrown High Church dogmas. I
+have a Faith--I have a Religion; and I assure you that I never so
+fully realized the vital truth of my religion as I do now--now
+that I see things, not in the dim cathedral light, but out under
+the broad heavens!"
+
+"How can you dare to question the authority of our Holy Mother,
+the Church, whose teachings have come down to us through all these
+centuries, bearing the sacred sanction of the most ancient
+authority?"
+
+"Old things can rot!" Walter answered.
+
+"And you fancy," the bishop indignantly demanded, "that I will
+give one dollar for your support while you are adhering to this
+blasphemy? That I will ever again even so much as break bread with
+you, until, in humble contrition, you return to your allegiance to
+the Church?"
+
+Walter lifted his earnest eyes and met squarely his uncle's
+frowning stare. Then the boy rose.
+
+"Nothing, then, is left for me," he said steadily, "but to leave
+your home, give up the course of study I had hoped to continue at
+Harvard, and get to work."
+
+"You fully realize all that this step must mean?" his uncle coldly
+asked him. "You are absolutely penniless."
+
+"In a matter of this kind, uncle, you must realize that such a
+consideration could not possibly enter in."
+
+"You have not a penny of your own. The few thousands that your
+father left were long ago used up in your school-bills."
+
+"And I am much in your debt; I know it all."
+
+"So you choose poverty and hardship for the sake of this
+perversity?"
+
+"Others have suffered harder things for principle."
+
+Thus they parted.
+
+And thus it was, through the suddenness and unexpectedness of the
+loss of his home and livelihood, that Walter Fairchilds came to
+apply for the position at William Penn.
+
+"HERE, Tillie, you take and go up to Sister Jennie Hershey's and
+get some mush. I'm makin' fried mush fur supper," said Aunty Em,
+bustling into the hotel kitchen where her niece was paring
+potatoes, one Saturday afternoon. "Here's a quarter. Get two
+pound."
+
+"Oh, Tillie," called her cousin Rebecca from the adjoining dining-
+room, which served also as the family sitting-room, "hurry on and
+you'll mebbe be in time to see the stage come in with the new
+teacher in. Mebbe you'll see him to speak to yet up at Hershey's."
+
+"Lizzie Hershey's that wonderful tickled that the teacher's going
+to board at their place!" said Amanda, the second daughter, a girl
+of Tillie's age, as she stood in the kitchen doorway and watched
+Tillie put on her black hood over the white Mennonite cap. Stout
+Aunty Em also wore the Mennonite dress, which lent a certain
+dignity to her round face with its alert but kindly eyes; but her
+two daughters were still "of the world's people."
+
+"When Lizzie she tole me about it, comin' out from Lancaster after
+market this morning," continued Amanda, "she was now that tickled!
+She sayed he's such a good-looker! Och, I wisht he was stoppin'
+here; ain't, Tillie? Lizzie'll think herself much, havin' a town
+fellah stoppin' at their place."
+
+"If he's stoppin' at Hershey's," said Rebecca, appearing suddenly,
+"that ain't sayin' he has to get in with Lizzie so wonderful
+thick! I hope he's a JOLLY fellah."
+
+Amanda and Rebecca were now girls of seventeen and eighteen years
+--buxom, rosy, absolutely unideal country lasses. Beside them,
+frail little Tillie seemed a creature of another clay.
+
+"Lizzie tole me: she sayed how he come up to their market-stall in
+there at Lancaster this morning," Amanda related, "and tole her
+he'd heard Jonas Hershey's pork-stall at market was where he could
+mebbe find out a place he could board at in New Canaan with a
+private family--he'd sooner live with a private family that way
+than at the HOtel. Well, Lizzie she coaxed her pop right there in
+front of the teacher to say THEY'd take him, and Jonas Hershey he
+sayed HE didn't care any. So Lizzie she tole him then he could
+come to their place, and he sayed he'd be out this after in the
+four-o'clock stage."
+
+"Well, and I wonder what her mother has to say to her and Jonas
+fixin' it up between 'em to take a boarder and not waitin' to ast
+HER!" Aunty Em said. "I guess mebbe Sister Jennie's spited!"
+
+The appellation of "sister" indicated no other relation than that
+of the Mennonite church membership, Mrs. Jonas Hershey being also
+a New Mennonite.
+
+"Now don't think you have to run all the way there and back,
+Tillie," was her aunt's parting injunction. "_I_ don't time you
+like what your pop does! Well, I guess not! I take notice you're
+always out of breath when you come back from an urrand. It's early
+yet--you dare stop awhile and talk to Lizzie."
+
+Tillie gave her aunt a look of grateful affection as she left the
+house. Often when she longed to thank her for her many little acts
+of kindness, the words would not come. It was the habit of her
+life to repress every emotion of her mind, whether of bitterness
+or pleasure, and an unconquerable shyness seized upon her in any
+least attempt to reveal herself to those who were good to her.
+
+It was four o'clock on a beautiful October afternoon as she walked
+up the village street, and while she enjoyed, through all her
+sensitive maiden soul, the sweet sunshine and soft autumn
+coloring, her thought dwelt with a pleasant expectancy on her
+almost inevitable meeting with "the Teacher," if he did indeed
+arrive in the stage now due at New Canaan.
+
+Unlike her cousins Amanda and Rebecca, and their neighbor Lizzie
+Hershey, Tillie's eagerness to meet the young man was not born of
+a feminine hunger for romance. Life as yet had not revealed those
+emotions to her except as she had known them in her love for Miss
+Margaret--which love was indeed full of a sacred sentiment. It was
+only because the teacher meant an aid to the realization of her
+ambition to become "educated" that she was interested in his
+coming.
+
+It was but a few minutes' walk to the home of Jonas Hershey, the
+country pork butcher. As Tillie turned in at the gate, she heard,
+with a leap of her heart, the distant rumble of the approaching
+stagecoach.
+
+Jonas Hershey's home was probably the cleanest, neatest-looking
+red brick house in all the county. The board-walk from the gate to
+the door fairly glistened from the effects of soap and water. The
+flower-beds, almost painfully neat and free from weeds, were laid
+out on a strictly mathematical plan. A border of whitewashed clam-
+shells, laid side by side with military precision, set off the
+brilliant reds and yellows of the flowers, and a glance at them
+was like gazing into the face of the midday sun. Tillie shaded her
+dazzled eyes as she walked across the garden to the side door
+which opened into the kitchen. It stood open and she stepped in
+without ceremony. For a moment she could see nothing but red and
+yellow flowers and whitewashed clam-shells. But as her vision
+cleared, she perceived her neighbor, Lizzie Hershey, a well-built,
+healthy-looking country lass of eighteen years, cutting bread at a
+table, and her mother, a large fat woman wearing the Mennonite
+dress, standing before a huge kitchen range, stirring "ponhaus" in
+a caldron.
+
+The immaculate neatness of the large kitchen gave evidence, as did
+garden, board-walk, and front porch, of that morbid passion for
+"cleaning up" characteristic of the Dutch housewife.
+
+Jonas Hershey did a very large and lucrative business, and the
+work of his establishment was heavy. But he hired no "help" and
+his wife and daughter worked early and late to aid him in earning
+the dollars which he hoarded.
+
+"Sister Jennie!" Tillie accosted Mrs. Hershey with the New
+Mennonite formal greeting, "I wish you the grace and peace of the
+Lord."
+
+"The same to you, sister," Mrs. Hershey replied, bending to
+receive Tillie's kiss as the girl came up to her at the stove--the
+Mennonite interpretation of the command, "Salute the brethren with
+a holy kiss."
+
+"Well, Lizzie," was Tillie's only greeting to the girl at the
+table. Lizzie was not a member of meeting and the rules forbade
+the members to kiss those who were still in the world.
+
+"Well, Tillie," answered Lizzie, not looking up from the bread she
+was cutting.
+
+Tillie instantly perceived a lack of cordiality. Something was
+wrong. Lizzie's face was sullen and her mother's countenance
+looked grim and determined. Tillie wondered whether their evident
+ill-humor were in any way connected with herself, or whether her
+Aunty Em's surmise were correct, and Sister Jennie was really
+"spited."
+
+"I've come to get two pound of mush," she said, remembering her
+errand.
+
+"It's all," Mrs. Hershey returned. "We solt every cake at market,
+and no more's made yet. It was all a'ready till market was only
+half over."
+
+"Aunty Em'll be disappointed. She thought she'd make fried mush
+for supper," said Tillie.
+
+"Have you strangers?" inquired Mrs. Hershey.
+
+"No, we haven't anybody for supper, unless some come on the stage
+this after. We had four for dinner."
+
+"Were they such agents, or what?" asked Lizzie.
+
+Tillie turned to her. "Whether they were agents? No, they were
+just pleasure-seekers. They were out for a drive and stopped off
+to eat."
+
+At this instant the rattling old stage-coach drew up at the gate.
+
+The mother and daughter, paying no heed whatever to the sound,
+went on with their work, Mrs. Hershey looking a shade more grimly
+determined as she stirred her ponhaus and Lizzie more sulky.
+
+Tillie had just time to wonder whether she had better slip out
+before the stranger came in, when a knock on the open kitchen door
+checked her.
+
+Neither mother nor daughter glanced up in answer to the knock.
+Mrs. Hershey resolutely kept her eyes on her caldron as she turned
+her big spoon about in it, and Lizzie, with sullen, averted face,
+industriously cut her loaf.
+
+A second knock, followed by the appearance of a good-looking,
+well-dressed young man on the threshold, met with the same
+reception. Tillie, in the background, and hidden by the stove,
+looked on wonderingly.
+
+The young man glanced, in evident mystification, at the woman by
+the stove and at the girl at the table, and a third time rapped
+loudly.
+
+"Good afternoon!" he said pleasantly, an inquiring note in his
+voice.
+
+Mrs. Hershey and Lizzie went on with their work as though they had
+not heard him.
+
+He took a step into the room, removing his hat. "You were
+expecting me this afternoon, weren't you?" he asked.
+
+"This is the place," Lizzie remarked at last.
+
+"You were looking for me?" he repeated.
+
+Mrs. Hershey suddenly turned upon Lizzie. "Why don't you speak?"
+she inquired half-tauntingly. "You spoke BEFORE."
+
+Tillie realized that Sister Jennie must be referring to Lizzie's
+readiness at market that morning to "speak," in making her
+agreement with the young man for board.
+
+"You spoke this morning," the mother repeated. "Why can't you
+speak now?"
+
+"Och, why don't you speak yourself?" retorted Lizzie. "It ain't
+fur ME to speak!"
+
+The stranger appeared to recognize that he was the subject of a
+domestic unpleasantness.
+
+"You find it inconvenient to take me to board?" he hesitatingly
+inquired of Mrs. Hershey. "I shouldn't think of wishing to
+intrude. There is a hotel in the place, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes. There IS a HOtel in New Canaan."
+
+"I can get board there, no doubt?"
+
+"Well," Mrs. Hershey replied argumentatively, "that's a public
+house and this ain't. We never made no practice of takin'
+boarders. To be sure, Jonas he always was FUR boarders. But I
+AIN'T fur!"
+
+"Oh, yes," gravely nodded the young man. "Yes. I see."
+
+He picked up the dress-suit case which he had set on the sill.
+"Where is the hotel, may I ask?"
+
+"Just up the road a piece. You can see the sign out," said Mrs.
+Hershey, while Lizzie banged the bread-box shut with an energy
+forcibly expressive of her feelings.
+
+"Thank you," responded the gentleman, a pair of keen, bright eyes
+sweeping Lizzie's gloomy face.
+
+He bowed, put his hat on his head and stepped out of the house.
+
+There was a back door at the other side of the kitchen. Not
+stopping for the ceremony of leave-taking, Tillie slipped out of
+it to hurry home before the stranger should reach the hotel.
+
+Her heart beat fast as she hurried across fields by a short-cut,
+and there was a sparkle of excitement in her eyes. Her ears were
+tingling with sounds to which they were unaccustomed, and which
+thrilled them exquisitely--the speech, accent, and tones of one
+who belonged to that world unknown to her except through books--
+out of which Miss Margaret had come and to which this new teacher,
+she at once recognized, belonged. Undoubtedly he was what was
+called, by magazine-writers and novel-writers, a "gentleman." And
+it was suddenly revealed to Tillie that in real life the
+phenomenon thus named was even more interesting than in
+literature. The clean cut of the young man's thin face, his pale
+forehead, the fineness of the white hand he had lifted to his hat,
+his modulated voice and speech, all these things had, in her few
+minutes' observation of him, impressed themselves instantly and
+deeply upon the girl's fresh imagination.
+
+Out of breath from her hurried walk, she reached the back door of
+the hotel several minutes before the teacher's arrival. She had
+just time to report to her aunt that Sister Jennie's mush was
+"all," and to reply in the affirmative to the eager questions of
+Amanda and Rebecca as to whether she had seen the teacher, when
+the sound of the knocker on the front door arrested their further
+catechism.
+
+"The stage didn't leave out whoever it is--it drove right apast,"
+said Aunty Em. "You go, Tillie, and see oncet who is it."
+
+Tillie was sure that she had not been seen by the evicted
+applicant for board, as she had been hidden behind the stove. This
+impression was confirmed when she now opened the door to him, for
+there was no recognition in his eyes as he lifted his hat. It was
+the first time in Tillie's life that a man had taken off his hat
+to her, and it almost palsied her tongue as she tried to ask him
+to come in.
+
+In reply to his inquiry as to whether he could get board here, she
+led him into the darkened parlor at the right of a long hall.
+Groping her way across the floor to the window she drew up the
+blind.
+
+"Just sit down," she said timidly. "I'll call Aunty Em."
+
+"Thank you," he bowed with a little air of ceremony that for an
+instant held her spellbound. She stood staring at him--only
+recalled to herself and to a sense of shame for her rudeness by
+the sudden entrance of her aunt.
+
+"How d' do?" said Mrs. Wackernagel in her brisk, businesslike
+tone. "D'you want supper?"
+
+"I am the applicant for the New Canaan school. I want to get board
+for the winter here, if I can--and in case I'm elected."
+
+"Well, I say! Tillie! D'you hear that? Why us we all heard you was
+goin' to Jonas Hershey's."
+
+"They decided it wasn't convenient to take me and sent me here."
+
+"Now think! If that wasn't like Sister Jennie yet! All right!" she
+announced conclusively. "We can accommodate you to satisfaction, I
+guess."
+
+"Have you any other boarders?" the young man inquired.
+
+"No reg'lar boarders--except, to be sure, the Doc; and he's lived
+with us it's comin' fifteen years, I think, or how long, till
+November a'ready. It's just our own fam'ly here and my niece where
+helps with the work, and the Doc. We have a many to meals though,
+just passing through that way, you know. We don't often have more
+'n one reg'lar boarder at oncet, so we just make 'em at home
+still, like as if they was one of us. Now YOU," she hospitably
+concluded, "we'll lay in our best bed. We don't lay 'em in the
+best bed unless they're some clean-lookin'."
+
+Tillie noticed as her aunt talked that while the young man
+listened with evident interest, his eyes moved about the room,
+taking in every detail of it. To Tillie's mind, this hotel parlor
+was so "pleasing to the eye" as to constitute one of those
+Temptations of the Enemy against which her New Mennonite faith
+prescribed most rigid discipline. She wondered whether the
+stranger did not think it very handsome.
+
+The arrangement of the room was evidently, like Jonas Hershey's
+flower-beds, the work of a mathematical genius. The chairs all
+stood with their stiff backs squarely against the wall, the same
+number facing each other from the four sides of the apartment.
+Photographs in narrow oval frames, six or eight, formed another
+oval, all equidistant from the largest, which occupied the dead
+center, not only of this group, but of the wall from which it
+depended. The books on the square oak table, which stood in the
+exact middle of the floor, were arranged in cubical piles in the
+same rigid order. Tillie saw the new teacher's glance sweep their
+titles: "Touching Incidents, and Remarkable Answers to Prayer";
+"From Tannery to White House"; "Gems of Religious Thought," by
+Talmage; "History of the Galveston Horror; Illustrated"; "Platform
+Echoes, or Living Truths for Heart and Head," by John B. Gough.
+
+"Lemme see--your name's Fairchilds, ain't?" the landlady abruptly
+asked.
+
+"Yes," bowed the young man.
+
+"Will you, now, take it all right if I call you by your Christian
+name? Us Mennonites daresent call folks Mr. and Mrs. because us we
+don't favor titles. What's your first name now?"
+
+Mr. Fairchilds considered the question with the appearance of
+trying to remember. "You'd better call me Pestalozzi," he
+answered, with a look and tone of solemnity.
+
+"Pesky Louzy!" Mrs. Waekernagel exclaimed. "Well, now think!
+That's a name where ain't familiar 'round here. Is it after some
+of your folks?"
+
+"It was a name I think I bore in a previous incarnation as a
+teacher of youth," Fairchilds gravely replied.
+
+Mrs. Waekernagel looked blank. "Tillie!" she appealed to her
+niece, who had shyly stepped half behind her, "do you know right
+what he means?"
+
+Tillie dumbly shook her head.
+
+"Pesky Louzy!" Mrs. Waekernagel experimented with the unfamiliar
+name. "Don't it, now, beat all! It'll take me awhile till I'm used
+to that a'ready. Mebbe I'll just call you Teacher; ain't?"
+
+She looked at him inquiringly, expecting an answer. "Ain't!" she
+repeated in her vigorous, whole-souled way.
+
+"Eh--ain't WHAT?" Fairchilds asked, puzzled.
+
+"Och, I just mean, SAY NOT? Can't you mebbe talk English wery
+good? We had such a foreigners at this HOtel a'ready. We had oncet
+one, he was from Phil'delphy and he didn't know what we meant
+right when we sayed, 'The butter's all any more.' He'd ast like
+you, 'All what?' Yes, he was that dumm! Och, well," she added
+consolingly, "people can't help fur their dispositions, that way!"
+
+"And what must I call you?" the young man inquired.
+
+"My name's Wackernagel."
+
+"Miss or Mrs.?"
+
+"Well, I guess not MISS anyhow! I'm the mother of four!"
+
+"Oh, excuse me!"
+
+"Oh, that's all right!" responded Mrs. Wackernagel, amiably.
+"Well, I must go make supper now. You just make yourself at home
+that way."
+
+"May I go to my room?"
+
+"Now?" asked Mrs. Wackernagel, incredulously. "Before night?"
+
+"To unpack my dress-suit case," the young man explained. "My trunk
+will be brought out to-morrow on the stage."
+
+"All right. If you want. But we ain't used to goin' up-stairs in
+the daytime. Tillie, you take his satchel and show him up. This is
+my niece, Tillie Getz."
+
+Again Mr. Fairchilds bowed to the girl as his eyes rested on the
+fair face looking out from her white cap. Tillie bent her head in
+response, then stooped to pick up the suit case. But he interposed
+and took it from her hands--and the touch of chivalry in the act
+went to her head like wine.
+
+She led the way up-stairs to the close, musty, best spare bedroom.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE WACKERNAGELS AT HOME
+
+
+At the supper-table, the apparently inexhaustible topic of talk
+was the refusal of the Hersheys to receive the new teacher into
+the bosom of their family. A return to this theme again and again,
+on the part of the various members of the Wackernagel household,
+did not seem to lessen its interest for them, though the teacher
+himself did not take a very animated part in its discussion.
+Tillie realized, as with an absorbing interest she watched his
+fine face, that all he saw and heard here was as novel to him as
+the world whence he had come would be to her and her kindred and
+neighbors, could they be suddenly transplanted into it. Tillie had
+never looked upon any human countenance which seemed to express so
+much of that ideal world in which she lived her real life.
+
+"To turn him off after he got there!" Mrs. Wackernagel exclaimed,
+reverting for the third time to the episode which had so excited
+the family. "And after Lizzie and Jonas they'd sayed he could come
+yet!"
+
+"Well, I say!" Mr. Wackernagel shook his head, as though the
+story, even at its third recital, were full of surprises.
+
+Mr. Wackernagel was a tall, raw-boned man with conspicuously large
+feet and hands. He wore his hair plastered back from his face in a
+unique, not to say distinguished style, which he privately
+considered highly becoming his position as the proprietor of the
+New Canaan Hotel. Mr. Wackernagel's self-satisfaction did indeed
+cover every detail of his life--from the elegant fashion of his
+hair to the quality of the whisky which he sold over the bar, and
+of which he never tired of boasting. Not only was he entirely
+pleased with himself, but his good-natured satisfaction included
+all his possessions--his horse first, then his wife, his two
+daughters, his permanent boarder, "the Doc," and his wife's niece
+Tillie. For people outside his own horizon, he had a tolerant but
+contemptuous pity.
+
+Mr. Wackernagel and the doctor both sat at table in their shirt-
+sleeves, the proprietor wearing a clean white shirt (his
+extravagance and vanity in using two white shirts a week being one
+of the chief historical facts of the village), while the doctor
+was wont to appear in a brown cotton shirt, the appearance of
+which suggested the hostler rather than the physician.
+
+That Fairchilds should "eat in his coat" placed him, in the eyes
+of the Wackernagels, on the high social plane of the drummers from
+the city, many of whom yearly visited the town with their wares.
+
+"And Teacher he didn't press 'em none, up at Jonas Hershey's, to
+take him in, neither, he says," Mrs. Wackernagel pursued.
+
+"He says?" repeated Mr. Wackernagel, inquiringly. "Well, that's
+like what I was, too, when I was a young man," he boasted. "If I
+thought I ain't wanted when I went to see a young lady--if she
+passed any insinyations--she never wasn't worried with ME ag'in!"
+
+"I guess Lizzie's spited that Teacher's stoppin' at our place,"
+giggled Rebecca, her pretty face rosy with pleasurable excitement
+in the turn affairs had taken. She sat directly opposite Mr.
+Fairchilds, while Amanda had the chair at his side.
+
+Tillie could see that the young man's eyes rested occasionally
+upon the handsome, womanly form of her very good-looking cousin
+Amanda. Men always looked at Amanda a great deal, Tillie had often
+observed. The fact had never before had any special significance
+for her.
+
+"Are you from Lancaster, or wherever?" the doctor inquired of Mr.
+Fairchilds.
+
+"From Connecticut," he replied in a tone that indefinably, but
+unmistakably checked further questioning.
+
+"Now think! So fur off as that!"
+
+"Yes, ain't!" exclaimed Mrs. Wackernagel. "It's a wonder a body'd
+ever be contented to live that fur off."
+
+"We're had strangers here in this HOtel," Mr. Wackernagel began to
+brag, while he industriously ate of his fried sausage and fried
+potatoes, "from as fur away as Illinois yet! And from as fur south
+as down in Maine! Yes, indeed! Ain't, mom?" he demanded of his
+wife.
+
+"Och, yes, many's the strange meals I cooked a'ready in this
+house. One week I cooked forty strange meals; say not, Abe?" she
+returned.
+
+"Yes, I mind of that week. It was Mrs. Johnson and her daughter we
+had from Illinois and Mrs. Snyder from Maine," Abe explained to
+Mr. Fairchilds. "And them Johnsons stayed the whole week."
+
+"They stopped here while Mr. Johnson went over the county sellin'
+milk-separators," added Mrs. Wackernagel. "And Abe he was in
+Lancaster that week, and the Doc he was over to East Donegal, and
+there was no man here except only us ladies! Do you mind,
+Rebecca?"
+
+Eebecca nodded, her mouth too full for utterance.
+
+"Mrs. Johnson she looked younger than her own daughter yet," Mrs.
+Wackernagel related, with animation, innocent of any suspicion
+that the teacher might not find the subject of Mrs. Johnson as
+absorbing as she found it.
+
+"There is nothing like good health as a preserver of youth,"
+responded Fairchilds.
+
+"HOtel-keepin' didn't pay till we got the license," Mr.
+Wackernagel chatted confidentially to the stranger. "Mom, to be
+sure, she didn't favor my havin' a bar, because she belonged to
+meetin'. But I seen I couldn't make nothin' if I didn't. It was
+never no temptation to me--I was always among the whisky and I
+never got tight oncet. And it ain't the hard work farmin' was. I
+had to give up followin' farmin'. I got it so in my leg. Why,
+sometimes I can't hardly walk no more."
+
+"And can't your doctor cure you?" Fairchilds asked, with a curious
+glance at the unkempt little man across the table.
+
+"Och, yes, he's helped me a heap a'ready. Him he's as good a
+doctor as any they're got in Lancaster even!" was the loyal
+response. "Here a couple months back, a lady over in East Donegal
+Township she had wrote him a letter over here, how the five
+different kinds of doses where he give her daughter done her so
+much good, and she was that grateful, she sayed she just felt
+indebted fur a letter to him! Ain't, Doc? She sayed now her
+daughter's engaged to be married and her mind's more settled--and
+to be sure, that made somepin too. Yes, she sayed her gettin'
+engaged done her near as much good as the five different kind of
+doses done her."
+
+"Are you an Allopath?" Fairchilds asked the doctor.
+
+"I'm a Eclectic," he responded glibly. "And do you know, Teacher,
+I'd been practisin' that there style of medicine fur near twelve
+years before I knowed it was just to say the Eclectic School, you
+understand."
+
+"Like Moliere's prose-writer!" remarked the teacher, then smiled
+at himself for making such an allusion in such a place.
+
+"Won't you have some more sliced radishes, Teacher?" urged the
+hostess. "I made a-plenty."
+
+"No, I thank you," Fairchilds replied, with his little air of
+courtesy that so impressed the whole family. "I can't eat radishes
+in the evening with impunity."
+
+"But these is with WINEGAR," Mrs. Wackernagel corrected him.
+
+Before Mr. Fairchilds could explain, Mr. Wackernagel broke in,
+confirming the doctor's proud claim.
+
+"Yes, Doc he's a Eclectic," he repeated, evidently feeling that
+the fact reflected credit on the hotel. "You can see his sign on
+the side door."
+
+"I was always interested in science," explained the doctor, under
+the manifest impression that he was continuing the subject. "Phe-
+non-e-ma. That's what I like. Odd things. I'm stuck on 'em! Now
+this here wireless teleGRAPHY. I'm stuck on that, you bet! To me
+that there's a phe-non-e-ma."
+
+"Teacher," interrupted Mrs. Wackernagel, "you ain't eatin' hearty.
+Leave me give you some more sausage."
+
+"If you please," Mr. Fairchilds bowed as he handed his plate to
+her.
+
+"Why don't you leave him help hisself," protested Mr. Wackernagel.
+"He won't feel to make hisself at home if he can't help hisself
+like as if he was one of us that way."
+
+"Och, well," confessed Mrs. Wackernagel, "I just keep astin' him
+will he have more, so I can hear him speak his manners so nice."
+She laughed aloud at her own vanity. "You took notice of it too,
+Tillie, ain't? You can't eat fur lookin' at him!"
+
+A tide of color swept Tillie's face as the teacher, with a look of
+amusement, turned his eyes toward her end of the table. Her glance
+fell upon her plate, and she applied herself to cutting up her
+untouched sausage.
+
+"Now, there's Doc," remarked Amanda, critically, "he's GOT good
+manners, but he don't use 'em."
+
+"Och," said the doctor, "it ain't worth while to trouble."
+
+"I think it would be wonderful nice, Teacher," said Mrs.
+Wackernagel, "if you learnt them manners you got to your scholars
+this winter. I wisht 'Manda and Rebecca knowed such manners.
+THEY're to be your scholars this winter."
+
+"Indeed?" said Fairchilds; "are they?"
+
+"'Manda there," said her father, "she's so much fur actin' up
+you'll have to keep her right by you to keep her straight, still."
+
+"That's where I shall be delighted to keep her," returned
+Fairchilds, gallantly, and Amanda laughed boisterously and grew
+several shades rosier as she looked boldly up into the young man's
+eyes.
+
+"Ain't you fresh though!" she exclaimed coquettishly.
+
+How dared they all make so free with this wonderful young man,
+marveled Tillie. Why didn't they realize, as she did, how far
+above them he was? She felt almost glad that in his little
+attentions to Amanda and Rebecca he had scarcely noticed her at
+all; for the bare thought of talking to him overwhelmed her with
+shyness.
+
+"Mind Tillie!" laughed Mr. Wackernagel, suddenly, "lookin' scared
+at the way yous are all talkin' up to Teacher! Tillie she's afraid
+of you," he explained to Mr. Fairchilds. "She ain't never got her
+tongue with her when there's strangers. Ain't, Tillie?"
+
+Tillie's burning face was bent over her plate, and she did not
+attempt to answer. Mr. Fairchilds' eyes rested for an instant on
+the delicate, sensitive countenance of the girl. But his attention
+was diverted by an abrupt exclamation from Mrs. Wackernagel.
+
+"Oh, Abe!" she suddenly cried, "you ain't tole Teacher yet about
+the Albright sisters astin' you, on market, what might your name
+be!"
+
+The tone in which this serious omission was mentioned indicated
+that it was an anecdote treasured among the family archives.
+
+"Now, I would mebbe of forgot that!" almost in consternation said
+Mr. Wackernagel. "Well," he began, concentrating his attention
+upon the teacher, "it was this here way. The two Miss Albrights
+they had bought butter off of us, on market, for twenty years back
+a'ready, and all that time we didn't know what was their name, and
+they didn't know ourn; fur all, I often says to mom, 'Now I wonder
+what's the name of them two thin little women.' Well, you see, I
+was always a wonderful man fur my jokes. Yes, I was wery fond of
+makin' a joke, still. So here one day the two sisters come along
+and bought their butter, and then one of 'em she says, 'Excuse me,
+but here I've been buyin' butter off of yous fur this twenty years
+back a'ready and I ain't never heard your name. What might your
+name BE?' Now I was such a man fur my jokes, still, so I says to
+her"--Mr. Wackernagel's whole face twinkled with amusement, and
+his shoulders shook with laughter as he contemplated the joke he
+had perpetrated--"I says, 'Well, it MIGHT be Gener'l Jackson'"--
+laughter again choked his utterance, and the stout form of Mrs.
+Wackernagel also was convulsed with amusement, while Amanda and
+Rebecca giggled appreciatively. Tillie and the doctor alone
+remained unaffected. "'It might be Gener'l Jackson,' I says. 'But
+it ain't. It's Abe Wackernagel,' I says. You see," he explained,
+"she ast me what MIGHT my name be.--See?--and I says 'It might be
+Jackson'--MIGHT be, you know, because she put it that way, what
+might it be. 'But it ain't,' I says. 'It's Wackernagel.'"
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Wackernagel and their daughters leaned back in their
+chairs and gave themselves up to prolonged and exuberant laughter,
+in which the teacher obligingly joined as well as he was able.
+
+When this hilarity had subsided, Mr. Wackernagel turned to Mr.
+Fairchilds with a question. "Are you mebbe feelin' oneasy,
+Teacher, about meetin' the school directors to-night? You know
+they meet here in the HOtel parlor at seven o'clock to take a look
+at you; and if you suit, then you and them signs the agreement."
+
+"And if I don't suit?"
+
+"They'll turn you down and send you back home!" promptly answered
+the doctor. "That there Board ain't conferrin' William Penn on no
+one where don't suit 'em pretty good! They're a wonderful
+partic'lar Board!"
+
+Aiter supper the comely Amanda agreed eagerly to the teacher's
+suggestion that she go with him for a walk, before the convening
+of the School Board at seven o'clock, and show him the school-
+house, as he would like to behold, he said, "the seat of learning"
+which, if the Board elected him, was to be the scene of his
+winter's campaign.
+
+Amanda improved this opportunity to add her word of warning to
+that of the doctor.
+
+"That there Board's awful hard to suit, still. Oncet they got a
+Millersville Normal out here, and when she come to sign they seen
+she was near-sighted that way, and Nathaniel Puntz--he's a
+director--he up and says that wouldn't suit just so well, and they
+sent her back home. And here oncet a lady come out to apply and
+she should have sayed [she is reported to have said] she was
+afraid New Canaan hadn't no accommodations good enough fur her,
+and the directors ast her, 'Didn't most of our Presidents come out
+of log cabins?' So they wouldn't elect her. Now," concluded
+Amanda, "you see!"
+
+"Thanks for your warning. Can you give me some pointers?"
+
+"What's them again?"
+
+"Well, I must not be near-sighted, for one thing, and I must not
+demand 'all the modern improvements.' Tell me what manner of man
+this School Board loves and admires. To be in the dark as to their
+tastes, you know--"
+
+"You must make yourself nice and common," Amanda instructed him.
+"You haven't dare to put on no city airs. To be sure, I guess they
+come a good bit natural to you, and, as mom says still, a body
+can't help fur their dispositions; but our directors is all plain
+that way and they don't like tony people that wants to come out
+here and think they're much!"
+
+"Yes? I see. Anything else?"
+
+"Well, they'll be partic'lar about your bein' a perfessor."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+Amanda looked at him in astonishment. "If you're a perfessor or
+no. They'll be sure to ast you."
+
+Mr. Fairchilds thoughtfully considered it.
+
+"You mean," he said, light coming to him, "they will ask me
+whether I am a professor of religion, don't you?"
+
+"Why, to be sure!"
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"And you better have your answer ready."
+
+"What, in your judgment, may I ask, would be a suitable answer to
+that?"
+
+"Well, ARE you a perfessor?"
+
+"Oh, I'm anything at all that will get me this 'job.' I've got to
+have it as a makeshift until I can get hold of something better.
+Let me see--will a Baptist do?"
+
+"Are you a Baptist?" the girl stolidly asked.
+
+"When circumstances are pressing. Will they be satisfied with a
+Baptist?"
+
+"That's one of the fashionable churches of the world," Amanda
+replied gravely. "And the directors is most all Mennonites and
+Amish and Dunkards. All them is PLAIN churches and loosed of the
+world, you know."
+
+"Oh, well, I'll wriggle out somehow! Trust to luck!" Fairchilds
+dismissed the subject, realizing the injudiciousness of being too
+confidential with this girl on so short an acquaintance.
+
+At the momentous hour of seven, the directors promptly assembled.
+When Tillie, at her aunt's request, carried two kerosene lamps
+into the parlor, a sudden determination came to the girl to remain
+and witness the reception of the new teacher by the School Board.
+
+She was almost sick with apprehension lest the Board should
+realize, as she did, that this Harvard graduate was too fine for
+such as they. It was an austere Board, hard to satisfy, and there
+was nothing they would so quickly resent and reject as evident
+superiority in an applicant. The Normal School students, their
+usual candidates, were for the most part, though not always, what
+was called in the neighborhood "nice and common." The New Canaan
+Board was certainly not accustomed to sitting in judgment upon an
+applicant such as this Pestalozzi Fairchilds. (Tillie's religion
+forbade her to call him by the vain and worldly form of Mr.)
+
+No one noticed the pale-faced girl as, after placing one lamp on
+the marble-topped table about which the directors sat and another
+on the mantelpiece, she moved quietly away to the farthest corner
+of the long, narrow parlor and seated herself back of the stove.
+
+The applicant, too, when he came into the room, was too much taken
+up with what he realized to be the perils of his case to observe
+the little watcher in the corner, though he walked past her so
+close that his coat brushed her shoulder, sending along her
+nerves, like a faint electric shock, a sensation so novel and so
+exquisite that it made her suddenly close her eyes to steady her
+throbbing head.
+
+There were present six members of the Board--two Amishmen, one Old
+Mennonite, one patriarchal-looking Dunkard, one New Mennonite, and
+one Evangelical, the difference in their religious creeds being
+attested by their various costumes and the various cuts of beard
+and hair. The Evangelical, the New Mennonite, and the Amishmen
+were farmers, the Dunkard kept the store and the post-office, and
+the Old Mennonite was the stage-driver. Jacob Getz was the
+Evangelical; and Nathaniel Puntz, Absalom's father, the New
+Mennonite.
+
+The investigation of the applicant was opened up by the president
+of the Board, a long-haired Amishman, whose clothes were fastened
+by hooks and eyes instead of buttons and buttonholes, these latter
+being considered by his sect as a worldly vanity.
+
+"What was your experience a'ready as a teacher?"
+
+Fairchilds replied that he had never had any.
+
+Tillie's heart sank as, from her post in the corner, she heard
+this answer. Would the members think for one moment of paying
+forty dollars a month to a teacher without experience? She was
+sure they had never before done so. They were shaking their heads
+gravely over it, she could see.
+
+But the investigation proceeded.
+
+"What was your Persuasion then?"
+
+Tillie saw, in the teacher's hesitation, that he did not
+understand the question.
+
+"My 'Persuasion'? Oh! I see. You mean my Church?"
+
+"Yes, what's your conwictions?"
+
+He considered a moment. Tillie hung breathlessly upon his answer.
+She knew how much depended upon it with this Board of "plain"
+people. Could he assure them that he was "a Bible Christian"?
+Otherwise, they would never elect him to the New Canaan school. He
+gave his reply, presently, in a tone suggesting his having at that
+moment recalled to memory just what his "Persuasion" was. "Let me
+see--yes--I'm a Truth-Seeker."
+
+"What's that again?" inquired the president, with interest. "I
+have not heard yet of that Persuasion."
+
+"A Truth-Seeker," he gravely explained, "is one who believes in--
+eh--in a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a
+definite, coherent heterogeneity."
+
+The members looked at each other cautiously.
+
+"Is that the English you're speakin', or whatever?" asked the
+Dunkard member. "Some of them words ain't familiar with me till
+now, and I don't know right what they mean."
+
+"Yes, I'm talking English," nodded the applicant. "We also
+believe," he added, growing bolder, "in the fundamental,
+biogenetic law that ontogenesis is an abridged repetition of
+philogenesis."
+
+"He says they believe in Genesis," remarked the Old Mennonite,
+appealing for aid, with bewildered eyes, to the other members.
+
+"Maybe he's a Jew yet!" put in Nathaniel Puntz. "We also believe,"
+Mr. Fairchilds continued, beginning to enjoy himself, "in the
+revelations of science."
+
+"He believes in Genesis and in Revelations," explained the
+president to the others.
+
+"Maybe he's a Cat'lic!" suggested the suspicious Mr. Puntz.
+
+"No," said Fairchilds, "I am, as I said, a Truth-Seeker. A Truth-
+Seeker can no more be a Catholic or a Jew in faith than an
+Amishman can, or a Mennonite, or a Brennivinarian."
+
+Tillie knew he was trying to say "Winebrennarian," the name of one
+of the many religious sects of the county, and she wondered at his
+not knowing better.
+
+"You ain't a gradyate, neither, are you?" was the president's next
+question, the inscrutable mystery of the applicant's creed being
+for the moment dropped.
+
+"Why, yes, I thought you knew that. Of Harvard."
+
+"Och, that!" contemptuously; "I mean you ain't a gradyate of
+Millersville Normal?"
+
+"No," humbly acknowledged Fairchilds.
+
+"When I was young," Mr. Getz irrelevantly remarked, "we didn't
+have no gradyate teachers like what they have now, still. But we
+anyhow learnt more ACCORDING."
+
+"How long does it take you to get 'em from a, b, c's to the
+Testament?" inquired the patriarchal Dunkard.
+
+"That depends upon the capacity of the pupil," was Mr.
+Fairchilds's profound reply.
+
+"Can you learn 'em 'rithmetic good?" asked Nathaniel Puntz. "I got
+a son his last teacher couldn't learn 'rithmetic to. He's
+wonderful dumm in 'rithmetic, that there boy is. Absalom by name.
+After the grandfather. His teacher tried every way to learn him to
+count and figger good. He even took and spread toothpicks out yet
+--but that didn't learn him neither. I just says, he ain't
+appointed to learn 'rithmetic. Then the teacher he tried him with
+such a Algebry. But Absalom he'd get so mixed up!--he couldn't
+keep them x's spotted."
+
+"I have a method," Mr. Fairchilds began, "which I trust--"
+
+To Tillie's distress, her aunt's voice, at this instant calling
+her to "come stir the sots [yeast] in," summoned her to the
+kitchen.
+
+It was very hard to have to obey. She longed so to stay till
+Fairchilds should come safely through his fiery ordeal. For a
+moment she was tempted to ignore the summons, but her conscience,
+no less than her grateful affection for her aunt, made such
+behavior impossible. Softly she stole out of the room and
+noiselessly closed the door behind her.
+
+A half-hour later, when her aunt and cousins had gone to bed, and
+while the august School Board still occupied the parlor, Tillie
+sat sewing in the sitting-room, while the doctor, at the other
+side of the table, nodded over his newspaper.
+
+Since Tillie had come to live at the hotel, she and the doctor
+were often together in the evening; the Doc was fond of a chat
+over his pipe with the child whom he so helped and befriended in
+her secret struggles to educate herself. There was, of course, a
+strong bond of sympathy and friendship between them in their
+common conspiracy with Miss Margaret, whom the doctor had never
+ceased to hold in tender memory.
+
+Just now Tillie's ears were strained to catch the sounds of the
+adjourning of the Board. When at last she heard their shuffling
+footsteps in the hall, her heart beat fast with suspense. A moment
+more and the door leading from the parlor opened and Fairchilds
+came out into the sitting-room.
+
+Tillie did not lift her eyes from her sewing, but the room seemed
+suddenly filled with his presence.
+
+"Well!" the doctor roused himself to greet the young man; "were
+you 'lected?"
+
+Breathlessly, Tillie waited to hear his answer.
+
+"Oh, yes; I've escaped alive!" Fairchilds leaned against the table
+in an attitude of utter relaxation. "They roasted me brown,
+though! Galileo at Rome, and Martin Luther at Worms, had a dead
+easy time compared to what I've been through!"
+
+"I guess!" the doctor laughed. "Ain't!"
+
+"I'm going to bed," the teacher announced in a tone of collapse.
+"Good night!"
+
+"Good night!" answered the doctor, cordially.
+
+Fairchilds drew himself up from the table and took a step toward
+the stairway; this brought him to Tillie's side of the table, and
+he paused a moment and looked down upon her as she sewed.
+
+Her fingers trembled, and the pulse in her throat beat
+suffocatingly, but she did not look up.
+
+"Good night, Miss--Tillie, isn't it?"
+
+"Matilda Maria," Tillie's soft, shy voice replied as her eyes,
+full of light, were raised, for an instant, to the face above her.
+
+The man smiled and bowed his acknowledgment; then, after an
+instant's hesitation, he said, "Pardon me: the uniform you and
+Mrs. Wackernagel wear--may I ask what it is?"
+
+"'Uniform'?" breathed Tillie, wonderingly. "Oh, you mean the garb?
+We are members of meeting. The world calls us New Mennonites."
+
+"And this is the uni--the garb of the New Mennonites?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"It is a very becoming garb, certainly," Fairchilds smiled, gazing
+down upon the fair young girl with a puzzled look in his own face,
+for he recognized, not only in her delicate features, and in the
+light of her beautiful eyes, but also in her speech, a something
+that set her apart from the rest of this household.
+
+Tillie colored deeply at his words, and the doctor laughed
+outright.
+
+"By gum! They wear the garb to make 'em look UNbecomin'! And he
+ups and tells her it's becomin' yet! That's a choke, Teacher! One
+on you, ain't? That there cap's to hide the hair which is a pride
+to the sek! And that cape over the bust is to hide woman's
+allurin' figger. See? And you ups and tells her it's a becomin'
+UNYFORM! Unyforms is what New Mennonites don't uphold to! Them's
+fur Cat'lics and 'Piscopals--and fur warriors--and the Mennonites
+don't favor war! Unyforms yet!" he laughed. "I'm swanged if that
+don't tickle me!"
+
+"I stand corrected. I beg pardon if I've offended," Fairchilds
+said hastily. "Miss--Matilda--I hope I've not hurt your feelings?
+Believe me, I did not mean to."
+
+"Och!" the doctor answered for her, "Tillie she ain't so easy hurt
+to her feelin's, are you, Tillie? Gosh, Teacher, them manners you
+got must keep you busy! Well, sometimes I think I'm better off if
+I stay common. Then I don't have to bother."
+
+The door leading from the bar-room opened suddenly and Jacob Getz
+stood on the threshold.
+
+"Well, Tillie," he said by way of greeting. "Uncle Abe sayed you
+wasn't went to bed yet, so I stopped to see you a minute."
+
+"Well, father," Tillie answered as she put down her sewing and
+came up to him.
+
+Awkwardly he bent to kiss her, and Tillie, even in her emotional
+excitement, realized, with a passing wonder, that he appeared glad
+to see her after a week of separation.
+
+"It's been some lonesome, havin' you away," he told her.
+
+"Is everybody well?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, middlin'. You was sewin', was you?" he inquired, glancing at
+the work on the table.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"All right. Don't waste your time. Next Saturday I 'll stop off
+after market on my way out from Lancaster and see you oncet, and
+get your wages off of Aunty Em."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+A vague idea of something unusual in the light of Tillie's eyes
+arrested him. He glanced suspiciously at the doctor, who was
+speaking in a low tone to the teacher.
+
+"Look-ahere, Tillie. If Teacher there wants to keep comp'ny with
+one of yous girls, it ain't to be you, mind. He ain't to be makin'
+up to you! I don't want you to waste your time that there way."
+
+Apprehensively, Tillie darted a sidelong glance at the teacher to
+see if he had heard--for though no tender sentiment was associated
+in her mind with the idea of "keeping company," yet intuitively
+she felt the unseemliness of her father's warning and its
+absurdity in the eyes of such as this stranger.
+
+Mr. Fairchilds was leaning against the table, his arms folded, his
+lips compressed and his face flushed. She was sure that he had
+overheard her father. Was he angry, or--almost worse--did that
+compressed mouth mean concealed amusement?
+
+"Well, now, I must be goin'," said Mr. Getz. "Be a good girl,
+mind. Och, I 'most forgot to tell you. Me and your mom's conceited
+we'd drive up to Puntz's Sunday afternoon after the dinner work's
+through a'ready. And if Aunty Em don't want you partic'lar, you're
+to come home and mind the childern, do you hear?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Now, don't forget. Well, good-by, then."
+
+Again he bent to kiss her, and Tillie felt Fairchilds's eyes upon
+her, as unresponsively she submitted to the caress.
+
+"Good night to you, Teacher." Mr. Getz gruffly raised his voice to
+speak to the pair by the table. "And to you, Doc."
+
+They answered him and he went away. When Tillie slowly turned back
+to the table, the teacher hastily took his leave and moved away to
+the stairway at the other end of the room. As she took up her
+sewing, she heard him mount the steps and presently close and lock
+the door of his room at the head of the stairs.
+
+"He was, now, wonderful surprised, Tillie," the doctor confided to
+her, "when I tole him Jake Getz was your pop. He don't think your
+pop takes after you any. I says to him, 'Tillie's pop, there,
+bein' one of your bosses, you better make up to Tillie,' I says,
+and he sayed, 'You don't mean to tell me that that Mr. Getz of the
+School Board is the father of this girl?' 'That's what,' I says.
+'He's that much her father,' I says, 'that you'd better keep on
+the right side of him by makin' up to Tillie,' I says, just to
+plague him. And just then your pop up and sayed if Teacher wanted
+to keep comp'ny he must pick out 'Manda or Rebecca--and I seen
+Teacher wanted to laugh, but his manners wouldn't leave him. He
+certainly has, now, a lot of manners, ain't, Tillie?"
+
+Tillie's head was bent over her sewing and she did not answer.
+
+The doctor yawned, stretched himself, and guessed he would step
+into the bar-room.
+
+Tillie bent over her sewing for a long time after she was left
+alone. The music of the young man's grave voice as he had spoken
+her name and called her "Miss Matilda" sang in her brain. The
+fascination of his smile as he had looked down into her eyes, and
+the charm of his chivalrous courtesy, so novel to her experience,
+haunted and intoxicated her. And tonight, Tillie felt her soul
+flooded with a life and light so new and strange that she trembled
+as before a miracle.
+
+Meanwhile, Walter Fairchilds, alone in his room, his mind too full
+of the events and characters to which the past day had introduced
+him to admit of sleep, was picturing, with mingled amusement and
+regret, the genuine horror of his fastidious relatives could they
+know of his present environment, among people for whom their
+vocabulary had but one word--a word which would have consigned
+them all, even that sweet-voiced, clear-eyed little Puritan,
+Matilda Maria, to outer darkness; and that he, their adopted son
+and brother, should be breaking bread and living on a footing of
+perfect equality with these villagers he knew would have been, in
+their eyes, an offense only second in heinousness to that of his
+apostasy.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE WACKERNAGELS "CONWERSE"
+
+
+The next day, being the Sabbath, brought to Tillie two of the
+keenest temptations she had ever known. In the first place, she
+did not want to obey her father and go home after dinner to take
+care of the children. All in a day the hotel had become to her the
+one haven where she would be, outside of which the sun did not
+shine.
+
+True, by going home she might hope to escape the objectionable
+Sunday evening sitting-up with Absalom; for in spite of the note
+she had sent him, telling him of her father's wish that he must
+not come to see her at the hotel, she was unhappily sure that he
+would appear as usual. Indeed, with his characteristic dogged
+persistency, he was pretty certain to follow her, whithersoever
+she went. And even if he did not, it would be easier to endure the
+slow torture of his endless visit under this roof, which sheltered
+also that other presence, than to lose one hour away from its
+wonderful and mysterious charm.
+
+"Now, look here, Tillie," said Aunty Em, at the breakfast-table,
+"you worked hard this week, and this after you're restin'--
+leastways, unless you WANT to go home and take care of all them
+litter of childern. If you don't want to go, you just stay--and
+_I'll_ take the blame! I'll say I needed you."
+
+"Let Jake Getz come 'round HERE tryin' to bully you, Tillie,"
+exclaimed Mr. Wackernagel, "and it won't take me a week to tell
+him what I think of HIM! I don't owe HIM nothin'!"
+
+"No," agreed Jake Getz's sister, "we don't live off of him!"
+
+"And I don't care who fetches him neither!" added Mr. Wackernagel
+--which expression of contempt was one of the most scathing known
+to the tongue of a Pennsylvania Dutchman.
+
+"What are you goin' to do, Tillie?" Amanda asked. "Are you goin'
+or stayin'?"
+
+Tillie wavered a moment between duty and inclination; between the
+habit of servility to her father and the magic power that held her
+in its fascinating spell here under her uncle's roof.
+
+"I'm staying," she faltered.
+
+"Good fur you, Tillie!" laughed her uncle. "You're gettin' learnt
+here to take your own head a little fur things. Well, I'd like to
+get you spoilt good fur your pop--that's what I'd like to do!"
+
+"We darsent go too fur," warned Aunty Em, "or he won't leave her
+stay with us at all."
+
+"Now there's you, Abe," remarked the doctor, dryly; "from the time
+your childern could walk and talk a'ready all you had to say was
+'Go'--and they stayed. Ain't?"
+
+Mr. Wackernagel joined in the loud laughter of his wife and
+daughters.
+
+Tillie realized that the teacher, as he sipped his coffee, was
+listening to the dialogue with astonishment and curiosity, and she
+hungered to know all that was passing through his mind.
+
+Her second temptation came to her upon hearing Fairchilds, as they
+rose from the breakfast-table, suggest a walk in the woods with
+Amanda and Rebecca. "And won't Miss Tillie go too?" he inquired.
+
+Her aunt answered for her. "Och, she wouldn't have dare, her bein'
+a member, you know. It would be breakin' the Sabbath. And anyways,
+even if it wasn't Sunday, us New Mennonites don't take walks or do
+anything just fur pleasure when they ain't nothin' useful in it.
+If Tillie went, I'd have to report her to the meetin', even if it
+did go ag'in' me to do it."
+
+"And then what would happen?" Mr. Fairchilds inquired curiously.
+
+"She'd be set back."
+
+"'Set back'?"
+
+"She wouldn't have dare to greet the sisters with a kiss, and she
+couldn't speak with me or eat with me or any of the brothers and
+sisters till she gave herself up ag'in and obeyed to the rules."
+
+"This is very interesting," commented Fairchilds, his
+contemplative gaze moving from the face of Mrs. Wackernagel to
+Tillie. "But," he questioned, "Mrs. Wackernagel, why are your
+daughters allowed to do what you think wrong and would not do?"
+
+"Well," began Aunty Em, entering with relish into the discussion,
+for she was strong in theology, "we don't hold to forcin' our
+childern or interferin' with the free work of the Holy Spirit in
+bringin' souls to the truth. We don't do like them fashionable
+churches of the world where teaches their childern to say their
+prayers and makes 'em read the Bible and go to Sunday-school. We
+don't uphold to Sunday-schools. You can't read nothin' in the
+Scripture about Sunday-schools. We hold everybody must come by
+their free will, and learnt only of the Holy Spirit, into the
+light of the One True Way."
+
+Fairchilds gravely thanked her for her explanation and pursued the
+subject no further.
+
+When Tillie presently saw him start out with her cousins, an
+unregenerate longing filled her soul to stay away from meeting and
+go with them, to spend this holy Sabbath day in worshiping, not
+her God, but this most god-like being who had come like the
+opening up of heaven into her simple, uneventful life. In her
+struggle with her conscience to crush such sinful desires, Tillie
+felt that now, for the first time, she understood how Jacob of old
+had wrestled with the Angel.
+
+Her spiritual struggle was not ended by her going dutifully to
+meeting with her aunt. During all the long services of the morning
+she fought with her wandering attention to keep it upon the sacred
+words that were spoken and sung. But her thoughts would not be
+controlled. Straying like a wicked imp into forbidden paths, her
+fancy followed the envied ones into the soft, cool shadows of the
+autumn woods and along the banks of the beautiful Conestoga, and
+mingling with the gentle murmuring of the leaves and the rippling
+of the water, she heard that resonant voice, so unlike any voice
+she had ever heard before, and that little abrupt laugh with its
+odd falsetto note, which haunted her like a strain of music; and
+she saw, in the sunlight of the lovely October morning, against a
+background of gold and brown leaves and silver water, the finely
+chiseled face, the thoughtful, pale forehead, the kind eyes, the
+capable white hands, of this most wonderful young man.
+
+Tillie well understood that could the brethren and sisters know in
+what a worldly frame of mind she sat in the house of God this day,
+undoubtedly they would present her case for "discipline," and
+even, perhaps, "set her back." But all the while that she tried to
+fight back the enemy of her soul, who thus subtly beset her with
+temptation to sin, she felt the utter uselessness of her struggle
+with herself. For even when she did succeed in forcing her
+attention upon some of the hymns, it was in whimsical and
+persistent terms of the teacher that she considered them. How was
+it possible, she wondered, for him, or any unconverted soul, to
+hear, without being moved to "give himself up," such lines as
+these:
+
+     "He washed them all to make them clean,
+     But Judas still was full of sin.
+     May none of us, like Judas, sell
+     Our Lord for gold, and go to hell!"
+
+And these:
+
+     "O man, remember, thou must die;
+     The sentence is for you and I.
+     Where shall we be, or will we go,
+     When we must leave this world below?"
+
+In the same moment that Tillie was wondering how a "Truth-Seeker"
+would feel under these searching words, she felt herself condemned
+by them for her wandering attention.
+
+The young girl's feelings toward the stranger at this present
+stage of their evolution were not, like those of Amanda and
+Rebecca, the mere instinctive feminine craving for masculine
+admiration. She did not think of herself in relation to him at
+all. A great hunger possessed her to know him--all his thoughts,
+his emotions, the depths and the heights of him; she did not long,
+or even wish, that he might know and admire HER.
+
+The three-mile drive home from church seemed to Tillie, sitting in
+the high, old-fashioned buggy at her aunt's side, an endless
+journey. Never had old Dolly traveled so deliberately or with more
+frequent dead stops in the road to meditate upon her long-past
+youth. Mrs. Wackernagel's ineffectual slaps of the reins upon the
+back of the decrepit animal inspired in Tillie an inhuman longing
+to seize the whip and lash the feeble beast into a swift pace. The
+girl felt appalled at her own feelings, so novel and inexplicable
+they seemed to her. Whether there was more of ecstasy or torture
+in them, she hardly knew.
+
+Immediately after dinner the teacher went out and did not turn up
+again until evening, when he retired immediately to the seclusion
+of his own room.
+
+The mystification of the family at this unaccountably unsocial
+behavior, their curiosity as to where he had been, their suspense
+as to what he did when alone so long in his bedroom, reached a
+tension that was painful.
+
+Promptly at half-past six, Absalom, clad in his Sunday suit,
+appeared at the hotel, to perform his weekly stint of sitting-up.
+
+As Rebecca always occupied the parlor on Sunday evening with her
+gentleman friend, there was only left to Absalom and Tillie to sit
+either in the kitchen or with the assembled family in the sitting-
+room. Tillie preferred the latter. Of course she knew that such
+respite as the presence of the family gave her was only temporary,
+for in friendly consideration of what were supposed to be her
+feelings in the matter, they would all retire early. Absalom also
+knowing this, accepted the brief inconvenience of their presence
+without any marked restiveness.
+
+"Say, Absalom," inquired the doctor, as the young man took up his
+post on the settee beside Tillie, sitting as close to her as he
+could without pushing her off, "how did your pop pass his opinion
+about the new teacher after the Board meeting Saturday, heh?"
+
+The doctor was lounging in his own special chair by the table, his
+fat legs crossed and his thumbs thrust into his vest arms. Amanda
+idly rocked back and forth in a large luridly painted rocking-
+chair by the window, and Mrs. Wackernagel sat by the table before
+an open Bible in which she was not too much absorbed to join
+occasionally in the general conversation.
+
+"He sayed he was afraid he was some tony," answered Absalom.
+"And," he added, a reflection in his tone of his father's
+suspicious attitude on Saturday night toward Fairchilds, "pop
+sayed HE couldn't make out what was his conwictions. He couldn't
+even tell right was he a Bible Christian or no."
+
+"He certainly does, now, have pecooliar views," agreed the doctor.
+"I was talkin' to him this after--"
+
+"You WAS!" exclaimed Amanda, a note of chagrin in her voice.
+"Well, I'd like to know where at? Where had he took himself to?"
+
+"Up to the woods there by the old mill. I come on him there at
+five o'clock--layin' readin' and musin'--when I was takin' a short
+cut home through the woods comin' from Adam Oberholzer's."
+
+"Well I never!" cried Amanda. "And was he out there all by hisself
+the whole afternoon?" she asked incredulously.
+
+"So much as I know. AIN'T he, now, a queer feller not to want a
+girl along when one was so handy?" teased the doctor.
+
+"Well," retorted Amanda, "I think he's hard up--to be spendin' a
+whole afternoon READIN'!"
+
+"Oh, Doc!" Tillie leaned forward and whispered, "he's up in his
+room and perhaps he can hear us through the register!"
+
+"I wisht he KIN," declared Amanda, "if it would learn him how dumm
+us folks thinks a feller where spends a whole Sunday afternoon by
+hisself READIN'!"
+
+"Why, yes," put in Mrs. Wackernagel; "what would a body be wantin'
+to waste time like that fur?--when he could of spent his nice
+afternoon settin' there on the porch with us all, conwersin'."
+
+"And he's at it ag'in this evenin', up there in his room," the
+doctor informed them. "I went up to give him my lamp, and I'm
+swanged if he ain't got a many books and such pamp'lets in his
+room! As many as ten, I guess! I tole him: I says, 'It does, now,
+beat all the way you take to them books and pamp'lets and
+things!'"
+
+"It's a pity of him!" said motherly Mrs. Wackernagel.
+
+"And I says to him," added the doctor, "I says, 'You ain't much
+fur sociability, are you?' I says."
+
+"Well, I did think, too, Amanda," sympathized her mother, "he'd
+set up with you mebbe to-night, seein' Rebecca and Tillie's each
+got their gent'man comp'ny--even if he didn't mean it fur really,
+but only to pass the time."
+
+"Och, he needn't think I'm dyin' to set up with HIM! There's a
+plenty others would be glad to set up with me, if I was one of
+them that was fur keepin' comp'ny with just ANYbody! But I did
+think when I heard he was goin' to stop here that mebbe he'd be a
+JOLLY feller that way. Well," Amanda concluded scathingly, "I'm
+goin' to tell Lizzie Hershey she ain't missin' much!"
+
+"What's them pecooliar views of hisn you was goin' to speak to us,
+Doc?" said Absalom.
+
+"Och, yes, I was goin' to tell you them. Well, here this after we
+got to talkin' about the subjeck of prayer, and I ast him his
+opinion. And if I understood right what he meant, why, prayin' is
+no different to him than musin'. Leastways, that's the thought I
+got out of his words."
+
+"Musin'," repeated Absalom. "What's musin'?"
+
+"Yes, what's that ag'in?" asked Mrs. Wackernagel, alert with
+curiosity, theological discussions being always of deep interest
+to her.
+
+"Musin' is settin' by yourself and thinkin' of your learnin',"
+explained the doctor. "I've took notice, this long time back,
+educated persons they like to set by theirselves, still, and
+muse."
+
+"And do you say," demanded Absalom, indignantly, "that Teacher he
+says it's the same to him as prayin'--this here musin'?"
+
+"So much as I know, that's what he sayed."
+
+"Well," declared Absalom, "that there ain't in the Bible! He'd
+better watch out! If he ain't a Bible Christian, pop and Jake Getz
+and the other directors'll soon put him off William Penn!"
+
+"Och, Absalom, go sass your gran'mom!" was the doctor's elegant
+retort. "What's ailin' YOU, anyways, that you want to be so spunky
+about Teacher? I guess you're mebbe thinkin' he'll cut you out
+with Tillie, ain't?"
+
+"I'd like to see him try it oncet!" growled Absalom.
+
+Tillie grew cold with fear that the teacher might hear them; but
+she knew there was no use in protesting.
+
+"Are you goin' to keep on at William Penn all winter, Absalom?"
+Mrs. Wackernagel asked.
+
+"Just long enough to see if he kin learn 'rithmetic to me. Ezra
+Herr, he was too dumm to learn me."
+
+"Mebbe," said the doctor, astutely, "you was too dumm to GET
+learnt!"
+
+"I AM wonderful dumm in 'rithmetic," Absalom acknowledged
+shamelessly. "But pop says this here teacher is smart and kin
+mebbe learn me. I've not saw him yet myself."
+
+Much as Tillie disliked being alone with her suitor, she was
+rather relieved this evening when the family, en masse,
+significantly took its departure to the second floor; for she
+hoped that with no one but Absalom to deal with, she could induce
+him to lower his voice so their talk would not be audible to the
+teacher in the room above.
+
+Had she been able but faintly to guess what was to ensue on her
+being left alone with him, she would have fled up-stairs with the
+rest of the family and left Absalom to keep company with the
+chairs.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+THE TEACHER MEETS ABSALOM
+
+
+Only a short time had the sitting-room been abandoned to them when
+Tillie was forced to put a check upon her lover's ardor.
+
+"Now, Absalom," she firmly said, moving away from his encircling
+arm, "unless you leave me be, I'm not sitting on the settee
+alongside you at all. You MUST NOT kiss me or hold my hand--or
+even touch me. Never again. I told you so last Sunday night."
+
+"But why?" Absalom asked, genuinely puzzled. "Is it that I
+kreistle you, Tillie?"
+
+"N--no," she hesitated. An affirmative reply, she knew, would be
+regarded as a cold-blooded insult. In fact, Tillie herself did not
+understand her own repugnance to Absalom's caresses.
+
+"You act like as if I made you feel repulsive to me, Tillie," he
+complained.
+
+"N--no. I don't want to be touched. That's all."
+
+"Well, I'd like to know what fun you think there is in settin' up
+with a girl that won't leave a feller kiss her or hug her!"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know what you do see in it, Absalom. I told you
+not to come."
+
+"If I ain't to hold your hand or kiss yon, what are we to do to
+pass the time?" he reasoned.
+
+"I'll tell you, Absalom. Let me read to you. Then we wouldn't be
+wasting the evening."
+
+"I ain't much fur readin'. I ain't like Teacher." He frowned and
+looked at her darkly. "I've took notice how much fur books you are
+that way. Last Sunday night, too, you sayed, 'Let me read somepin
+to you.' Mebbe you and Teacher will be settin' up readin'
+together. And mebbe the Doc wasn't just jokin' when he sayed
+Teacher might cut me out!"
+
+"Please, Absalom," Tillie implored him, "don't talk so loud!"
+
+"I don't care! I hope he hears me sayin' that if he ever comes
+tryin' to get my girl off me, I 'll get pop to have him put off
+his job!"
+
+"None of you know what you are talking about," Tillie indignantly
+whispered. "You can't understand. The teacher is a man that
+wouldn't any more keep company with one of us country girls than
+you would keep company, Absalom, with a gipsy. He's ABOVE us!"
+
+"Well, I guess if you're good enough fur me, Tillie Getz, you're
+good enough fur anybody else--leastways fur a man that gets his
+job off the wotes of your pop and mine!"
+
+"The teacher is a--a gentleman, Absalom."
+
+Absalom did not understand. "Well, I guess I know he ain't a lady.
+I guess I know what his sek is!"
+
+Tillie sighed in despair, and sank back on the settee. For a few
+minutes they sat in strained silence.
+
+"I never seen a girl like what you are! You're wonderful different
+to the other girls I've knew a'ready."
+
+Tillie did not reply.
+
+"Where d'you come by them books you read?"
+
+"The Doc gets them for me."
+
+"Well, Tillie, look-ahere. I spoke somepin to the Doc how I wanted
+to fetch you somepin along when I come over sometime, and I ast
+him what, now, he thought you would mebbe like. And he sayed a
+book. So I got Cousin Sally Puntz to fetch one along fur me from
+the Methodist Sunday-school li-bry, and here I brung it over to
+you."
+
+He produced a small volume from his coat pocket.
+
+"I was 'most ashamed to bring it, it's so wonderful little. I tole
+Cousin Sally, 'Why didn't you bring me a bigger book?' And she
+sayed she did try to get a bigger one, but they was all. There's
+one in that li-bry with four hunderd pages. I tole her, now, she's
+to try to get me that there one next Sunday before it's took by
+somebody. This one's'most too little."
+
+Tillie smiled as she took it from him. "Thank you, Absalom. I
+don't care if it's LITTLE, so long as it's interesting--and
+instructive," she spoke primly.
+
+"The Bible's such a big book, I thought the bigger the book was,
+the nearer it was like the Bible," said Absalom.
+
+"But there's the dictionary, Absalom. It's as big as the Bible."
+
+"Don't the size make nothin'?" Absalom asked.
+
+Tillie shook her head, still smiling. She glanced down and read
+aloud the title of the book she held: "'What a Young Husband Ought
+to Know.'"
+
+"But, Absalom!" she faltered.
+
+"Well? What?"
+
+She looked up into his heavy, blank face, and suddenly a faint
+sense of humor seemed born in her--and she laughed.
+
+The laugh illumined her face, and it was too much for Absalom. He
+seized her and kissed her, with resounding emphasis, squarely on
+the mouth.
+
+Instantly Tillie wrenched herself away from him and stood up. Her
+face was flushed and her eyes sparkled. And yet, she was not
+indignant with him in the sense that a less unsophisticated girl
+would have been. Absalom, according to New Canaan standards, was
+not exceeding his rights under the circumstances. But an instinct,
+subtle, undefined, incomprehensible to herself, contradicted,
+indeed, by every convention of the neighborhood in which she had
+been reared, made Tillie feel that in yielding her lips to this
+man for whom she did not care, and whom, if she could hold out
+against him, she did not intend to marry, she was desecrating her
+womanhood. Vague and obscure as her feeling was, it was strong
+enough to control her.
+
+"I meant what I said, Absalom. If you won't leave me be, I won't
+stay here with you. You'll have to go home, for now I'm going
+right up-stairs."
+
+She spoke with a firmness that made the dull youth suddenly
+realize a thing of which he had never dreamed, that however
+slightly Tillie resembled her father in other respects, she did
+have a bit of his determination.
+
+She took a step toward the stairs, but Absalom seized her skirts
+and pulled her back. "You needn't think I'm leavin' you act like
+that to me, Tillie!" he muttered, his ardor whetted by the
+difficulties of his courting. "Now I'll learn you!" and holding
+her slight form in his burly grasp he kissed her again and again.
+
+"Leave me go!" she cried. "I'll call out if you don't! Stop it,
+Absalom!"
+
+Absalom laughed aloud, his eyes glittering as he felt her womanly
+helplessness in his strong clasp.
+
+"What you goin' to do about it, Tillie? You can't help yourself--
+you got to get kissed if you want to or no!" And again his
+articulate caresses sounded upon her shrinking lips, and he roared
+with laughter in his own satisfaction and in his enjoyment of her
+predicament. "You can't help yourself," he said, crushing her
+against him in a bearish hug.
+
+"Absalom!" the girl's voice rang out sharply in pain and fear.
+
+Then of a sudden Absalom's wrists were seized in a strong grip,
+and the young giant found his arms pinned behind him.
+
+"Now, then, Absalom, you let this little girl alone. Do you
+understand?" said Fairchilds, coolly, as he let go his hold on the
+youth and stepped round to his side.
+
+Absalom's face turned white with fury as he realized who had dared
+to interfere. He opened his lips, but speech would not come to
+him. Clenching his fingers, he drew back his arm, but his heavy
+fist, coming swiftly forward, was caught easily in Fairchilds's
+palm--and held there.
+
+"Come, come," he said soothingly, "it isn't worth while to row,
+you know. And in the presence of the lady!"
+
+"You mind to your OWN business!" spluttered Asalom, struggling to
+free his hand, and, to his own surprise, failing. Quickly he drew
+back his left fist and again tried to strike, only to find it too
+caught and held, with no apparent effort on the part of the
+teacher. Tillie, at first pale with fright at what had promised to
+be so unequal a contest in view of the teacher's slight frame and
+the brawny, muscular strength of Absalom, felt her pulses bound
+with a thrill of admiration for this cool, quiet force which could
+render the other's fury so helpless; while at the same time she
+felt sick with shame.
+
+"Blame you!" cried Absalom, wildly. "Le' me be! It don't make
+nothin' to you if I kiss my girl! I don't owe YOU nothin'! You le'
+me be!"
+
+"Certainly," returned Fairchilds, cheerfully. "Just stop annoying
+Miss Tillie, that's all I want."'
+
+He dropped the fellow's hands and deliberately drew out his
+handkerchief to wipe his own.
+
+A third time Absalom made a furious dash at him, to find his two
+wrists caught in the vise-like grip of his antagonist.
+
+"Tut, tut, Absalom, this is quite enough. Behave yourself, or I
+shall be obliged to hurt you."
+
+"YOU--you white-faced, woman-faced mackerel! YOU think you kin
+hurt me! You--"
+
+"Now then," Fairchilds again dropped Absalom's hands and picked up
+from the settee the book which the youth had presented to Tillie.
+"Here, Absalom, take your 'What a Young Husband Ought to Know' and
+go home."
+
+Something in the teacher's quiet, confident tone cowed Absalom
+completely--for the time being, at least. He was conquered. It was
+very bewildering. The man before him was not half his weight and
+was not in the least ruffled. How had he so easily "licked" him?
+Absalom, by reason of his stalwart physique and the fact that his
+father was a director, had, during most of his school life, found
+pleasing diversion in keeping the various teachers of William Penn
+cowed before him. He now saw his supremacy in that quarter at an
+end--physically speaking at least. There might be a moral point of
+attack.
+
+"Look-ahere!" he blustered. "Do you know my pop's Nathaniel Puntz,
+the director?"
+
+"You are a credit to him, Absalom. By the way, will you take a
+message to him from me? Tell him, please, that the lock on the
+school-room door is broken, and I'd be greatly obliged if he would
+send up a lock-smith to mend it."
+
+Absalom looked discouraged. A Harvard graduate was, manifestly, a
+freak of nature--invulnerable at all points.
+
+"If pop gets down on you, you won't be long at William Penn!" he
+bullied. "You'll soon get chased off your job!"
+
+"My job at breaking you in? Well, well, I might be spending my
+time more profitably, that's so."
+
+"You go on out of here and le' me alone with my girl!" quavered
+Absalom, blinking away tears of rage.
+
+"That will be as she says. How is it, Miss Tillie? Do you want him
+to go?"
+
+Now Tillie knew that if she allowed Absalom Puntz to leave her in
+his present state of baffled anger, Fairchilds would not remain in
+New Canaan a month. Absalom was his father's only child, and
+Nathaniel Puntz was known to be both suspicious and vindictive.
+"Clothed in a little brief authority," as school director, he
+never missed an opportunity to wield his precious power.
+
+With quick insight, Tillie realized that the teacher would think
+meanly of her if, after her outcry at Absalom's amorous behavior,
+she now inconsistently ask that he remain with her for the rest of
+the evening. But what the teacher might think about HER did not
+matter so much as that he should be saved from the wrath of
+Absalom.
+
+"Please leave him stay," she answered in a low voice.
+
+Fairchilds gazed in surprise upon the girl's sweet, troubled face.
+"Let him stay?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then perhaps my interference was unwelcome?"
+
+"I thank you, but--I want him to stay."
+
+"Yes? I beg pardon for my intrusion. Good night."
+
+He turned away somewhat abruptly and left the room.
+
+And Tillie was again alone with Absalom.
+
+IN his chamber, getting ready for bed, Fairchilds's thoughts idly
+dwelt upon the strange contradictions he seemed to see in the
+character of the little Mennonite maiden. He had thought that he
+recognized in her a difference from the rest of this household--a
+difference in speech, in feature, in countenance, in her whole
+personality. And yet she could allow the amorous attentions of
+that coarse, stupid cub; and her protestations against the
+fellow's liberties with her had been mere coquetry. Well, he would
+be careful, another time, how he played the part of a Don Quixote.
+
+Meantime Tillie, with suddenly developed histrionic skill, was, by
+a Spartan self-sacrifice in submitting to Absalom's love-making,
+overcoming his wrath against the teacher. Absalom never suspected
+how he was being played upon, or what a mere tool he was in the
+hands of this gentle little girl, when, somewhat to his own
+surprise, he found himself half promising that the teacher should
+not be complained of to his father. The infinite tact and scheming
+it required on Tillie's part to elicit this assurance without
+further arousing his jealousy left her, at the end of his
+prolonged sitting-up, utterly exhausted.
+
+Yet when at last her weary head found her pillow, it was not to
+rest or sleep. A haunting, fearful certainty possessed her. "Dumm"
+as he was, Absalom, in his invulnerable persistency, had become to
+the tired, tortured girl simply an irresistible force of Nature.
+And Tillie felt that, struggle as she might against him, there
+would come a day when she could fight no longer, and so at last
+she must fall a victim to this incarnation of Dutch determination.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+TILLIE REVEALS HERSELF
+
+
+In the next few days, Tillie tried in vain to summon courage to
+appeal to the teacher for assistance in her winter's study. Day
+after day she resolved to speak to him, and as often postponed it,
+unable to conquer her shyness. Meantime, however, under the
+stimulus of his constant presence, she applied herself in every
+spare moment to the school-books used by her two cousins, and in
+this unaided work she succeeded, as usual, in making headway.
+
+Fairchilds's attention was arrested by the frequent picture of the
+little Mennonite maiden conning school-books by lamp-light.
+
+One evening he happened to be alone with her for a few minutes in
+the sitting-room. It was Hallowe'en, and he was waiting for Amanda
+to come down from her room, where she was arraying herself for
+conquest at a party in the village, to which he had been invited
+to escort her.
+
+"Studying all alone?" he inquired sociably, coming to the table
+where Tillie sat, and looking down upon her.
+
+"Yes," said Tillie, raising her eyes for an instant.
+
+"May I see!"
+
+He bent to look at her book, pressing it open with his palm, and
+the movement brought his hand in contact with hers. Tillie felt
+for an instant as if she were going to swoon, so strangely
+delicious was the shock.
+
+"'Hiawatha,'" he said, all unconscious of the tempest in the
+little soul apparently so close to him, yet in reality so
+immeasurably far away. "Do you enjoy it?" he inquired curiously.
+
+"Oh, yes"; then quickly she added, "I am parsing it."
+
+"Oh!" There was a faint disappointment in his tone.
+
+"But," she confessed, "I read it all through the first day I began
+to parse it, and--and I wish I was parsing something else, because
+I keep reading this instead of parsing it, and--"
+
+"You enjoy the story and the poetry?" he questioned.
+
+"But a body mustn't read just for pleasure," she said timidly;
+"but for instruction; and this 'Hiawatha' is a temptation to me."
+
+"What makes you think you ought not to read 'just for pleasure'?"
+
+"That would be a vanity. And we Mennonites are loosed from the
+things of the world."
+
+"Do you never do anything just for the pleasure of it?"
+
+"When pleasure and duty go hand in hand, then pleasure is not
+displeasing to God. But Christ, you know, did not go about seeking
+pleasure. And we try to follow him in all things."
+
+"But, child, has not God made the world beautiful for our
+pleasure? Has he not given us appetites and passions for our
+pleasure?--minds and hearts and bodies constructed for pleasure?"
+
+"Has he made anything for pleasure apart from usefulness?" Tillie
+asked earnestly, suddenly forgetting her shyness.
+
+"But when a thing gives pleasure it is serving the highest
+possible use," he insisted. "It is blasphemous to close your
+nature to the pleasures God has created for you. Blasphemous!"
+
+"Those thoughts have come to me still," said Tillie. "But I know
+they were sent to me by the Enemy."
+
+"'The Enemy'?"
+
+"The Enemy of our souls."
+
+"Oh!" he nodded; then abruptly added, "Now do you know, little
+girl, I wouldn't let HIM bother me at this stage of the game, if I
+were you! He's a back number, really!" He checked himself,
+remembering how dangerous such heresies were in New Canaan. "Don't
+you find it dull working alone?" he asked hastily, "and rather
+uphill?"
+
+"It is often very hard."
+
+"Often? Then you have been doing it for some time?"
+
+"Yes," Tillie answered hesitatingly. No one except the doctor
+shared her secret with Miss Margaret. Self-concealment had come to
+be the habit of her life--her instinct for self-preservation. And
+yet, the teacher's evident interest, his presence so close to her,
+brought all her soul to her lips. She had a feeling that if she
+could overcome her shyness, she would he able to speak to him as
+unrestrainedly, as truly, as she talked in her letters to Miss
+Margaret.
+
+"Do you have no help at all?" he pursued.
+
+Could she trust him with the secret of Miss Margaret's letters?
+The habit of secretiveness was too strong upon her. "There is no
+one here to help me--unless YOU would sometimes," she timidly
+answered.
+
+"I am at your service always. Nothing could give me greater
+pleasure."
+
+"Thank you." Her face flushed with delight.
+
+"You have, of course, been a pupil at William Penn?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, but father took me out of school when I was twelve. Ever
+since then I've been trying to educate myself, but--" she lifted
+troubled eyes to his face, "no one here knows it but the doctor.
+No one must know it."
+
+"Trust me," he nodded. "But why must they not know it?"
+
+"Father would stop it if he found it out."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He wouldn't leave me waste the time."
+
+"You have had courage--to have struggled against such odds."
+
+"It has not been easy. But--it seems to me the things that are
+worth having are never easy to get."
+
+Fairchilds looked at her keenly.
+
+"'The things that are worth having'? What do you count as such
+things?"
+
+"Knowledge and truth; and personal freedom to be true to one's
+self."
+
+He concealed the shock of surprise he felt at her words. "What
+have we here?" he wondered, his pulse quickening as he looked into
+the shining upraised eyes of the girl and saw the tumultuous
+heaving of her bosom. He had been right after all, then, in
+feeling that she was different from the rest of them! He could see
+that it was under the stress of unusual emotion that she gave
+expression to thoughts which of necessity she must seldom or never
+utter to those about her.
+
+"'Personal freedom to be true to one's self'?" he repeated. "What
+would it mean to you if you had it?"
+
+"Life!" she answered. "I am only a dead machine, except when I am
+living out my true self."
+
+He deliberately placed his hand on hers as it lay on the table.
+"You make me want to clasp hands with you. Do you realize what a
+big truth you have gotten hold of--and all that it involves?"
+
+"I only know what it means to me."
+
+"You are not free to be yourself?"
+
+"I have never drawn a natural breath except in secret."
+
+Tillie's face was glowing. Scarcely did she know herself in this
+wonderful experience of speaking freely, face to face, with one
+who understood.
+
+"My own recent experiences of life," he said gravely, "have
+brought me, too, to realize that it is death in life not to be
+true to one's self. But if you wait for the FREEDOM to be so--" he
+shrugged his shoulders. "One always has that freedom if he will
+take it--at its fearful cost. To be uncompromisingly and always
+true to one's self simply means martyrdom in one form or another."
+
+He, too, marveled that he should have found any one in this
+household to whom he could speak in such a vein as this.
+
+"I always thought," Tillie said, "that when I was enough educated
+to be a teacher and be independent of father, I would be free to
+live truly. But I see that YOU cannot. You, too, have to hide your
+real self. Else you could not stay here in New Canaan."
+
+"Or anywhere else, child," he smiled. "It is only with the rare
+few whom one finds on one's own line of march that one can be
+absolutely one's self. Your secret life, Miss Tillie, is not
+unique."
+
+A fascinating little brown curl had escaped from Tillie's cap and
+lay on her cheek, and she raised her hand to push it back where it
+belonged, under its snowy Mennonite covering.
+
+"Don't!" said Fairchilds. "Let it be. It's pretty!"
+
+Tillie stared up at him, a new wonder in her eyes.
+
+"In that Mennonite cap, you look like--like a Madonna!" Almost
+unwittingly the words had leaped from his lips; he could not hold
+them back. And in uttering them, it came to him that in the
+freedom permissible to him with an unsophisticated but interesting
+and gifted girl like this--freedom from the conventional
+restraints which had always limited his intercourse with the girls
+of his own social world--there might be possible a friendship such
+as he had never known except with those of his own sex--and with
+them but rarely. The thought cheered him mightily; for his life in
+New Canaan was heavy with loneliness.
+
+With the selfishness natural to man, he did not stop to consider
+what such companionship might come to mean to this inexperienced
+girl steeped in a life of sordid labor and unbroken monotony.
+
+There came the rustle of Amanda's skirts on the stairs.
+
+Fairchilds clasped Tillie's passive hand. "I feel that I have
+found a friend to-night."
+
+Amanda, brilliant in a scarlet frock and pink ribbons, appeared in
+the doorway. The vague, almost unseeing look with which the
+teacher turned to her was interpreted by the vanity of this buxom
+damsel to be the dazzled vision of eyes half blinded by her
+radiance.
+
+For a long time after they had gone away together, Tillie sat with
+her face bowed upon her book, happiness surging through her with
+every great throb of her heart.
+
+At last she rose, picked up the lamp and carried it into the
+kitchen to the little mirror before which the family combed their
+hair. Holding the lamp high, she surveyed her features. As long as
+her arm would bear the weight of the uplifted lamp, she gazed at
+her reflected image.
+
+When presently with trembling arm she set it on the dresser,
+Tillie, like Mother Eve of old, had tasted of the Tree of
+Knowledge. Tillie knew that she was very fair.
+
+That evening marked another crisis in the girl's inner life. Far
+into the night she lay with her eyes wide open, staring into the
+darkness, seeing there strange new visions of her own soul, gazing
+into its hitherto unsounded depths and seeing there the heaven or
+the hell--she scarcely knew which--that possessed all her being.
+
+"Blasphemous to close your nature to the pleasures God has created
+for you!" His words burned themselves into her brain. Was it to an
+abyss of degradation that her nature was bearing her in a swift
+and fatal tide--or to a holy height of blessedness? Alternately
+her fired imagination and awakened passion exalted her adoration
+of him into an almost religious joy, making her yearn to give
+herself to him, soul and body, as to a god; then plunged her into
+an agony of remorse and terror at her own idolatry and
+lawlessness.
+
+A new universe was opened up to her, and all of life appeared
+changed. All the poetry and the stories which she had ever read
+held new and wonderful meanings. The beauty in Nature, which, even
+as a child, she had felt in a way she knew those about her could
+never have understood, now spoke to her in a language of infinite
+significance. The mystery, the wonder, the power of love were
+revealed to her, and her soul was athirst to drink deep at this
+magic fountain of living water.
+
+"You look like a Madonna!" Oh, surely, thought Tillie, in the long
+hours of that wakeful night, this bliss which filled her heart WAS
+a temptation of the Evil One, who did not scruple to use even such
+as the teacher for an instrument to work her undoing! Was not his
+satanic hand clearly shown in these vain and wicked thoughts which
+crowded upon her--thoughts of how fair she would look in a red
+gown like Amanda's, or in a blue hat like Rebecca's, instead of in
+her white cap and black hood? She crushed her face in her pillow
+in an agony of remorse for her own faithlessness, as she felt how
+hideous was that black Mennonite hood and all the plain garb which
+hitherto had stood to her for the peace, the comfort, the
+happiness, of her life! With all her mind, she tried to force back
+such wayward, sinful thoughts, but the more she wrestled with
+them, the more persistently did they obtrude themselves.
+
+On her knees she passionately prayed to be delivered from the
+temptation of such unfaithfulness to her Lord, even in secret
+thought. Yet even while in the very act of pleading for mercy,
+forgiveness, help, to her own unutterable horror she found herself
+wondering whether she would dare brave her father's wrath and ask
+her aunt, in the morning, to keep back from her father a portion
+of her week's wages that she might buy some new white caps, her
+old ones being of poor material and very worn.
+
+It was a tenet of her church that "wearing-apparel was instituted
+by God as a necessity for the sake of propriety and also for
+healthful warmth, but when used for purposes of adornment it
+becomes the evidence of an un-Christlike spirit." Now Tillie knew
+that her present yearning for new caps was prompted, not by the
+praiseworthy and simple desire to be merely neat, but wholly by
+her vain longing to appear more fair in the eyes of the teacher.
+
+Thus until the small hours of the morning did the young girl
+wrestle with the conflicting forces in her soul.
+
+But the Enemy had it all his own way; for when Tillie went down-
+stairs next morning to help her aunt get breakfast, she knew that
+she intended this day to buy those new caps in spite of the
+inevitable penalty she would have to suffer for daring to use her
+own money without her father's leave.
+
+And when she walked into the kitchen, her aunt was amazed to see
+the girl's fair face looking out from a halo of tender little
+brown curls, which, with a tortured conscience, and an
+apprehension of retribution at the hands of the meeting, Tillie
+had brushed from under her cap and arranged with artful care.
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+TILLIE TELLS A LIE
+
+
+It was eleven o'clock on the following Saturday morning, a busy
+hour at the hotel, and Mrs. Wackernagel and Tillie were both hard
+at work in the kitchen, while Eebecca and Amanda were vigorously
+applying their young strength to "the up-stairs work."
+
+The teacher was lounging on the settee in the sitting-room, trying
+to read his Boston Transcript and divert his mind from its
+irritation and discontent under a condition of things which made
+it impossible for him to command Tillie's time whenever he wanted
+a companion for a walk in the woods, or for a talk in which he
+might unburden himself of his pent-up thoughts and feelings. The
+only freedom she had was in the evening; and even then she was not
+always at liberty. There was Amanda always ready and at hand--it
+kept him busy dodging her. Why was Fate so perverse in her
+dealings with him? Why couldn't it be Tillie instead of Amanda?
+Fairchilds chafed under this untoward condition of things like a
+fretful child--or, rather, just like a man who can't have what he
+wants.
+
+Both Tillie and her aunt went about their tasks this morning with
+a nervousness of movement and an anxiety of countenance that told
+of something unwonted in the air. Fairchilds was vaguely conscious
+of this as he sat in the adjoining room, with the door ajar.
+
+"Tillie!" said her aunt, with a sharpness unusual to her, as she
+closed the oven door with a spasmodic bang, "you put on your shawl
+and bonnet and go right up to Sister Jennie Hershey's for some
+bacon."
+
+"Why, Aunty Em!" said Tillie, in surprise, looking up from the
+table where she was rolling out paste; "I can't let these pies."
+
+"I'll finish them pies. You just go now."
+
+"But we've got plenty of bacon."
+
+"If we've got bacon a-plenty, then get some ponhaus. Or some mush.
+Hurry up and go, Tillie!"
+
+She came to the girl's side and took the rolling-pin from her
+hands. "And don't hurry back. Set awhile. Now get your things on
+quick."
+
+"But, Aunty Em--"
+
+"Are you mindin' me, Tillie, or ain't you?" her aunt sharply
+demanded.
+
+"But in about ten minutes father will be stopping on his way from
+Lancaster market," Tillie said, though obediently going toward the
+corner where hung her shawl and bonnet, "to get my wages and see
+me, Aunty Em--like what he does every Saturday still."
+
+"Well, don't be so dumm, Tillie! That's why I'm sendin' you off!"
+
+"Oh, Aunty Em, I don't want to go away and leave you to take all
+the blame for those new caps! And, anyhow, father will stop at
+Sister Jennie Hershey's if he don't find me here."
+
+"I won't tell him you're there. And push them curls under your
+cap, or Sister Jennie'll be tellin' the meeting, and you'll be set
+back yet! I don't know what's come over you, Tillie, to act that
+vain and unregenerate!"
+
+"Father will guess I'm at Sister Jennie's, and he'll stop to see."
+
+"That's so, too." Aunty Em thoughtfully considered the situation.
+"Go out and hide in the stable, Tillie."
+
+Tillie hesitated as she nervously twisted the strings of her
+bonnet. "What's the use of hiding, Aunty Em? I'd have to see him
+NEXT Saturday."
+
+"He won't be so mad about it till next Saturday."
+
+Tillie shook her head. "He'll keep getting angrier--until he has
+satisfied himself by punishing me in some way for spending that
+money without leave."
+
+The girl's face was pale, but she spoke very quietly, and her aunt
+looked at her curiously.
+
+"Tillie, ain't you afraid of your pop no more?"
+
+"Oh, Aunty Em! YES, I am afraid of him."
+
+"I'm all fidgety myself, thinkin' about how mad he'll be. Dear
+knows what YOU must feel yet, Tillie--and what all your little
+life you've been feelin', with his fear always hangin' over you
+still. Sometimes when I think how my brother Jake trains up his
+childern!"--indignation choked her--"I have feelin's that are un-
+Christlike, Tillie!"
+
+"And yet, Aunty Em," the girl said earnestly, "father does care
+for me too--even though he always did think I ought to want
+nothing else but to work for him. But he does care for me. The
+couple of times I was sick already, he was concerned. I can't
+forget it."
+
+"To be sure, he'd have to be a funny man if he wasn't concerned
+when his own child's sick, Tillie. I don't give him much for
+THAT."
+
+"But it always puzzled me, Aunty Em--if father's concerned to see
+me sick or suffering, why will he himself deliberately make me
+suffer more than I ever suffered in any sickness? I never could
+understand that."
+
+"He always thinks he's doin' his duty by you. That we must give
+him. Och, my! there's his wagon stoppin' NOW! Go on out to the
+stable, Tillie! Quick!"
+
+"Aunty Em!" Tillie faltered, "I'd sooner stay and have it done
+with now, than wait and have it hanging over me all the week till
+next Saturday."
+
+There was another reason for her standing her ground and facing it
+out. Ever since she had yielded to the temptation to buy the caps
+and let her hair curl about her face, her conscience had troubled
+her for her vanity; and a vague feeling that in suffering her
+father's displeasure she would be expiating her sin made her
+almost welcome his coming this morning.
+
+There was the familiar heavy tread in the bar-room which adjoined
+the kitchen. Tillie flushed and paled by turns as it drew near,
+and her aunt rolled out the paste with a vigor and an emphasis
+that expressed her inward agitation. Even Fairchilds, in the next
+room, felt himself infected with the prevailing suspense.
+
+"Well!" was Jake Getz's greeting as he entered the kitchen. "Em!"
+he nodded to his sister. "Well, Tillie!"
+
+There was a note of affection in his greeting of his daughter.
+Tillie realized that her father missed her presence at home almost
+as much as he missed the work that she did. The nature of his
+regard for her was a mystery that had always puzzled the girl. How
+could one be constantly hurting and thwarting a person whom one
+cared for?
+
+Tillie went up to him dutifully and held out her hand. He took it
+and bent to kiss her.
+
+"Are you well? You're lookin' some pale. And your hair's strubbly
+[untidy]."
+
+"She's been sewin' too steady on them clo'es fur your childern,"
+said Aunty Em, quickly. "It gives her such a pain in her side
+still to set and sew. I ain't leavin' her set up every night to
+sew no more! You can just take them clo'es home, Jake. They ain't
+done, and they won't get done here."
+
+"Do you mebbe leave her set up readin' books or such pamp'lets,
+ain't?" Mr. Getz inquired.
+
+"I make her go to bed early still," Mrs. Wackernagel said
+evasively, though her Mennonite conscience reproached her for such
+want of strict candor.
+
+"That dude teacher you got stayin' here mebbe gives her things to
+read, ain't?" Mr. Getz pursued his suspicions.
+
+"He's never gave her nothin' that I seen him," Mrs. Wackernagel
+affirmed.
+
+"Well, mind you don't leave her waste time readin'. She ain't to."
+
+"You needn't trouble, Jake!"
+
+"Well," said Jake, "I'll leave them clo'es another week, and mebbe
+Tillie'll feel some better and can get 'em done. Mom won't like it
+when I come without 'em this mornin'. She's needin' 'em fur the
+childern, and she thought they'd be done till this morning
+a'ready."
+
+"Why don't you hire your washin' or buy her a washin'-machine?
+Then she'd have time to do her own sewin'."
+
+"Work don't hurt a body," Mr. Getz maintained. "It's healthy.
+What's Tillie doin' this morning?"
+
+"She was bakin' these pies, but I want her now to redd up. Take
+all them pans to the dresser, Tillie."
+
+Tillie went to the table to do as she was bid.
+
+"Well, I must be goin' home now," said Mr. Getz. "I'll take
+Tillie's wages, Em."
+
+Mrs. Wackernagel set her lips as she wiped her hands on the
+roller-towel and opened the dresser drawer to get her purse.
+
+"How's her?" she inquired, referring to Mrs. Getz to gain time, as
+she counted out the money.
+
+"She's old-fashioned."
+
+"Is the childern all well?"
+
+"Yes, they're all middlin' well. Hurry up, Em; I'm in a hurry, and
+you're takin' wonderful long to count out them two dollars."
+
+"It's only one and a half this week, Jake. Tillie she had to have
+some new caps, and they come to fifty cents. And I took notice her
+underclo'es was too thin fur this cold spell, and I wanted her to
+buy herself a warm petticoat, but she wouldn't take the money."
+
+An angry red dyed the swarthy neck and forehead of the man, as his
+keen eyes, very like his sister's, only lacking their expression
+of kindness, flashed from her face to the countenance of his
+daughter at the dresser.
+
+"What business have you lettin' her buy anything?" he sternly
+demanded. "You was to give me her wages, and _I_ was to buy her
+what she couldn't do without. You're not keepin' your bargain!"
+
+"She needed them caps right away. I couldn't wait till Saturday to
+ast you oncet. And," she boldly added, "you ought to leave her
+have another fifty cents to buy herself a warm petticoat!"
+
+"Tillie!" commanded her father, "you come here!"
+
+The girl was very white as she obeyed him. But her eyes, as they
+met his, were not afraid.
+
+"It's easy seen why you're pale! I guess it ain't no pain in your
+side took from settin' up sewin' fur mom that's made you pale! Now
+see here," he sternly said, "what did you do somepin like this
+fur? Spendin' fifty cents without astin' me!"
+
+"I needed the caps," she quietly answered. "And I knew you would
+not let me buy them if I asked you, father."
+
+"You're standin' up here in front of me and sayin' to my face you
+done somepin you knowed I wouldn't give you darst to do! And you
+have no business, anyhow, wearin' them New Mennonite caps! I never
+wanted you to take up with that blamed foolishness! Well, I'll
+learn you! If I had you home I'd whip you!"
+
+"You ain't touchin' her 'round HERE!" exclaimed his sister. "You
+just try it, Jake, and I'll call Abe out!"
+
+"Is she my own child or ain't she, Em Wackernagel? And can I do
+with my own what I please, or must I ast you and Abe Wackernagel?"
+
+"She's too growed up fur to be punished, Jake, and you know it."
+
+"Till she's too growed up to obey her pop, she'll get punished,"
+he affirmed. "Where's the good of your religion, I'd like to know,
+Em--settin' a child on to defy her parent? And you, Tillie, you
+STOLE that money off of me! Your earnin's ain't yourn till you're
+twenty-one. Is them New Mennonite principles to take what ain't
+yourn? It ain't only the fifty cents I mind--it's your
+disobedience and your stealin'."
+
+"Oh, father! it wasn't STEALING!"
+
+"Of course it wasn't stealin'--takin' what you earnt yourself--
+whether you ARE seventeen instead of twenty-one!" her aunt warmly
+assured her.
+
+"Now look-ahere, Em! If yous are goin' to get her so spoilt fur
+me, over here, she ain't stayin' here. I'll take her home!"
+
+"Well, take her!" diplomatically answered his sister. "I can get
+Abe's niece over to East Donegal fur one-seventy-five. She'd be
+glad to come!"
+
+Mr. Getz at this drew in his sails a bit. "I'll give her one more
+chancet," he compromised. "But I ain't givin' her no second
+chancet if she does somepin again where she ain't got darst to do.
+Next time I hear of her disobeyin' me, home she comes. I'd sooner
+lose the money than have her spoilt fur me. Now look-ahere,
+Tillie, you go get them new caps and bring 'em here."
+
+Tillie turned away to obey.
+
+"Now, Jake, what are you up to?" his sister demanded as the girl
+left the room.
+
+"Do you suppose I'd leave her KEEP them caps she stole the money
+off of me to buy?" Getz retorted.
+
+"She earnt the money!" maintained Mrs. Wackernagel.
+
+"The money wasn't hern, and I'd sooner throw them caps in the rag-
+bag than leave her wear 'em when she disobeyed me to buy 'em."
+
+"Jake Getz, you're a reg'lar tyrant! You mind me of Herod yet--and
+of Punshus Palate!"
+
+"Ain't I followin' Scripture when I train up my child to obey to
+her parent?" he wanted to know.
+
+"Now look-ahere, Jake; I'll give you them fifty cents and make a
+present to Tillie of them caps if you'll leave her keep 'em."
+
+But in spite of his yearning for the fifty cents, Mr. Getz firmly
+refused this offer. Paternal discipline must be maintained even at
+a financial loss. Then, too, penurious and saving as he was, he
+was strictly honest, and he would not have thought it right to let
+his sister pay for his child's necessary wearing-apparel.
+
+"No, Tillie's got to be punished. When I want her to have new
+caps, I'll buy 'em fur her."
+
+Tillie reentered the room with the precious bits of linen tenderly
+wrapped up in tissue paper. Her pallor was now gone, and her eyes
+were red with crying. She came to her father's side and handed him
+the soft bundle.
+
+"These here caps," he said to her, "mom can use fur night-caps, or
+what. When you buy somepin unknownst to me, Tillie, I ain't
+leavin' you KEEP it! Now go 'long back to your dishes. And next
+Saturday, when I come, I want to find them clo'es done, do you
+understand?"
+
+Tillie's eyes followed the parcel as it was crushed ruthlessly
+into her father's coat pocket--and she did not heed his question.
+
+"Do you hear me, Tillie?" he demanded.
+
+"Yes," she answered, looking up at him with brimming eyes.
+
+His sister, watching them from across the room, saw in the man's
+face the working of conflicting feelings--his stern displeasure
+warring with his affection. Mrs. Wackernagel had realized, ever
+since Tillie had come to live with her, that "Jake's" brief weekly
+visits to his daughter were a pleasure to the hard man; and not
+only because of the two dollars which he came to collect. Just
+now, she could see how he hated to part from her in anger. Justice
+having been meted out in the form of the crushed and forfeited
+caps in his pocket, he would fain take leave of the girl with some
+expression of his kindlier feelings toward her.
+
+"Now are you behavin' yourself--like a good girl--till I come
+again?" he asked, laying his hand upon her shoulder.
+
+"Yes," she said dully.
+
+"Then give me good-b'y." She held up her face and submitted to his
+kiss.
+
+"Good-by, Em. And mind you stop spoilin' my girl fur me!"
+
+He opened the door and went away.
+
+And Fairchilds, an unwilling witness to the father's brutality,
+felt every nerve in his body tingle with a longing first to break
+the head of that brutal Dutchman, and then to go and take little
+Tillie in his arms and kiss her. To work off his feelings, he
+sprang up from the settee, put on his hat, and flung out of the
+house to walk down to "the krik."
+
+"Never you mind, Tillie," her aunt consoled her. "I'm goin' in
+town next Wednesday, and I'm buyin' you some caps myself fur a
+present."
+
+"Oh, Aunty Em, but maybe you'd better not be so good to me!"
+Tillie said, dashing away the tears as she industriously rubbed
+her pans. "It was my vanity made me want new caps. And father's
+taking them was maybe the Lord punishing my vanity."
+
+"You needed new caps--your old ones was wore out. AND DON'T YOU BE
+JUDGIN' THE LORD BY YOUR POP! Don't try to stop me--I'm buyin' you
+some caps."
+
+Now Tillie knew how becoming the new caps were to her, and her
+soul yearned for them even as (she told herself) Israel of old
+yearned after the flesh-pots of Egypt. To lose them was really a
+bitter disappointment to her.
+
+But Aunty Em would spare her that grief! A sudden passionate
+impulse of gratitude and love toward her aunt made her do a most
+unwonted thing. Taking her hands from her dish-water, she dried
+them hastily, went over to Mrs. Wackernagel, threw her arms about
+her neck, and kissed her.
+
+"Oh, Aunty Em, I love you like I've never loved any one--except
+Miss Margaret and--"
+
+She stopped short as she buried her face in her aunt's motherly
+bosom and clung to her.
+
+"And who else, Tillie?" Mrs. Wackernagel asked, patting the girl's
+shoulder, her face beaming with pleasure at her niece's
+affectionate demonstration.
+
+"No one else, Aunty Em."
+
+Tillie drew herself away and again returned to her work at the
+dresser.
+
+But all the rest of that day her conscience tortured her that she
+should have told this lie.
+
+For there was some one else.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+TILLIE IS "SET BACK"
+
+
+On Sunday morning, in spite of her aunt's protestations, Tillie
+went to meeting with her curls outside her cap.
+
+"They'll set you back!" protested Mrs. Wackernagel, in great
+trouble of spirit.
+
+"It would be worse to be deceitful than to be vain," Tillie
+answered. "If I am going to let my hair curl week-days, I won't be
+a coward and deceive the meeting about myself."
+
+"But whatever made you take it into your head to act so vain,
+Tillie?" her bewildered aunt inquired for the hundredth time. "It
+can't be fur Absalom, fur you don't take to him. And, anyways, he
+says he wants to be led of the Spirit to give hisself up. To be
+sure, I hope he ain't tempted to use religion as a means of
+gettin' the girl he wants!"
+
+"I know I'm doing wrong, Aunty Em," Tillie replied sorrowfully.
+"Maybe the meeting to-day will help me to conquer the Enemy."
+
+She and her aunt realized during the course of the morning that
+the curls were creating a sensation. An explanation would
+certainly be demanded of Tillie before the week was out.
+
+After the service, they did not stop long for "sociability,"--the
+situation was too strained,--but hurried out to their buggy as
+soon as they could escape.
+
+Tillie marveled at herself as, on the way home, she found how
+small was her concern about the disapproval of the meeting, and
+even about her sin itself, before the fact that the teacher
+thought her curls adorable.
+
+Aunty Em, too, marveled as she perceived the girl's strange
+indifference to the inevitable public disgrace at the hands of the
+brethren and sisters. Whatever was the matter with Tillie?
+
+At the dinner-table, to spare Tillie's evident embarrassment
+(perhaps because of the teacher's presence), Mrs. Wackernagel
+diverted the curiosity of the family as to how the meeting had
+received the curls.
+
+"What did yous do all while we was to meeting?" she asked of her
+two daughters.
+
+"Me and Amanda and Teacher walked to Buckarts Station," Rebecca
+answered.
+
+"Did yous, now?"
+
+"Up the pike a piece was all the fu'ther I felt fur goin',"
+continued Eebecca, in a rather injured tone; "but Amanda she was
+so fur seein' oncet if that fellah with those black MUStache was
+at the blacksmith's shop yet, at Buckarts! I tole her she needn't
+be makin' up to HIM, fur he's keepin' comp'ny with Lizzie
+Hershey!"
+
+"Say, mom," announced Amanda, ignoring her sister's rebuke, "I
+stopped in this morning to see Lizzie Hershey, and she's that
+spited about Teacher's comin' here instead of to their place that
+she never so much as ast me would I spare my hat!"
+
+"Now look!" exclaimed Mrs. Wackernagel. "And when I said, after
+while, 'Now I must go,' she was that unneighborly she never ast
+me, 'What's your hurry?'"
+
+"Was she that spited!" said Mrs. Wackernagel, half pityingly.
+"Well, it was just like Sister Jennie Hershey, if she didn't want
+Teacher stayin' there, to tell him right out. Some ain't as
+honest. Some talks to please the people."
+
+"What fur sermont did yous have this morning?" asked Mr.
+Wackernagel, his mouth full of chicken.
+
+"We had Levi Harnish. He preached good," said Mrs. Wackernagel.
+"Ain't he did, Tillie?"
+
+"Yes," replied Tillie, coloring with the guilty consciousness that
+scarcely a word of that sermon had she heard.
+
+"I like to hear a sermont, like hisn, that does me good to my
+heart," said Mrs. Wackernagel.
+
+"Levi Harnish, he's a learnt preacher," said her husband, turning
+to Fairchilds. "He reads wonderful much. And he's always thinkin'
+so earnest about his learnin' that I've saw him walk along the
+street in Lancaster a'ready and a'most walk into people!" "He
+certainly can stand on the pulpit elegant!" agreed Mrs.
+Wackernagel. "Why, he can preach his whole sermont with the Bible
+shut, yet! And he can put out elocution that it's something
+turrible!"
+
+"You are not a Mennonite, are you?" Fairchilds asked of the
+landlord.
+
+"No," responded Mr. Wackernagel, with a shrug. "I bothered a whole
+lot at one time about religion. Now I never bother."
+
+"We had Silas Trout to lead the singin' this morning," continued
+Mrs. Wackernagel. "I wisht I could sing by note, like him. I don't
+know notes; I just sing by random."
+
+"Where's Doc, anyhow?" suddenly inquired Amanda, for the doctor's
+place at the table was vacant.
+
+"He was fetched away. Mary Holzapple's mister come fur him!" Mr.
+Wackernagel explained, with a meaning nod.
+
+"I say!" cried Mrs. Wackernagel. "So soon a'ready! And last week
+it was Sue Hess! Doc's always gettin' fetched! Nothin' but babies
+and babies!"
+
+Tillie, whose eyes were always on the teacher, except when he
+chanced to glance her way, noted wonderingly the blush that
+suddenly covered his face and neck at this exclamation of her
+aunt's. In the primitive simplicity of her mind, she could see
+nothing embarrassing in the mere statement of any fact of natural
+history.
+
+"Here comes Doc now!" cried Rebecca, at the opening of the kitchen
+door. "Hello, Doc!" she cried as he came into the dining-room.
+"What IS it?"
+
+"Twin girls!" the doctor proudly announced, going over to the
+stove to warm his hands after his long drive.
+
+"My lands!" exclaimed Amanda.
+
+"Now what do you think!" ejaculated Mrs. Wackernagel.
+
+"How's missus?" Rebecca inquired.
+
+"Doin' fine! But mister he ain't feelin' so well. He wanted a boy
+--OR boys, as the case might be. It's gettin' some cold out," he
+added, rubbing his hands and holding them to the fire.
+
+That evening, when again Fairchilds was unable to have a chat
+alone with Tillie, because of Absalom Puntz's unfailing appearance
+at the hotel, he began to think, in his chagrin, that he must have
+exaggerated the girl's superiority, since week after week she
+could endure the attentions of "that lout."
+
+He could not know that it was for HIS sake--to keep him in his
+place at William Penn--that poor Tillie bore the hated caresses of
+Absalom.
+
+That next week was one never to be forgotten by Tillie. It stood
+out, in all the years that followed, as a week of wonder--in which
+were revealed to her the depths and the heights of ecstatic bliss
+--a bliss which so filled her being that she scarcely gave a
+thought to the disgrace hanging over her--her suspension from
+meeting.
+
+The fact that Tillie and the teacher sat together, now, every
+evening, called forth no surmises or suspicions from the
+Wackernagels, for the teacher was merely helping Tillie with some
+studies. The family was charged to guard the fact from Mr. Getz.
+
+The lessons seldom lasted beyond the early bedtime of the family,
+for as soon as Tillie and Fairchilds found the sitting-room
+abandoned to their private use, the school-books were put aside.
+They had somewhat to say to each other.
+
+Tillie's story of her long friendship with Miss Margaret, which
+she related to Fairchilds, made him better understand much about
+the girl that had seemed inexplicable in view of her environment;
+while her wonder at and sympathetic interest in his own story of
+how he had come to apply for the school at New Canaan both amused
+and touched him.
+
+"Do you never have any doubts, Tillie, of the truth of your
+creed?" he asked curiously, as they sat one evening at the
+sitting-room table, the school-books and the lamp pushed to one
+end.
+
+He had several times, in this week of intimacy, found it hard to
+reconcile the girl's fine intelligence and clear thought in some
+directions with her religious superstition. He hesitated to say a
+word to disturb her in her apparently unquestioning faith, though
+he felt she was worthy of a better creed than this impossibly
+narrow one of the New Mennonites. "She isn't ready yet," he had
+thought, "to take hold of a larger idea of religion."
+
+"I have sometimes thought," she said earnestly, "that if the
+events which are related in the Bible should happen now, we would
+not credit them. An infant born of a virgin, a star leading three
+travelers, a man who raised the dead and claimed to be God--we
+would think the folks who believed these things were ignorant and
+superstitious. And because they happened so long ago, and are in
+the Book which we are told came from God, we believe. It is very
+strange! Sometimes my thoughts trouble me. I try hard not to leave
+such thoughts come to me."
+
+"LET, Tillie, not 'leave.'"
+
+"Will I ever learn not to get my 'leaves' and 'lets' mixed!"
+sighed Tillie, despairingly.
+
+"Use 'let' whenever you find 'leave' on the end of your tongue,
+and vice versa," he advised, with a smile.
+
+She looked at him doubtfully. "Are you joking?"
+
+"Indeed, no! I couldn't give you a better rule."
+
+"There's another thing I wish you would tell me, please," she
+said, her eyes downcast.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I can't call you 'Mr.' Fairchilds, because such complimentary
+speech is forbidden to us New Mennonites. It would come natural to
+me to call you 'Teacher,' but you would think that what you call
+'provincial.'"
+
+"But you say 'Miss' Margaret."
+
+"I could not get out of the way of it, because I had called her
+that so many years before I gave myself up. That makes it seem
+different. But you--what must I call you?"
+
+"I don't see what's left--unless you call me 'Say'!"
+
+"I must have something to call you," she pleaded. "Would you mind
+if I called you by your Christian name?"
+
+"I should like nothing better."
+
+He drew forward a volume of Mrs. Browning's poems which lay among
+his books on the table, opened it at the fly-leaf, and pointed to
+his name.
+
+"'Walter'?" read Tillie. "But I thought--"
+
+"It was Pestalozzi? That was only my little joke. My name's
+Walter."
+
+On the approach of Sunday, Fairchilds questioned her one evening
+about Absalom.
+
+"Will that lad be taking up your whole Sunday evening again?" he
+demanded.
+
+She told him, then, why she suffered Absalom's unwelcome
+attentions. It was in order that she might use her influence over
+him to keep the teacher in his place.
+
+"But I can't permit such a thing!" he vehemently protested.
+"Tillie, I am touched by your kindness and self-sacrifice! But,
+dear child, I trust I am man enough to hold my own here without
+your suffering for me! You must not do it."
+
+"You don't know Nathaniel Puntz!" She shook her head. "Absalom
+will never forgive you, and, at a word from him, his father would
+never rest until he had got rid of you. You see, none of the
+directors like you--they don't understand you--they say you are
+'too tony.' And then your methods of teaching--they aren't like
+those of the Millersville Normal teachers we've had, and therefore
+are unsound! I discovered last week, when I was out home, that my
+father is very much opposed to you. They all felt just so to Miss
+Margaret."
+
+"I see. Nevertheless, you shall not bear my burdens. And don't you
+see it's not just to poor Absalom? You can't marry him, so you
+ought not to encourage him."
+
+"'If I refused to le-LET Absalom come, you would not remain a
+month at New Canaan," was her answer.
+
+"But it isn't a matter of life and death to me to stay at New
+Canaan! I need not starve if I lose my position here. There are
+better places."
+
+Tillie gazed down upon the chenille table-cover, and did not
+speak. She could not tell him that it did seem to HER a matter of
+life and death to have him stay.
+
+"It seems to me, Tillie, you could shake off Absalom through your
+father's objections to his attentions. The fellow could not blame
+you for that."
+
+"But don't you see I must keep him by me, in order to protect
+you."
+
+"My dear little girl, that's rough on Absalom; and I'm not sure
+it's worthy of you."
+
+"But you don't understand. You think Absalom will be hurt in his
+feelings if I refuse to marry him. But I've told him all along I
+won't marry him. And it isn't his feelings that are concerned. He
+only wants a good housekeeper."
+
+Fairchilds's eyes rested on the girl as she sat before him in the
+fresh bloom of her maidenhood, and he realized what he knew she
+did not--that unsentimental, hard-headed, and practical as Absalom
+might be, if she allowed him the close intimacy of "setting-up"
+with her, the fellow must suffer in the end in not winning her.
+But the teacher thought it wise to make no further comment, as he
+saw, at any rate, that he could not move her in her resolution to
+defend him.
+
+And there was another thing that he saw. The extraneous
+differences between himself and Tillie, and even the radical
+differences of breeding and heredity which, he had assumed from
+the first, made any least romance or sentiment on the part of
+either of them unthinkable, however much they might enjoy a good
+comradeship,--all these differences had strangely sunk out of
+sight as he had, from day to day, grown in touch with the girl's
+real self, and he found himself unable to think of her and himself
+except in that deeper sense in which her soul met his. Any other
+consideration of their relation seemed almost grotesque. This was
+his feeling--but his reason struggled with his feeling and bade
+him beware. Suppose that she too should come to feel that with the
+meeting of their spirits the difference in their conditions melted
+away like ice in the sunshine. Would not the result be fraught
+with tragedy for her? For himself, he was willing, for the sake of
+his present pleasure, to risk a future wrestling with his
+impracticable sentiments; but what must be the cost of such a
+struggle to a frail, sensitive girl, with no compensations
+whatever in any single phase of her life? Clearly, he was treading
+on dangerous ground. He must curb himself.
+
+Before another Sunday came around, the ax had fallen--the brethren
+came to reason with Tillie, and finding her unable to say she was
+sincerely repentant and would amend her vain and carnal
+deportment, she was, in the course of the next week, "set back."
+
+"I would be willing to put back the curls," she said to her aunt,
+who also reasoned with her in private; "but it would avail
+nothing. For my heart is still vain and carnal. 'Man looketh upon
+the outward appearance, but God looketh on the heart.'"
+
+"Then, Tillie," said her aunt, her kindly face pale with distress
+in the resolution she had taken, "you'll have to go home and stay.
+You can't stay here as long as you're not holding out in your
+professions."
+
+Tillie's face went white, and she gazed into her aunt's resolute
+countenance with anguish in her own.
+
+"I'd not do it to send you away, Tillie, if I could otherwise help
+it. But look how inconwenient it would be havin' you here to help
+work, and me not havin' dare to talk or eat with you. I'm not
+obeyin' to the 'Rules' NOW in talkin' to you. But I tole the
+brethren I'd only speak to you long enough to reason with you
+some--and then, if that didn't make nothin', I'd send you home."
+
+The Rules forbade the members to sit at table or hold any
+unnecessary word of communication with one who had failed to "hold
+out," and who had in consequence been "set back." Tillie, in her
+strange indifference to the disgrace of being set back, had not
+foreseen her inevitable dismissal from her aunt's employ. She
+recognized, now, with despair in her soul, that Aunty Em could not
+do otherwise than send her home.
+
+"When must I go, Aunty Em?"
+
+"As soon as you make your mind up you AIN'T goin' to repent of
+your carnal deportment."
+
+"I can't repent, Aunty Em!" Tillie's voice sounded hollow to
+herself as she spoke.
+
+"Then, Tillie, you're got to go to-morrow. I 'll have to get my
+niece from East Donegal over."
+
+It sounded to Tillie like the crack of doom.
+
+The doctor, who was loath to have her leave, who held her
+interests at heart, and who knew what she would forfeit in losing
+the help which the teacher was giving her daily in her studies,
+undertook to add his expostulations to that of the brethern and
+sisters.
+
+"By gum, Tillie, slick them swanged curls BACK, if they don't suit
+the taste of the meeting! Are you willin' to leave go your nice
+education, where you're gettin', fur a couple of damned curls? I
+don't know what's got INto you to act so blamed stubborn about
+keepin' your hair strubbled 'round your face!"
+
+"But the vanity would still be in my heart even if I did brush
+them back. And I don't want to be deceitful."
+
+"Och, come now," urged the doctor, "just till you're got your
+certificate a'ready to teach! That wouldn't be long. Then, after
+that, you can be as undeceitful as you want."
+
+But Tillie could not be brought to view the matter in this light.
+
+She did not sit at table with the family that day, for that would
+have forced her aunt to stay away from the table. Mrs. Wackernagel
+could break bread without reproach with all her unconverted
+household; but not with a backslider--for the prohibition was
+intended as a discipline, imposed in all love, to bring the
+recalcitrant member back into the fold.
+
+That afternoon, Tillie and the teacher took a walk together in the
+snow-covered woods.
+
+"It all seems so extraordinary, so inexplicable!" Fairchilds
+repeated over and over. Like all the rest of the household, he
+could not be reconciled to her going. His regret was, indeed,
+greater than that of any of the rest, and rather surprised
+himself. The pallor of Tillie's face and the anguish in her eyes
+he attributed to the church discipline she was suffering. He never
+dreamed how wholly and absolutely it was for him.
+
+"Is it any stranger," Tillie asked, her low voice full of pain,
+"than that your uncle should send you away because of your
+UNbelief?" This word, "unbelief," stood for a very definite thing
+in New Canaan--a lost and hopeless condition of the soul. "It
+seems to me, the idea is the same," said Tillie.
+
+"Yes," acknowledged Fairchilds, "of course you are right.
+Intolerance, bigotry, narrowness--they are the same the world
+over--and stand for ignorance always."
+
+Tillie silently considered his words. It had not occurred to her
+to question the perfect justice of the meeting's action.
+
+Suddenly she saw in the path before her a half-frozen, fluttering
+sparrow. They both paused, and Tillie stooped, gently took it up,
+and folded it in her warm shawl. As she felt its throbbing little
+body against her hand, she thought of herself in the hand of God.
+She turned and spoke her thought to Fairchilds.
+
+"Could I possibly hurt this little bird, which is so entirely at
+my mercy? Could I judge it, condemn and punish it, for some
+mistake or wrong or weakness it had committed in its little world?
+And could God be less kind, less merciful to me than I could be to
+this little bird? Could he hold my soul in the hollow of his hand
+and vivisect it to judge whether its errors were worthy of his
+divine anger? He knows how weak and ignorant I am. I will not fear
+him," she said, her eyes shining. "I will trust myself in his
+power--and believe in his love."
+
+"The New Mennonite creed won't hold her long," thought Fairchilds.
+
+"Our highest religious moments, Tillie," he said, "come to us, not
+through churches, nor even through Bibles. They are the moments
+when we are most receptive of the message Nature is always
+patiently waiting to speak to us--if we will only hear. It is she
+alone that can lead us to see God face to face, instead of
+'through another man's dim thought of him.'"
+
+"Yes," agreed Tillie, "I have often felt more--more RELIGIOUS,"
+she said, after an instant's hesitation, "when I've been walking
+here alone in the woods, or down by the creek, or up on Chestnut
+Hill--than I could feel in church. In church we hear ABOUT God, as
+you say, through other men's dim thoughts of Him. Here, alone, we
+are WITH him."
+
+They walked in silence for a space, Tillie feeling with mingled
+bliss and despair the fascination of this parting hour. But it did
+not occur to Fairchilds that her departure from the hotel meant
+the end of their intercourse.
+
+"I shall come out to the farm to see you, Tillie, as often as you
+will let me. You know, I've no one else to talk to, about here, as
+I talk with you. What a pleasure it has been!"
+
+"Oh, but father will never le--let me spend my time with you as I
+did at the hotel! He will be angry at my being sent home, and he
+will keep me constantly at work to make up for the loss it is to
+him. This is our last talk together!"
+
+"I'll risk your father's wrath, Tillie. You don't suppose I'd let
+a small matter like that stand in the way of our friendship?"
+
+"But father will not l--LET--me spend time with you. And if you
+come when he told you not to he would put you out of William
+Penn!"
+
+"I'm coming, all the same, Tillie."
+
+"Father will blame me, if you do."
+
+"Can't you take your own part, Tillie?" he gravely asked. "No,
+no," he hastily added, for he did not forget the talk he had
+overheard about the new caps, in which Mr. Getz had threatened
+personal violence to his daughter. "I know you must not suffer for
+my sake. But you cannot mean that we are not to meet at all after
+this?"
+
+"Only at chance times," faltered Tillie; "that is all."
+
+Very simply and somewhat constrainedly they said good-by the next
+morning, Fairchilds to go to his work at William Penn and Tillie
+to drive out with her Uncle Abe to meet her father's displeasure.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+"I'LL MARRY HIM TO-MORROW!"
+
+
+Mr. Getz had plainly given Absalom to understand that he did not
+want him to sit up with Tillie, as he "wasn't leaving her marry."
+Absalom had answered that he guessed Tillie would have something
+to say to that when she was "eighteen a'ready." And on the first
+Sunday evening after her return home he had boldly presented
+himself at the farm.
+
+"That's where you'll get fooled, Absalom, fur she's been raised to
+mind her pop!" Mr. Getz had responded. "If she disobeyed to my
+word, I wouldn't give her no aus styer. I guess you wouldn't marry
+a girl where wouldn't bring you no aus styer!"
+
+Absalom, who was frugal, had felt rather baffled at this threat.
+Nevertheless, here he was again on Sunday evening at the farm to
+assure Tillie that HE would stand by her, and that if she was not
+restored to membership in the meeting, he wouldn't give himself
+up, either.
+
+Mr. Getz dared not go to the length of forbidding Absalom his
+house, for that would have meant a family feud between all the
+Getzes and all the Puntzes of the county. He could only insist
+that Tillie "dishearten him," and that she dismiss him not later
+than ten o'clock. To almost any other youth in the neighborhood,
+such opposition would have proved effectual. But every new
+obstacle seemed only to increase Absalom's determination to have
+what he had set out to get.
+
+To-night he produced another book, which he said he had bought at
+the second-hand book-store in Lancaster.
+
+"'Cupid and Psyche,'" Tillie read the title. "Oh, Absalom, thank
+you. This is lovely. It's a story from Greek mythology--I've been
+hearing some of these stories from the teacher"--she checked
+herself, suddenly, at Absalom's look of jealous suspicion.
+
+"I'm wonderful glad you ain't in there at the HOtel no more," he
+said. "I hadn't no fair chancet, with Teacher right there on the
+GROUNDS."
+
+"Absalom," said Tillie, gravely, with a little air of dignity that
+did not wholly fail to impress him, "I insist on it that you never
+speak of the teacher in that way in connection with me. You might
+as well speak of my marrying the County Superintendent! He'd be
+just as likely to ask me!"
+
+The county superintendent of public instruction was held in such
+awe that his name was scarcely mentioned in an ordinary tone of
+voice.
+
+"As if there's no difference from a teacher at William Penn to the
+county superintendent! You ain't that dumm, Tillie!"
+
+"The difference is that the teacher at William Penn is superior in
+every way to the county superintendent!"
+
+She spoke impulsively, and she regretted her words the moment they
+were uttered. But Absalom only half comprehended her meaning.
+
+"You think you ain't good enough fur him, and you think I ain't
+good enough fur YOU!" he grumbled. "I have never saw such a funny
+girl! Well," he nodded confidently, "you'll think different one of
+these here days!"
+
+"You must not cherish any false hopes, Absalom," Tillie insisted
+in some distress.
+
+"Well, fur why don't you want to have me?" he demanded for the
+hundredth time.
+
+"Absalom,"--Tillie tried a new mode of discouragement,--"I don't
+want to get married because I don't want to be a farmer's wife--
+they have to work too hard!"
+
+It was enough to drive away any lover in the countryside, and for
+a moment Absalom was staggered.
+
+"Well!" he exclaimed, "a woman that's afraid of work ain't no wife
+fur me, anyways!"
+
+Tillie's heart leaped high for an instant in the hope that now she
+had effectually cooled his ardor. But it sank again as she
+recalled the necessity of retaining at least his good-will and
+friendship, that she might protect the teacher.
+
+"Now, Absalom," she feebly protested, "did you ever see me afraid
+of work?"
+
+"Well, then, if you ain't afraid of workin', what makes you talk
+so CONTRARY?"
+
+"I don't know. Come, let me read this nice book you've brought
+me," she urged, much as she might have tried to divert one of her
+little sisters or brothers.
+
+"I'd ruther just set. I ain't much fur readin'. Jake Getz he says
+he's goin' to chase you to bed at ten--and ten comes wonderful
+soon Sundays. Leave us just set."
+
+Tillie well understood that this was to endure Absalom's clownish
+wooing. But for the sake of the cause, she said to herself, she
+would conquer her repugnance and bear it.
+
+For two weeks after Tillie's return home, she did not once have a
+word alone with Fairchilds. He came several times, ostensibly on
+errands from her aunt; but on each occasion he found her hard at
+work in her father's presence. At his first visit, Tillie, as he
+was leaving, rose from her corn-husking in the barn to go with him
+to the gate, but her father interfered.
+
+"You stay where you're at!"
+
+With burning face, she turned to her work. And Fairchilds,
+carefully suppressing an impulse to shake Jake Getz till his teeth
+rattled, walked quietly out of the gate and up the road.
+
+Her father was more than usually stern and exacting with her in
+these days of her suspension from meeting, inasmuch as it involved
+her dismissal from the hotel and the consequent loss to him of two
+dollars a week.
+
+As for Tillie, she found a faint consolation in the fact of the
+teacher's evident chagrin and indignation at the tyrannical rule
+which forbade intercourse between them.
+
+At stated intervals, the brethren came to reason with her, but
+while she expressed her willingness to put her curls back, she
+would not acknowledge that her heart was no longer "carnal and
+vain," and so they found it impossible to restore her to favor.
+
+A few weeks before Christmas, Absalom, deciding that he had
+imbibed all the arithmetical erudition he could hold, stopped
+school. On the evening that he took his books home, he gave the
+teacher a parting blow, which he felt sure quite avenged the
+outrageous defeat he had suffered at his hands on that Sunday
+night at the hotel.
+
+"Me and Tillie's promised. It ain't put out yet, but I conceited
+I'd better tell you, so's you wouldn't be wastin' your time tryin'
+to make up to her."
+
+"You and Tillie are engaged to be married?" Fairchilds
+incredulously asked.
+
+"That's what! As good as, anyways. I always get somepin I want
+when I make up my mind oncet." And he grinned maliciously.
+
+Fairchilds pondered the matter as, with depressed spirits, he
+walked home over the frozen road.
+
+"No wonder the poor girl yielded to the pressure of such an
+environment," he mused. "I suppose she thinks Absalom's rule will
+not be so bad as her father's. But that a girl like Tillie should
+be pushed to the wall like that--it is horrible! And yet--if she
+were worthy a better fate would she not have held out?--it is too
+bad, it is unjust to her 'Miss Margaret' that she should give up
+now! I feel," he sadly told himself, "disappointed in Tillie!"
+
+When the notable "Columbus Celebration" came off in New Canaan, in
+which event several schools of the township united to participate,
+and which was attended by the entire countryside, as if it were a
+funeral, Tillie hoped that here would be an opportunity for seeing
+and speaking with Walter Fairchilds. But in this she was bitterly
+disappointed.
+
+It was not until a week later, at the township Institute, which
+met at New Canaan, and which was also attended by the entire
+population, that her deep desire was gratified.
+
+It was during the reading of an address, before the Institute, by
+Miss Spooner, the teacher at East Donegal, that Fairchilds
+deliberately came and sat by Tillie in the back of the school-
+room.
+
+Tillie's heart beat fast, and she found herself doubting the
+reality of his precious nearness after the long, dreary days of
+hungering for him.
+
+She dared not speak to him while Miss Spooner held forth, and,
+indeed, she feared even to look at him, lest curious eyes read in
+her face what consciously she strove to conceal.
+
+She realized his restless impatience under Miss Spooner's
+eloquence.
+
+"It was a week back already, we had our Columbus Celebration,"
+read this educator of Lancaster County, genteelly curving the
+little finger of each hand, as she held her address, which was
+esthetically tied with blue ribbon. "It was an inspiring sight to
+see those one hundred enthusiastic and paterotic children marching
+two by two, led by their equally enthusiastic and paterotic
+teachers! Forming a semicircle in the open air, the exercises were
+opened by a song, 'O my Country,' sung by clear--r-r-ringing--
+childish voices...."
+
+It was the last item on the program, and by mutual and silent
+consent, Tillie and Fairchilds, at the first stir of the audience,
+slipped out of the schoolhouse together. Tillie's father was in
+the audience, and so was Absalom. But they had sat far forward,
+and Tillie hoped they had not seen her go out with the teacher.
+
+"Let us hurry over to the woods, where we can be alone and
+undisturbed, and have a good talk!" proposed Fairchilds, his face
+showing the pleasure he felt in the meeting.
+
+After a few minutes' hurried walking, they were able to slacken
+their pace and stroll leisurely through the bleak winter forest.
+
+"Tillie, Tillie!" he said, "why won't you abandon this 'carnal'
+life you are leading, be restored to the approbation of the
+brethren, and come back to the hotel? I am very lonely without
+you."
+
+Tillie could scarcely find her voice to answer, for the joy that
+filled her at his words--a joy so full that she felt but a very
+faint pang at his reference to the ban under which she suffered.
+She had thought his failure to speak to her at the "Celebration"
+had indicated indifference or forgetfulness. But now that was all
+forgotten; every nerve in her body quivered with happiness.
+
+He, however, at once interpreted her silence to mean that he had
+wounded her. "Forgive me for speaking so lightly of what to you
+must be a sacred and serious matter. God knows, my own experience
+--which, as you say, was not unlike your own--was sufficiently
+serious to me. But somehow, I can't take THIS seriously--this
+matter of your pretty curls!"
+
+"Sometimes I wonder whether you take any person or any thing,
+here, seriously," she half smiled. "You seem to me to be always
+mocking at us a little."
+
+"Mocking? Not so bad as that. And never at YOU, Tillie."
+
+"You were sneering at Miss Spooner, weren't you?"
+
+"Not at her; at Christopher Columbus--though, up to the time of
+that celebration, I was always rather fond of the discoverer of
+America. But now let us talk of YOU, Tillie. Allow me to
+congratulate you!"
+
+"What for?"
+
+"True enough. I stand corrected. Then accept my sincere sympathy."
+He smiled whimsically.
+
+Tillie lifted her eyes to his face, and their pretty look of
+bewilderment made him long to stoop and snatch a kiss from her
+lips. But he resisted the temptation.
+
+"I refer to your engagement to Absalom. That's one reason why I
+wanted you to come out here with me this afternoon--so that you
+could tell me about it--and explain to me what made you give up
+all your plans. What will your Miss Margaret say?"
+
+Tillie stopped short, her cheeks reddening.
+
+"What makes you think I am promised to Absalom?"
+
+"The fact is, I've only his word for it."
+
+"He told you that?"
+
+"Certainly. Isn't it true?"
+
+"Do YOU think so poorly of me?" Tillie asked in a low voice.
+
+He looked at her quickly. "Tillie, I'm sorry; I ought not to have
+believed it for an instant!"
+
+"I have a higher ambition in life than to settle down to take care
+of Absalom Puntz!" said Tillie, fire in her soft eyes, and an
+unwonted vibration in her gentle voice.
+
+"My credulity was an insult to you!"
+
+"Absalom did not mean to tell you a lie. He has made up his mind
+to have me, so he thinks it is all as good as settled. Sometimes I
+am almost afraid he will win me just by thinking he is going to."
+
+"Send him about his business! Don't keep up this folly, dear
+child!"
+
+"I would rather stand Absalom," she faltered, "than stand having
+you go away."
+
+"But, Tillie," he turned almost fiercely upon her--"Tillie, I
+would rather see you dead at my feet than to see your soul tied to
+that clod of earth!"
+
+A wild thrill of rapture shot through Tillie's heart at his words.
+For an instant she looked up at him, her soul shining in her eyes.
+"Does he--does HE--care that much what happens to me?" throbbed in
+her brain.
+
+For the first time Fairchilds fully realized, with shame at his
+blind selfishness, the danger and the cruelty of his intimate
+friendship with this little Mennonite maid. For her it could but
+end in a heartbreak; for him--"I have been a cad, a despicable
+cad!" he told himself in bitter self-reproach. "If I had only
+known! But now it's too late--unless--" In his mind he rapidly
+went over the simple history of their friendship as they walked
+along; and, busy with her own thought, Tillie did not notice his
+abstraction.
+
+"Tillie," he said suddenly. "Next Saturday there is an examination
+of applicants for certificates at East Donegal. You must take that
+examination. You are perfectly well prepared to pass it."
+
+"Oh, do you really, REALLY think I am?" the girl cried
+breathlessly.
+
+"I know it. The only question is, How are you going to get off to
+attend the examination?"
+
+"Father will be at the Lancaster market on Saturday morning!"
+
+"Then I'll hire a buggy, come out to the farm, and carry you off!"
+
+"No--oh, no, you must not do that. Father would be so angry with
+you!"
+
+"You can't walk to Bast Donegal. It's six miles away."
+
+"Let me think.--Uncle Abe would do anything I asked him--but he
+wouldn't have time to leave the hotel Saturday morning. And I
+couldn't make him or Aunty Em understand that I was educated
+enough to take the examination. But there's the Doc!"
+
+"Of course!" cried Fairchilds. "The Doc isn't afraid of the whole
+county! Shall I tell him you'll go if he'll come for you?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Good! I'll undertake to promise for him that he'll be there!"
+
+"When father comes home from market and finds me gone!" Tillie
+said--but there was exultation, rather than fear, in her voice.
+
+"When you show him your certificate, won't that appease him? When
+he realizes how much more you can earn by teaching than by working
+for your aunt, especially as he bore none of the expense of giving
+you your education? It was your own hard labor, and none of his
+money, that did it! And now I suppose he'll get all the profit of
+it!" Fairchilds could not quite keep down the rising indignation
+in his voice.
+
+"No," said Tillie, quietly, though the color burned in her face.
+"Walter! I'm going to refuse to give father my salary if I am
+elected to a school. I mean to save my money to go to the Normal--
+where Miss Margaret is."
+
+"So long as you are under age, he can take it from you, Tillie."
+
+"If the school I teach is near enough for me to live at home, I'll
+pay my board. More than that I won't do."
+
+"But how are you going to help yourself?"
+
+"I haven't made up my mind, yet, how I'm going to do it. It will
+be the hardest struggle I've ever had--to stand out against him in
+such a thing," Tillie continued; "but I will not be weak, I will
+not! I have studied and worked all these years in the hope of a
+year at the Normal--with Miss Margaret. And I won't falter now!"
+
+Before he could reply to her almost impassioned earnestness, they
+were startled by the sound of footsteps behind them in the woods--
+the heavy steps of men. Involuntarily, they both stopped short,
+Tillie with the feeling of one caught in a stolen delight; and
+Fairchilds with mingled annoyance at the interruption, and
+curiosity as to who might be wandering in this unfrequented patch
+of woods.
+
+"I seen 'em go out up in here!"
+
+It was the voice of Absalom. The answer came in the harsh,
+indignant tones of Mr. Getz. "Next time I leave her go to a
+Instytoot or such a Columbus Sallybration, she'll stay at HOME!
+Wastin' time walkin' 'round in the woods with that dude teacher!
+--and on a week-day, too!"
+
+Tillie looked up at Fairchilds with an appeal that went to his
+heart. Grimly he waited for the two.
+
+"So here's where you are!" cried Mr. Getz, striding up to them,
+and, before Fairchilds could prevent it, he had seized Tillie by
+the shoulder. "What you mean, runnin' off up here, heh? What you
+mean?" he demanded, shaking her with all his cruel strength.
+
+"Stop that, you brute!" Fairchilds, unable to control his fury,
+drew back and struck the big man squarely on the chest. Getz
+staggered back, amazement at this unlooked-for attack for a moment
+getting the better of his indignation. He had expected to find the
+teacher cowed with fear at being discovered by a director and a
+director's son in a situation displeasing to them.
+
+"Let the child alone, you great coward--or I 'll horsewhip you!"
+
+Getz recovered himself. His face was black with passion. He lifted
+the horsewhip which he carried.
+
+"You'll horsewhip me--me, Jake Getz, that can put you off William
+Penn TO-MORROW if I want! Will you do it with this here? he
+demanded, grasping the whip more tightly and lifting it to strike
+--but before it could descend, Fairchilds wrenched it out of his
+hand.
+
+"Yes," he responded, "if you dare to touch that child again, you
+shameless dog!"
+
+Tillie, with anguished eyes, stood motionless as marble, while
+Absalom, with clenched fists, awaited his opportunity.
+
+"If I dare!" roared Getz. "If I have dare to touch my own child!"
+He turned to Tillie. "Come along," he exclaimed, giving her a cuff
+with his great paw; and instantly the whip came down with stinging
+swiftness on his wrist. With a bellow of pain, Getz turned on
+Fairchilds, and at the same moment, Absalom sprang on him from
+behind, and with one blow of his brawny arm brought the teacher to
+the ground. Getz sprawled over his fallen antagonist and snatched
+his whip from him.
+
+"Come on, Absalom--we'll learn him oncet!" he cried fiercely.
+"We'll learn him what horsewhippin' is! We'll give him a lickin'
+he won't forget!"
+
+Absalom laughed aloud in his delight at this chance to avenge his
+own defeat at the hands of the teacher, and with clumsy speed the
+two men set about binding the feet of the half-senseless
+Fairchilds with Absalom's suspenders.
+
+Tillie felt herself spellbound, powerless to move or to cry out.
+
+"Now!" cried Getz to Absalom, "git back, and I'll give it to him!"
+
+The teacher, stripped of his two coats and bound hand and foot,
+was rolled over on his face. He uttered no word of protest, though
+they all saw that he had recovered consciousness. The truth was,
+he simply recognized the uselessness of demurring.
+
+"Warm him up, so he don't take cold!" shouted Absalom--and even as
+he spoke, Jake Getz's heavy arm brought the lash down upon
+Fairchilds's back.
+
+At the spiteful sound, life came back to Tillie. Like a wild
+thing, she sprang between them, seized her father's arm and hung
+upon it. "Listen to me! Listen! Father! If you strike him again,
+I'LL MARRY ABSALOM TO-MORROW!"
+
+By inspiration she had hit upon the one argument that would move
+him.
+
+Her father tried to shake her off, but she clung to his arm with
+the strength of madness, knowing that if she could make him grasp,
+even in his passionate anger, the real import of her threat, he
+would yield to her.
+
+"I'll marry Absalom! I'll marry him to-morrow!" she repeated. "You
+darsent--you ain't of age! Let go my arm, or I'll slap you ag'in!"
+
+"I shall be of age in three months! I'll marry Absalom if you go
+on with this!"
+
+"That suits me!" cried Absalom. "Keep on with it, Jake!"
+
+"If you do, I'll marry him to-morrow!"
+
+There was a look in Tillie's eyes and a ring in her voice that her
+father had learned to know. Tillie would do what she said.
+
+And here was Absalom "siding along with her" in her unfilial
+defiance! Jacob Getz wavered. He saw no graceful escape from his
+difficulty.
+
+"Look-ahere, Tillie! If I don't lick this here feller, I'll punish
+YOU when I get you home!"
+
+Tillie saw that she had conquered him, and that the teacher was
+safe. She loosed her hold of her father's arm and, dropping on her
+knees beside Fairchilds began quickly to loosen his bonds. Her
+father did not check her.
+
+"Jake Getz, you ain't givin' in THAT easy?" demanded Absalom,
+angrily.
+
+"She'd up and do what she says! I know her! And I ain't leavin'
+her marry! You just wait"--he turned threateningly to Tillie as
+she knelt on the ground--"till I get you home oncet!"
+
+Fairchilds staggered to his feet, and drawing Tillie up from the
+ground, he held her two hands in his as he turned to confront his
+enemies.
+
+"You call yourselves men--you cowards and bullies! And you!" he
+turned his blazing eyes upon Getz, "you would work off your
+miserable spite on a weak girl--who can't defend herself! Dare to
+touch a hair of her head and I'll break YOUR damned head and every
+bone in your Body! Now take yourselves off, both of you, you curs,
+and leave us alone!"
+
+"My girl goes home along with me!" retorted the furious Getz. "And
+YOU--you 'll lose your job at next Board Meetin', Saturday night!
+So you might as well pack your trunk! Here!" He laid his hand on
+Tillie's arm, but Fairchilds drew her to him and held his arm
+about her waist, while Absalom, darkly scowling, stood uncertainly
+by.
+
+"Leave her with me. I must talk with her. MUST, I say. Do you hear
+me? She--"
+
+His words died on his lips, as Tillie's head suddenly fell forward
+on his shoulder, and, looking down, Fairchilds saw that she had
+fainted.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+THE DOC CONCOCTS A PLOT
+
+
+"So you see I'm through with this place!" Fairchilds concluded as,
+late that night, he and the doctor sat alone in the sitting-room,
+discussing the afternoon's happenings.
+
+"I was forced to believe," he went on, "when I saw Jake Getz's
+fearful anxiety and real distress while Tillie remained
+unconscious, that the fellow, after all, does have a heart of
+flesh under all his brutality. He had never seen a woman faint,
+and he thought at first that Tillie was dead. We almost had HIM on
+our hands unconscious!"
+
+"Well, the faintin' saved Tillie a row with him till he got her
+home oncet a'ready," the doctor said, as he puffed away at his
+pipe, his hands in his vest arms, his feet on the table, and a
+newspaper under them to spare the chenille table-cover.
+
+"Yes. Otherwise I don't know how I could have borne to see her
+taken home by that ruffian--to be punished for so heroically
+defending ME!"
+
+"You bet! That took cheek, ain't?--fur that little girl to stand
+there and jaw Jake Getz--and make him quit lickin' you! By gum,
+that minds me of sceneries I've saw a'ready in the theayter! They
+most gener'ly faints away in a swoond that way, too. Well, Tillie
+she come round all right, ain't?--till a little while?"
+
+"Yes. But she was very pale and weak, poor child!" Fairchilds
+answered, resting his head wearily upon his palm. "When she became
+conscious, Getz carried her out of the woods to his buggy that he
+had left near the school-house."
+
+"How did Absalom take it, anyhow?"
+
+"He's rather dazed, I think! He doesn't quite know how to make it
+all out. He is a man of one idea--one at a time and far apart. His
+idea at present is that he is going to marry Tillie."
+
+"Yes, and I never seen a Puntz yet where didn't come by what he
+set his stubborn head to!" the doctor commented. "It wonders me
+sometimes, how Tillie's goin' to keep from marryin' him, now he's
+made up his mind so firm!"
+
+"Tillie knows her own worth too well to throw herself away like
+that."
+
+"Well, now I don't know," said the doctor, doubtfully. "To be
+sure, I never liked them Puntzes, they're so damned thick-headed.
+Dummness runs in that family so, it's somepin' surprisin'!
+Dummness and stubbornness is all they got to 'em. But Absalom he's
+so well fixed--Tillie she might go furder and do worse. Now
+there's you, Teacher. If she took up with you and yous two got
+married, you'd have to rent. Absalom he'd own his own farm."
+
+"Now, come, Doc," protested Fairchilds, disgusted, "you know
+better--you know that to almost any sort of a woman marriage means
+something more than getting herself 'well fixed,' as you put it.
+And to a woman like Tillie!"
+
+"Yes--yes--I guess," answered the doctor, pulling briskly at his
+pipe. "It's the same with a male--he mostly looks to somepin
+besides a good housekeeper. There's me, now--I'd have took Miss
+Margaret--and she couldn't work nothin'. I tole her I don't mind
+if my wife IS smart, so she don't bother me any."
+
+"You did, did you?" smiled Fairchilds. "And what did the lady say
+to that?"
+
+"Och, she was sorry!"
+
+"Sorry to turn you down, do you mean?"
+
+"It was because I didn't speak soon enough," the doctor assured
+him. "She was promised a'ready to one of these here tony
+perfessers at the Normal. She was sorry I hadn't spoke sooner. To
+be sure, after she had gave her word, she had to stick to it." He
+thoughtfully knocked the ashes from his pipe, while his eyes grew
+almost tender. "She was certainly, now, an allurin' female!
+
+"So now," he added, after a moment's thoughtful pause, "you think
+your game's played out here, heh?"
+
+"Getz and Absalom left me with the assurance that at the Saturday-
+night meeting of the Board I'd be voted out. If it depends on
+them--and I suppose it does--I'm done for. They'd like to roast me
+over a slow fire!"
+
+"You bet they would!"
+
+"I suppose I haven't the least chance?"
+
+"Well, I don' know--I don' know. It would suit me wonderful to get
+ahead of Jake Getz and them Puntzes in this here thing--if I
+anyways could! Le' me see." He thoughtfully considered the
+situation. "The Board meets day after to-morrow. There's six
+directors. Nathaniel Puntz and Jake can easy get 'em all to wote
+to put you out, fur they ain't anyways stuck on you--you bein' so
+tony that way. Now me, I don't mind it--them things don't never
+bother me any--manners and cleanness and them."
+
+"Cleanness?"
+
+"Och, yes; us we never seen any person where wasted so much time
+washin' theirself--except Miss Margaret. I mind missus used to say
+a clean towel didn't last Miss Margaret a week, and no one else
+usin' it! You see, what the directors don't like is your ALWAYS
+havin' your hands so clean. Now they reason this here way--a
+person that never has dirty hands is lazy and too tony."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"But me, I don't mind. And I'm swanged if I wouldn't like to beat
+out Jake and Nathaniel on this here deal! Say! I'll tell you what.
+This here game's got fun in it fur me! I believe I got a way of
+DOIN' them fellers. I ain't tellin' you what it is!" he said, with
+a chuckle. "But it's a way that's goin' to WORK! I'm swanged if it
+ain't! You'll see oncet! You just let this here thing to me and
+you won't be chased off your job! I'm doin' it fur the sake of the
+fun I'll get out of seein' Jake Getz surprised! Mebbe that old
+Dutchman won't be wonderful spited!"
+
+"I shall be very much indebted to you, doctor, if you can help me,
+as it suits me to stay here for the present."
+
+"That's all right. Fur one, there's Adam Oberholzer; he 'll be an
+easy guy when it comes to his wote. Fur if I want, I can bring a
+bill ag'in' the estate of his pop, disceased, and make it 'most
+anything. His pop he died last month. Now that there was a man"--
+the doctor settled himself comfortably, preparatory to the
+relation of a tale--"that there was a man that was so wonderful
+set on speculatin' and savin' and layin' by, that when he come to
+die a pecooliar thing happened. You might call that there thing
+phe-non-e-ma. It was this here way. When ole Adam Oberholzer (he
+was named after his son, Adam Oberholzer, the school director)
+come to die, his wife she thought she'd better send fur the
+Evangelical preacher over, seein' as Adam he hadn't been inside a
+church fur twenty years back, and, to be sure, he wasn't just so
+well prepared. Oh, well, he was deef fur three years back, and
+churches don't do much good to deef people. But then he never did
+go when he did have his sound hearin'. Many's the time he sayed to
+me, he sayed, 'I don't believe in the churches,' he sayed, 'and
+blamed if it don't keep me busy believin' in a Gawd!' he sayed. So
+you see, he wasn't just what you might call a pillar of the
+church. One time he had such a cough and he come to me and sayed
+whether I could do somepin. 'You're to leave tobacco be,' I sayed.
+Ole Adam he looked serious. 'If you sayed it was caused by goin'
+to church,' he answered to me, 'I might mebbe break off. But
+tobacco--that's some serious,' he says. Adam he used to have some
+notions about the Bible and religion that I did think, now, was
+damned unushal. Here one day when he was first took sick, before
+he got so deef yet, I went to see him, and the Evangelical
+preacher was there, readin' to him that there piece of Scripture
+where, you know, them that worked a short time was paid the same
+as them that worked all day. The preacher he sayed he thought that
+par'ble might fetch him 'round oncet to a death-bed conwersion.
+But I'm swanged if Adam didn't just up and say, when the preacher
+got through, he says, 'That wasn't a square deal accordin' to MY
+way of lookin' at things.' Yes, that's the way that there feller
+talked. Why, here oncet--" the doctor paused to chuckle at the
+recollection--"when I got there, Reverend was wrestlin' with Adam
+to get hisself conwerted, and it was one of Adam's days when he
+was at his deefest. Reverend he shouted in his ear, 'You must
+experience religion--and get a change of heart--and be conwerted
+before you die!' 'What d' you say?' Adam he ast. Then Reverend, he
+seen that wouldn't work, so he cut it short, and he says wery
+loud, 'Trust the Lord!' Now, ole Adam Oberholzer in his business
+dealin's and speculatin' was always darned particular who he
+trusted, still, so he looked up at Reverend, and he says, 'Is he a
+reliable party?' Well, by gum, I bu'st right out laughin'! I
+hadn't ought to--seein' it was Adam's death-bed--and Reverend him
+just sweatin' with tryin' to work in his job to get him conwerted
+till he passed away a'ready. But I'm swanged if I could keep in! I
+just HOLLERED!"
+
+The doctor threw back his head and shouted with fresh appreciation
+of his story, and Fairchilds joined in sympathetically.
+
+"Well, did he die unconverted?" he asked the doctor.
+
+"You bet! Reverend he sayed afterwards, that in all his practice
+of his sacred calling he never had knew such a carnal death-bed.
+Now you see," concluded the doctor, "I tended ole Adam fur near
+two months, and that's where I have a hold on his son the school-
+directer."
+
+He laughed as he rose and stretched himself.
+
+"It will be no end of sport foiling Jake Getz!" Fairchilds said,
+with but a vague idea of what the doctor's scheme involved. "Well,
+doctor, you are our mascot--Tillie's and mine!" he added, as he,
+too, rose.
+
+"What's THAT?"
+
+"Our good luck." He held out an objectionably clean hand with its
+shining finger-nails. "Good night, Doc, and thank you!"
+
+The doctor awkwardly shook it in his own grimy fist. "Good night
+to you, then, Teacher."
+
+Out in the bar-room, as the doctor took his nightly glass of beer
+at the counter, he confided to Abe Wackernagel that somehow he
+did, now, "like to see Teacher use them manners of hisn. I'm 'most
+as stuck on 'em as missus is!" he declared.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+SUNSHINE AND SHADOW
+
+
+Tillie's unhappiness, in her certainty that on Saturday night the
+Board would vote for the eviction of the teacher, was so great
+that she felt almost indifferent to her own fate, as she and the
+doctor started on their six-mile ride to East Donegal. But when he
+presently confided to her his scheme to foil her father and
+Absalom, she became almost hysterical with joy.
+
+"You see, Tillie, it's this here way. Two of these here directers
+owes me bills. Now in drivin' you over to East Donegal I'm passin'
+near to the farms of both of them directers, and I'll make it suit
+to stop off and press 'em fur my money. They're both of 'em near
+as close as Jake Getz! They don't like it fur me to press 'em to
+pay right aways. So after while I'll say that if they wote ag'in'
+Jake and Nathaniel, and each of 'em gets one of the other two
+directers to wote with him to leave Teacher keep his job, I'll
+throw 'em the doctor's bill off! Adam Oberholzer he owes me about
+twelve dollars, and Joseph Kettering he owes me ten. I guess it
+ain't worth twelve dollars to Adam and ten to Joseph to run
+Teacher off William Penn!"
+
+"And do you suppose that they will be able to influence the other
+two--John Coppenhaver and Pete Underwocht?"
+
+"When all them dollars depends on it, I don't suppose nothin'--I
+know. I'll put it this here way: 'If Teacher ain't chased off,
+I'll throw you my doctor's bill off. If he is, you'll pay me up,
+and pretty damned quick, too!'"
+
+"But, Doc," faltered Tillie, "won't it be bribery?"
+
+"Och, Tillie, a body mustn't feel so conscientious about such
+little things like them. That's bein' too serious."
+
+"Did you tell the teacher you were going to do this?" she uneasily
+asked.
+
+"Well, I guess I ain't such a blamed fool! I guess I know that
+much, that he wouldn't of saw it the way _I_ see it. I tole him I
+was goin' to bully them directers to keep him in his job--but he
+don't know how I'm doin' it."
+
+"I'm glad he doesn't know," sighed Tillie.
+
+"Yes, he darsent know till it's all over oncet."
+
+The joy and relief she felt at the doctor's scheme, which she was
+quite sure would work out successfully, gave her a self-confidence
+in the ordeal before her that sharpened her wits almost to
+brilliancy. She sailed through this examination, which otherwise
+she would have dreaded unspeakably, with an aplomb that made her a
+stranger to herself. Even that bugbear of the examination labeled
+by the superintendent, "General Information," and regarded with
+suspicion by the applicants as a snare and a delusion, did not
+confound Tillie in her sudden and new-found courage; though the
+questions under this head brought forth from the applicants such
+astonishing statements as that Henry VIII was chiefly noted for
+being "a great widower"; and that the Mother of the Gracchi was
+"probably Mrs. Gracchi."
+
+In her unwonted elation, Tillie even waxed a bit witty, and in the
+quiz on "Methods of Discipline," she gave an answer which no doubt
+led the superintendent to mark her high.
+
+"What method would you pursue with a boy in your school who was
+addicted to swearing?" she was asked.
+
+"I suppose I should make him swear off!" said Tillie, with actual
+flippancy.
+
+A neat young woman of the class, sitting directly in front of the
+superintendent, and wearing spectacles and very straight, tight
+hair, cast a shocked and reproachful look upon Tillie, and turning
+to the examiner, said primly, "_I_ would organize an anti-swearing
+society in the school, and reward the boys who were not profane by
+making them members of it, expelling those who used any profane
+language."
+
+"And make every normal boy turn blasphemer in derision, I'm
+afraid," was the superintendent's ironical comment.
+
+When, at four o'clock that afternoon, she drove back with the
+doctor through the winter twilight, bearing her precious
+certificate in her bosom, the brightness of her face seemed to
+reflect the brilliancy of the red sunset glow on snow-covered
+fields, frozen creek, and farm-house windows.
+
+"Bully fur you, Matilda!" the doctor kept repeating at intervals.
+"Now won't Miss Margaret be tickled, though! I tell you what,
+wirtue like hern gits its rewards even in this here life. She'll
+certainly be set up to think she's made a teacher out of you
+unbeknownst! And mebbe it won't tickle her wonderful to think how
+she's beat Jake Getz!" he chuckled.
+
+"Of course you're writin' to her to-night, Tillie, ain't you?" he
+asked. "I'd write her off a letter myself if writin' come handier
+to me."
+
+"Of course I shall let her know at once," Tillie replied; and in
+her voice, for the first time in the doctor's acquaintance with
+her, there was a touch of gentle complacency.
+
+"I'll get your letter out the tree-holler to-morrow morning, then,
+when I go a-past--and I can stamp it and mail it fur you till
+noon. Then she'll get it till Monday morning yet! By gum, won't
+she, now, be tickled!"
+
+"Isn't it all beautiful!" Tillie breathed ecstatically. "I've got
+my certificate and the teacher won't be put out! What did Adam
+Oberholzer and Joseph Kettering say, Doc?"
+
+"I've got them fixed all right! Just you wait, Tillie!" he said
+mysteriously. "Mebbe us we ain't goin' to have the laugh on your
+pop and old Nathaniel Puntz! You'll see! Wait till your pop comes
+home and says what's happened at Board meetin' to-night! Golly!
+Won't he be hoppin' mad!"
+
+"What is going to happen, Doc?"
+
+"You wait and see! I ain't tellin' even you, Tillie. I'm savin' it
+fur a surprise party fur all of yous!"
+
+"Father won't speak to me about it, you know. He won't mention
+Teacher's name to me."
+
+"Then won't you find out off of him about the Board meetin'?" the
+doctor asked in disappointment. "Must you wait till you see me
+again oncet?"
+
+"He will tell mother. I can get her to tell me," Tillie said.
+
+"All right. Somepin's going to happen too good to wait! Now look-
+ahere, Tillie, is your pop to be tole about your certificate?"
+
+"I won't tell him until I must. I don't know how he'd take it. He
+might not let me get a school to teach. Of course, when once I've
+got a school, he will have to be told. And then," she quietly
+added, "I shall teach, whether he forbids it or not."
+
+"To be sure!" heartily assented the doctor. "And leave him go roll
+hisself, ain't! I'll keep a lookout fur you and tell you the first
+wacancy I hear of."
+
+"What would I do--what should I have done in all these years, Doc
+--if it hadn't been for you!" smiled Tillie, with an affectionate
+pressure of his rough hand; and the doctor's face shone with
+pleasure to hear her.
+
+"You have been a good friend to me, Doc."
+
+"Och, that's all right, Tillie. As I sayed, wirtue has its reward
+even in this here life. My wirtuous acts in standin' by you has
+gave me as much satisfaction as I've ever had out of anything! But
+now, Tillie, about tellin' your pop. I don't suspicion he'd take
+it anyways ugly. A body'd think he'd be proud! And he hadn't none
+of the expense of givin' you your nice education!"
+
+"I can't be sure how he WOULD take it, Doc, so I would rather not
+tell him until I must."
+
+"All right. Just what you say. But I dare tell missus, ain't?"
+
+"If she won't tell the girls, Doc. It would get back to father,
+I'm afraid, if so many knew it."
+
+"I 'll tell her not to tell. She 'll be as pleased and proud as if
+it was Manda or Rebecca!"
+
+"Poor Aunty Em! She is so good to me, and I'm afraid I've
+disappointed her!" Tillie humbly said; but somehow the sadness
+that should have expressed itself in the voice of one under
+suspension from meeting, when speaking of her sin, was quite
+lacking.
+
+When, at length, they reached the Getz farm, Mr. Getz met them at
+the gate, his face harsh with displeasure at Tillie's long and
+unpermitted absence from home.
+
+"Hello, Jake!" said the doctor, pleasantly, as her father lifted
+her down from the high buggy. "I guess missus tole you how I heard
+Tillie fainted away in a swoond day before yesterday, so this
+morning I come over to see her oncet--Aunty Em she was some
+oneasy. And I seen she would mebbe have another such a swoond if
+she didn't get a long day out in the air. It's done her wonderful
+much good--wonderful!"
+
+"She hadn't no need to stay all day!" growled Mr. Getz. "Mom had
+all Tillie's work to do, and her own too, and she didn't get it
+through all."
+
+"Well, better LET the work than have Tillie havin' any more of
+them dangerous swoonds. Them's dangerous, I tell you, Jake!
+Sometimes folks never comes to, yet!"
+
+Mr. Getz looked at Tillie apprehensively. "You better go in and
+get your hot supper, Tillie," he said, not ungently.
+
+Before this forbearance of her father, Tillie had a feeling of
+shame in the doctor's subterfuges, as she bade her loyal friend
+good night and turned to go indoors.
+
+"You'll be over to Board meetin' to-night, ain't?" the doctor said
+to Mr. Getz as he picked up the reins.
+
+"To be sure! Me and Nathaniel Puntz has a statement to make to the
+Board that'll chase that tony dude teacher off his job so quick he
+won't have time to pack his trunk!"
+
+"Is that so?" the doctor said in feigned surprise. "Well, he
+certainly is some tony--that I must give him, Jake. Well, good
+night to yous! Be careful of Tillie's health!"
+
+Getz went into the house and the doctor, chuckling to himself,
+drove away.
+
+Tillie was in bed, but sleep was far from her eyes, when, late
+that night, she heard her father return from the Board meeting.
+Long she lay in her bed, listening with tense nerves to his
+suppressed tones as he talked to his wife in the room across the
+hall, but she could not hear what he said. Not even his tone of
+voice was sufficiently enlightening as to how affairs had gone.
+
+In her wakefulness the night was agonizingly long; for though she
+was hopeful of the success of the doctor's plot, she knew that
+possibly there might have been some fatal hitch.
+
+At the breakfast-table, next morning, her father looked almost
+sick, and Tillie's heart throbbed with unfilial joy in the
+significance of this. His manner to her was curt and his face
+betrayed sullen anger; he talked but little, and did not once
+refer to the Board meeting in her presence.
+
+It was not until ten o'clock, when he had gone with some of the
+children to the Evangelical church, that she found her longed-for
+opportunity to question her stepmother.
+
+"Well," she began, with assumed indifference, as she and her
+mother worked together in the kitchen preparing the big Sunday
+dinner, "did they put the teacher out?"
+
+"If they put him out?" exclaimed Mrs. Getz, slightly roused from
+her customary apathy. "Well, I think they didn't! What do you
+think they done yet?"
+
+"I'm sure," said Tillie, evidently greatly interested in the
+turnips she was paring, "I don't know."
+
+"They raised his salary five a month!"
+
+The turnips dropped into the pan, and Tillie raised her eyes to
+gaze incredulously into the face of her stepmother, who, with
+hands on her hips, stood looking down upon her.
+
+"Yes," went on Mrs. Getz, "that's what they done! A dumm thing
+like that! And after pop and Nathaniel Puntz they had spoke their
+speeches where they had ready, how Teacher he wasn't fit fur
+William Penn! And after they tole how he had up and sassed pop,
+and him a directer yet! And Nathaniel he tole how Absalom had
+heard off the Doc how Teacher he was a' UNbeliever and says musin'
+is the same to him as prayin'! Now think! Such conwictions as
+them! And then, when the wote was took, here it come out that only
+pop and Nathaniel Puntz woted ag'in' Teacher, and the other four
+they woted FUR! And they woted to raise his salary five a month
+yet!"
+
+Tillie's eyes dropped from her mother's face, her chin quivered,
+she bit her lip, and suddenly, unable to control herself, she
+broke into wild, helpless laughter.
+
+Mrs. Getz stared at her almost in consternation. Never before in
+her life had she seen Tillie laugh with such abandon.
+
+"What ails you?" she asked wonderingly.
+
+Tillie could find no voice to answer, her slight frame shaking
+convulsively.
+
+"What you laughin' at, anyhow?" Mrs. Getz repeated, now quite
+frightened.
+
+"That--that Wyandotte hen jumped up on the sill!" Tillie murmured
+--then went off into a perfect peal of mirth. It seemed as though
+all the pent-up joy and gaiety of her childhood had burst forth in
+that moment.
+
+"I don't see nothin' in that that's anyways comical--a Wyandotte
+hen on the window-sill!" said Mrs. Getz, in stupid wonder.
+
+"She looked so--so--oh!" Tillie gasped, and wiped her eyes with a
+corner of her apron.
+
+"You don't take no int'rust in what I tole you all!" Mrs. Getz
+complained, sitting down near her stepdaughter to pick the
+chickens for dinner. "I'd think it would make you ashamed fur the
+way you stood up fur Teacher ag'in' your own pop here last
+Thursday--fur them four directers to go ag'in' pop like this
+here!"
+
+"What reasons did they give for voting for the teacher?" Tillie
+asked, her hysterics subsiding.
+
+"They didn't give no reasons till they had him elected a'ready.
+Then Adam Oberholzer he got up and he spoke how Teacher learned
+the scholars so good and got along without lickin' 'em any (pop he
+had brung that up AG'IN' Teacher, but Adam he sayed it was FUR),
+and that they better mebbe give him five extry a month to make
+sure to keep such a kind man to their childern, and one that
+learnt 'em so good."
+
+Tillie showed signs, for an instant, of going off into another fit
+of laughter.
+
+"What's ailin' you?" her mother asked in mystification. "I never
+seen you act so funny! You better go take a drink."
+
+Tillie repressed herself and went on with her work.
+
+During the remainder of that day, and, indeed, through all the
+week that followed, she struggled to conceal from her father the
+exultation of her spirits. She feared he would interpret it as a
+rejoicing over his defeat, and there was really no such feeling in
+the girl's gentle heart. She was even moved to some faint--it must
+be confessed, very faint--pangs of pity for him as she saw, from
+day to day, how hard he took his defeat. Apparently, it was to him
+a sickening blow to have his "authority" as school director defied
+by a penniless young man who was partly dependent upon his vote
+for daily bread. He suffered keenly in his conviction that the
+teacher was as deeply exultant in his victory as Getz had expected
+to be.
+
+In these days, Tillie walked on air, and to Mrs. Getz and the
+children she seemed almost another girl, with that happy vibration
+in her usually sad voice, and that light of gladness in her soft
+pensive eyes. The glorious consciousness was ever with her that
+the teacher was always near--though she saw him but seldom. This,
+and the possession of the precious certificate, her talisman to
+freedom, hidden always in her bosom, made her daily drudgery easy
+to her and her hours full of hope and happiness.
+
+Deep as was Tillie's impression of the steadiness of purpose in
+Absalom's character, she was nevertheless rather taken aback when,
+on the Sunday night after that horrible experience in the woods,
+her suitor stolidly presented himself at the farm-house, attired
+in his best clothes, his whole aspect and bearing eloquent of the
+fact that recent defeat had but made him more doggedly determined
+to win in the end.
+
+Tillie wondered if she might not be safe now in dismissing him
+emphatically and finally; but she decided there was still danger
+lest Absalom might wreak his vengeance in some dreadful way upon
+the teacher.
+
+Her heart was so full of happiness that she could tolerate even
+Absalom.
+
+Only two short weeks of this brightness and glory, and then the
+blow fell--the blow which blackened the sun in the heavens. The
+teacher suddenly, and most mysteriously, resigned and went away.
+
+No one knew why. Whether it was to take a better position, or for
+what other possible reason, not a soul in the township could tell
+--not even the Doc.
+
+Strange to say, Fairchilds's going, instead of pleasing Mr. Getz,
+was only an added offense to both him and Absalom. They had
+thirsted for vengeance; they had longed to humiliate this "high-
+minded dude"; and now not only was the opportunity lost to them,
+but the "job" they had determined to wrest from him was
+indifferently hurled back in their faces--he DIDN'T WANT IT!
+Absalom and Getz writhed in their helpless spleen.
+
+Tillie's undiscerning family did not for an instant attribute to
+its true cause her sudden change from radiant happiness to the
+weakness and lassitude that tell of mental anguish. They were not
+given to seeing anything that was not entirely on the surface and
+perfectly obvious.
+
+Three days had passed since Fairchilds's departure--three days of
+utter blackness to Tillie; and on the third day she went to pay
+her weekly visit to the tree-hollow in the woods where she was
+wont to place Miss Margaret's letters.
+
+On this day she found, to her amazement, two letters. Her knees
+shook as she recognized the teacher's handwriting on one of them.
+
+There was no stamp and no post-mark on the envelop. He had
+evidently written the letter before leaving, and had left it with
+the doctor to be delivered to her.
+
+Tillie had always been obliged to maneuver skilfully in order to
+get away from the house long enough to pay these weekly visits to
+the tree-hollow; and she nearly always read her letter from Miss
+Margaret at night by a candle, when the household was asleep.
+
+But now, heedless of consequences, she sat down on a snow-covered
+log and opened Fairchilds's letter, her teeth chattering with more
+than cold.
+
+It was only a note, written in great haste and evidently under
+some excitement. It told her of his immediate departure for
+Cambridge to accept a rather profitable private tutorship to a
+rich man's son. He would write to Tillie, later, when he could.
+Meanwhile, God bless her--and he was always her friend. That was
+all. He gave her no address and did not speak of her writing to
+him.
+
+Tillie walked home in a dream. All that evening, she was so
+"dopplig" as finally to call forth a sharp rebuke from her father,
+to which she paid not the slightest heed.
+
+Would she ever see him again, her heart kept asking? Would he
+really write to her again? Where was he at this moment, and what
+was he doing? Did he send one thought to her, so far away, so
+desolate? Did he have in any least degree the desire, the
+yearning, for her that she had for him?
+
+Tillie felt a pang of remorse for her disloyalty to Miss Margaret
+when she realized that she had almost forgotten that always
+precious letter. When, a little past midnight, she took it from
+her dress pocket she noticed what had before escaped her--some
+erratic writing in lead on the back of the envelop. It was in the
+doctor's strenuous hand.
+
+"Willyam Pens as good as yoorn ive got them all promist but your
+pop to wote for you at the bored meating saterdy its to be a
+surprize party for your pop."
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+THE REVOLT OF TILLIE
+
+
+At half-past seven o'clock on Saturday evening, the School Board
+once more convened in the hotel parlor, for the purpose of
+electing Fairchilds's successor.
+
+"Up till now," Mr. Getz had remarked at the supper-table, "I ain't
+been tole of no candidate applyin' fur William Penn, and here to-
+night we meet to elect him--or her if she's a female."
+
+Tillie's heart had jumped to her throat as she heard him,
+wondering how he would take it when they announced to him that the
+applicant was none other than his own daughter--whether he would
+be angry at her long deception, or gratified at the prospect of
+her earning so much money--for, of course, it would never occur to
+him that she would dare refuse to give him every cent she
+received.
+
+There was unwonted animation in the usually stolid faces of the
+School Board to-night; for the members were roused to a lively
+appreciation of the situation as it related to Jake Getz. The
+doctor had taken each and every one of them into his confidence,
+and had graphically related to them the story of how Tillie had
+"come by" her certificate, and the tale had elicited their
+partizanship for Tillie, as for the heroine of a drama. Even
+Nathaniel Puntz was enjoying the fact that he was to-night on the
+side of the majority. With Tillie, they were in doubt as to how
+Jake Getz would receive the news.
+
+"Is they a' applicant?" he inquired on his arrival.
+
+"Why, to be sure," said Nathaniel Puntz. "What fur would it be
+worth while to waste time meetin' to elect her if they ain't
+none?"
+
+"Then she's a female, is she?"
+
+"Well, she ain't no male, anyways, nor no Harvard gradyate,
+neither. If she was, _I_ wouldn't wote fur her!"
+
+"What might her name be?"
+
+"It's some such a French name," answered the doctor, who had
+carried in the lamp and was lingering a minute. "It would, now,
+surprise you, Jake, if you heard it oncet."
+
+"Is she such a foreigner yet?" Getz asked suspiciously. "I
+mistrust 'em when they're foreigners."
+
+"Well," spoke Adam Oberholzer, as the doctor reluctantly went out,
+"it ain't ten mile from here she was raised."
+
+"Is she a gradyate? We hadn't ought to take none but a Normal. We
+had _enough_ trouble!"
+
+"No, she ain't a Normal, but she's got her certificate off the
+superintendent."
+
+"Has any of yous saw her?"
+
+"Och, yes, she's familiar with us," replied Joseph Kettering, the
+Amishman, who was president of the Board.
+
+"Why ain't she familiar with me, then?" Getz inquired, looking
+bewildered, as the president opened the ink-bottle that stood on
+the table about which they sat, and distributed slips of paper.
+
+"Well, that's some different again, too," facetiously answered
+Joseph Kettering.
+
+"Won't she be here to-night to leave us see her oncet?"
+
+"She won't, but her pop will," answered Nathaniel Puntz; and Mr.
+Getz vaguely realized in the expressions about him that something
+unusual was in the air.
+
+"What do we want with her _pop_?" he asked.
+
+"We want his _wote_!" answered Adam Oberholzer--which sally
+brought forth hilarious laughter.
+
+"What you mean?" demanded Getz, impatient of all this mystery.
+
+"It's the daughter of one of this here Board that we're wotin'
+fur!"
+
+Mr. Getz's eyes moved about the table. "Why, none of yous ain't
+got a growed-up daughter that's been to school long enough to get
+a certificate."
+
+"It seems there's ways of gettin' a certificate without goin' to
+school. Some girls can learn theirselves at home without even a
+teacher, and workin' all the time at farm-work, still, and even
+livin' out!" said Mr. Puntz. "I say a girl with inDUStry like that
+would make any feller a good wife."
+
+Getz stared at him in bewilderment.
+
+"The members of this Board," said Mr. Kettering, solemnly, "and
+the risin' generation of the future, can point this here applicant
+out to their childern as a shinin' example of what can be did by
+inDUStry, without money and without price--and it'll be fur a spur
+to 'em to go thou and do likewise."
+
+"Are you so dumm, Jake, you don't know YET who we mean?" Nathaniel
+asked.
+
+"Why, to be sure, don't I! None of yous has got such a daughter
+where lived out."
+
+"Except yourself, Jake!"
+
+The eyes of the Board were fixed upon Mr. Getz in excited
+expectation. But he was still heavily uncomprehending. Then the
+president, rising, made his formal announcement, impressively and
+with dignity.
+
+"Members of Canaan Township School Board: We will now proceed to
+wote fur the applicant fur William Penn. She is not unknownst to
+this here Board. She is a worthy and wirtuous female, and has a
+good moral character. We think she's been well learnt how to
+manage childern, fur she's been raised in a family where childern
+was never scarce. The applicant," continued the speaker, "is--as I
+stated a couple minutes back--a shining example of inDUStry to the
+rising generations of the future, fur she's got her certificate to
+teach--and wery high marks on it--and done it all by her own
+unaided efforts and inDUStry. Members of Canaan Township School
+Board, we are now ready to wote fur Matilda Maria Getz."
+
+Before his dazed wits could recover from the shock of this
+announcement, Jake Getz's daughter had become the unanimously
+elected teacher of William Penn.
+
+The ruling passion of the soul of Jacob Getz manifested itself
+conspicuously in his reception of the revelation that his
+daughter, through deliberate and systematic disobedience, carried
+on through all the years of her girlhood, had succeeded in
+obtaining a certificate from the county superintendent, and was
+now the teacher-elect at William Penn. The father's satisfaction
+in the possession of a child capable of earning forty dollars a
+month, his greedy joy in the prospect of this addition to his
+income, entirely overshadowed and dissipated the rage he would
+otherwise have felt. The pathos of his child's courageous
+persistency in the face of his dreaded severity, of her pitiful
+struggle with all the adverse conditions of her life,--this did
+not enter at all into his consideration of the case. It was
+obvious to Tillie, as it had been to the School Board on Saturday
+night, that he felt an added satisfaction in the fact that this
+wonder had been accomplished without any loss to him either of
+money or of his child's labor.
+
+Somehow, her father's reception of her triumph filled her heart
+with more bitterness than she had ever felt toward him in all the
+years of her hard endeavor. It was on the eve of her first day of
+teaching that his unusually affectionate attitude to her at the
+supper-table suddenly roused in her a passion of hot resentment
+such as her gentle heart had not often experienced.
+
+"I owe YOU no thanks, father, for what education I have!" she
+burst forth. "You always did everything in your power to hinder
+me!"
+
+If a bomb had exploded in the midst of them, Mr. and Mrs. Getz
+could not have been more confounded. Mrs. Getz looked to see her
+husband order Tillie from the table, or rise from his place to
+shake her and box her ears. But he did neither. In amazement he
+stared at her for a moment--then answered with a mildness that
+amazed his wife even more than Tillie's "sassiness" had done.
+
+"I'd of LEFT you study if I'd knowed you could come to anything
+like this by it. But I always thought you'd have to go to the
+Normal to be fit fur a teacher yet. And you can't say you don't
+owe me no thanks--ain't I always kep' you?"
+
+"Kept me!" answered Tillie, with a scorn that widened her father's
+stare and made her stepmother drop her knife on her plate; "I
+never worked half so hard at Aunty Em's as I have done here every
+day of my life since I was nine years old--and SHE thought my work
+worth not only my 'keep,' but two dollars a week besides. When do
+you ever spend two dollars on me? You never gave me a dollar that
+I hadn't earned ten times over! You owe me back wages!"
+
+Jake Getz laid down his knife, with a look on his face that made
+his other children quail. His countenance was livid with anger.
+
+"OWE YOU BACK WAGES!" he choked. "Ain't you my child, then, where
+I begat and raised? Don't I own you? What's a child FUR? To grow
+up to be no use to them that raised it? You talk like that to me!"
+he roared. "You tell me I OWE you back money! Now listen here! I
+was a-goin' to leave you keep five dollars every month out of your
+forty. Yes, I conceited I'd leave you have all that--five a month!
+Now fur sassin' me like what you done, I ain't leavin' you have
+NONE the first month!"
+
+"And what," Tillie wondered, a strange calm suddenly following her
+outburst, as she sat back in her chair, white and silent, "what
+will he do and say when I refuse to give him more than the price
+of my board?"
+
+Her school-work, which began nest day, diverted her mind somewhat
+from its deep yearning for him who had become to her the very
+breath of her life.
+
+It was on the Sunday night after her first week of teaching that
+she told Absalom, with all the firmness she could command, that he
+must not come to see her any more, for she was resolved not to
+marry him.
+
+"Who are you goin' to marry, then?" he inquired, unconvinced.
+
+"No one."
+
+"Do you mean it fur really, that you'd ruther be a' ole maid?"
+
+"I'd rather be SIX old maids than the wife of a Dutchman!"
+
+"What fur kind of a man do you WANT, then?"
+
+"Not the kind that grows in this township."
+
+"Would you, mebbe," Absalom sarcastically inquired, "like such a
+dude like what--"
+
+"Absalom!" Tillie flashed her beautiful eyes upon him. "You are
+unworthy to mention his name to me! Don't dare to speak to me of
+him--or I shall leave you and go up-stairs RIGHT AWAY!"
+
+Absalom sullenly subsided.
+
+When, later, he left her, she saw that her firm refusal to marry
+him had in no wise baffled him.
+
+This impression was confirmed when on the next Sunday night, in
+spite of her prohibition, he again presented himself.
+
+Tillie was mortally weary that night. Her letter had not come, and
+her nervous waiting, together with the strain of her unwonted work
+of teaching, had told on her endurance. So poor Absalom's
+reception at her hands was even colder than her father's greeting
+at the kitchen door; for since Tillie's election to William Penn,
+Mr. Getz was more opposed than ever to her marriage, and he did
+not at all relish the young man's persistency in coming to see her
+in the face of his own repeated warning.
+
+"Tillie," Absalom began when they were alone together after the
+family had gone to bed, "I thought it over oncet, and I come to
+say I'd ruther have you 'round, even if you didn't do nothin' but
+set and knit mottos and play the organ, than any other woman where
+could do all my housework fur me. I'll HIRE fur you, Tillie--and
+you can just set and enjoy yourself musin', like what Doc says
+book-learnt people likes to do."
+
+Tillie's eyes rested on him with a softer and a kindlier light in
+them than she had ever shown him before; for such a magnanimous
+offer as this, she thought, could spring only from the fact that
+Absalom was really deeply in love, and she was not a little
+touched.
+
+She contemplated him earnestly as he sat before her, looking so
+utterly unnatural in his Sunday clothes. A feeling of compassion
+for him began to steal into her heart.
+
+"If I am not careful," she thought in consternation, "I shall be
+saying, 'Yes,' out of pity."
+
+But a doubt quickly crept into her heart. Was it really that he
+loved her so very much, or was it that his obstinacy was stronger
+than his prudence, and that if he could not get her as he wanted
+her,--as his housekeeper and the mother of numberless children,--
+he would take her on her own conditions? Only so he got her--that
+was the point. He had made up his mind to have her--it must be
+accomplished.
+
+"Absalom," she said, "I am not going to let you waste any more of
+your time. You must never come to see me again after to-night. I
+won't ever marry you, and I won't let you go on like this, with
+your false hope. If you come again, I won't see you. I'll go up-
+stairs!"
+
+One would have thought that this had no uncertain ring. But again
+Tillie knew, when Absalom left her, that his resolution not only
+was not shaken,--it was not even jarred.
+
+The weeks moved on, and the longed-for letter did not come. Tillie
+tried to gather courage to question the doctor as to whether
+Fairchilds had made any arrangement with him for the delivery of a
+letter to her. But an instinct of maidenly reserve and pride
+which, she could not conquer kept her lips closed on the subject.
+
+Had it not been for this all-consuming desire for a letter, she
+would more keenly have felt her enforced alienation from her aunt,
+of whom she was so fond; and at the same time have taken really
+great pleasure in her new work and in having reached at last her
+long-anticipated goal.
+
+In the meantime, while her secret sorrow--like Sir Hudibras's
+rusting sword that had nothing else to feed upon and so hacked
+upon itself--seemed eating out her very heart, the letter which
+would have been to her as manna in the wilderness had fallen into
+her father's hands, and after being laboriously conned by him, to
+his utter confusion as to its meaning, had been consigned to the
+kitchen fire.
+
+Mr. Getz's reasons for withholding the letter from his daughter
+and burning it were several. In the first place, Fairchilds was
+"an UNbeliever," and therefore his influence was baneful; he was
+Jacob Getz's enemy, and therefore no fit person to be writing
+friendly letters to his daughter; he asked Tillie, in his letter,
+to write to him, and this would involve the buying of stationery
+and wasting of time that might be better spent; and finally, he
+and Tillie, as he painfully gathered from the letter, were "making
+up" to a degree that might end in her wanting to marry the fellow.
+
+Mr. Getz meant to tell Tillie that he had received this letter;
+but somehow, every time he opened his lips to speak the words, the
+memory of her wild-cat behavior in defense of the teacher that
+afternoon in the woods, and her horribly death-like appearance
+when she had lain unconscious in the teacher's arms, recurred to
+him with a vividness that effectually checked him, and eventually
+led him to decide that it were best not to risk another such
+outbreak. So she remained in ignorance of the fact that Fairchilds
+had again written to her.
+
+Carlyle's "Gospel of Work" was indeed Tillie's salvation in these
+days; for in spite of her restless yearning and loneliness, she
+was deeply interested and even fascinated with her teaching, and
+greatly pleased and encouraged with her success in it.
+
+At last, with the end of her first month at William Penn, came the
+rather dreaded "pay-day"; for she knew that it would mean the
+hardest battle of her life.
+
+The forty dollars was handed to her in her schoolroom on Friday
+afternoon, at the close of the session. It seemed untold wealth to
+Tillie, who never before in her life had owned a dollar.
+
+She' did not risk carrying it all home with her. The larger part
+of the sum she intrusted to the doctor to deposit for her in a
+Lancaster bank.
+
+When, at five o'clock, she reached home and walked into the
+kitchen, her father's eagerness for her return, that he might lay
+his itching palms on her earnings, was perfectly manifest to her
+in his unduly affectionate, "Well, Tillie!"
+
+She was pale, but outwardly composed. It was to be one of those
+supreme crises in life which one is apt to meet with a courage and
+a serenity that are not forthcoming in the smaller irritations and
+trials of daily experience.
+
+"You don't look so hearty," her father said, as she quietly hung
+up her shawl and hood in the kitchen cupboard. "A body'd think
+you'd pick up and get fat, now you don't have to work nothin',
+except mornings and evenings."
+
+"There is no harder work in the world, father, than teaching--even
+when you like it."
+
+"It ain't no work," he impatiently retorted, "to set and hear off
+lessons."
+
+Tillie did not dispute the point, as she tied a gingham apron over
+her dress.
+
+Her father was sitting in a corner of the room, shelling corn,
+with Sammy and Sally at his side helping him. He stopped short in
+his work and glanced at Tillie in surprise, as she immediately set
+about assisting her mother in setting the supper-table.
+
+"You was paid to-day, wasn't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, why don't you gimme the money, then? Where have you got
+it?"
+
+Tillie drew a roll of bills from her pocket and came up to him.
+
+He held out his hand. "You know, Tillie, I tole you I ain't givin'
+you none of your wages this month, fur sassin' me like what you
+done. But next month, if you're good-behaved till then, I'll give
+you mebbe five dollars. Gimme here," he said, reaching for the
+money across the heads of the children in front of him.
+
+But she did not obey. She looked at him steadily as she stood
+before him, and spoke deliberately, though every nerve in her body
+was jumping.
+
+"Aunty Em charged the teacher fifteen dollars a month for board.
+That included his washing and ironing. I really earn my board by
+the work I do here Saturdays and Sundays, and in the mornings and
+evenings before and after school. But I will pay you twelve
+dollars a month for my board."
+
+She laid on his palm two five-dollar bills and two ones, and
+calmly walked back to the table.
+
+Getz sat as one suddenly turned to stone. Sammy and Sally dropped
+their corn-cobs into their laps and stared in frightened wonder.
+Mrs. Getz stopped cutting the bread and gazed stupidly from her
+husband to her stepdaughter. Tillie alone went on with her work,
+no sign in her white, still face of the passion of terror in her
+heart at her own unspeakable boldness.
+
+Suddenly two resounding slaps on the ears of Sammy and Sally,
+followed by their sharp screams of pain and fright, broke the
+tense stillness.
+
+"Who tole you to stop workin', heh?" demanded their father,
+fiercely. "Leave me see you at it, do you hear? You stop another
+time to gape around and I 'll lick you good! Stop your bawlin'
+now, this minute!"
+
+He rose from his chair and strode over to the table. Seizing
+Tillie by the shoulder, he drew her in froet of him.
+
+"Gimme every dollar of them forty!"
+
+"I have given you all I have."
+
+"Where are you got the others hid?"
+
+"I have deposited my money in a Lancaster bank."
+
+Jacob Getz's face turned apoplectic with rage.
+
+"Who took it to Lancaster fur you?"
+
+"I sent it."
+
+"What fur bank?"
+
+"I prefer not to tell you that."
+
+"You PERFER! I'll learn you PERFER! Who took it in fur you--and
+what fur bank? Answer to me!"
+
+"Father, the money is mine."
+
+"It's no such thing! You ain't but seventeen. And I don't care if
+you're eighteen or even twenty-one! You're my child and you 'll
+obey to me and do what I tell you!"
+
+"Father, I will not submit to your robbing me, You can't force me
+to give you my earnings. If you could, I wouldn't teach at all!"
+
+"You won't submit! And I darsent rob you!" he spluttered. "Don't
+you know I can collect your wages off the secretary of the Board
+myself?"
+
+"Before next pay-day I shall be eighteen. Then you can't legally
+do that. If you could, I would resign. Then you wouldn't even get
+your twelve dollars a month for my board. That's four dollars more
+than I can earn living out at Aunty Em's."
+
+Beside himself with his fury, Getz drew her a few steps to the
+closet where his strap hung, and jerking it from its nail, he
+swung out his arm.
+
+But Tillie, with a strength born of a sudden fury almost matching
+his own, and feeling in her awakened womanhood a new sense of
+outrage and ignominy in such treatment, wrenched herself free,
+sprang to the middle of the room, and faced him with blazing eyes.
+
+"Dare to touch me--ever again so long as you live!--and I'll kill
+you, I'll KILL you!"
+
+Such madness of speech, to ears accustomed to the carefully
+tempered converse of Mennonites, Amish, and Dunkards, was in
+itself a wickedness almost as great as the deed threatened. The
+family, from the father down to six-year-old Zephaniah, trembled
+to hear the awful words.
+
+"Ever dare to touch me again so long as we both live--and I'll
+stab you dead!"
+
+Mrs. Getz shrieked. Sally and Sammy clung to each other whimpering
+in terror, and the younger children about the room took up the
+chorus.
+
+"Tillie!" gasped her father.
+
+The girl tottered, her eyes suddenly rolled back in her head, she
+stretched out her hands, and fell over on the floor. Once more
+Tillie had fainted.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+GETZ "LEARNS" TILLIE
+
+
+As a drowning man clings to whatever comes in his way, Tillie, in
+these weary days of heart-ache and yearning, turned with new
+intensity of feeling to Miss Margaret, who had never failed her,
+and their interchange of letters became more frequent.
+
+Her father did not easily give up the struggle with her for the
+possession of her salary. Finding that he could not legally
+collect it himself from the treasurer of the Board, he accused his
+brother-in-law, Abe Wackernagel, of having taken it to town for
+her; and when Abe denied the charge, with the assurance, however,
+that he "WOULD do that much for Tillie any day he got the
+chancet," Mr. Getz next taxed the doctor, who, of course, without
+the least scruple, denied all knowledge of Tillie's monetary
+affairs.
+
+On market day, he had to go to Lancaster City, and when his
+efforts to force Tillie to sign a cheek payable to him had proved
+vain, his baffled greed again roused him to uncontrollable fury,
+and lifting his hand, he struck her across the cheek.
+
+Tillie reeled and would have fallen had he not caught her, his
+anger instantly cooling in his fear lest she faint again. But
+Tillie had no idea of fainting. "Let me go," she said quietly,
+drawing her arm out of his clasp. Turning quickly away, she walked
+straight out of the room and up-stairs to her chamber.
+
+Her one change of clothing she quickly tied into a bundle, and
+putting on her bonnet and shawl, she walked down-stairs and out of
+the house.
+
+"Where you goin'?" her father demanded roughly as he followed her
+out on the porch.
+
+She did not answer, but walked on to the gate. In an instant he
+had overtaken her and stood squarely in her path.
+
+"Where you goin' to?" he repeated.
+
+"To town, to board at the store."
+
+He dragged her, almost by main force, back into the house, and all
+that evening kept a watch upon her until he knew that she was in
+bed.
+
+Next morning, Tillie carried her bundle of clothing to school with
+her, and at the noon recess she went to the family who kept the
+village store and engaged board with them, saying she could not
+stand the daily walks to and from school.
+
+When, at six o'clock that evening, she had not returned home, her
+father drove in to the village store to get her. But she locked
+herself in her bedroom and would not come out.
+
+In the next few weeks he tried every means of force at his
+command, but in vain; and at last he humbled himself to propose a
+compromise.
+
+"I'll leave you have some of your money every month, Tillie,--as
+much as ten dollars,--if you'll give me the rest, still."
+
+"Why should I give it to you, father? How would that benefit ME?"
+she said, with a rather wicked relish in turning the tables on him
+and applying his life principle of selfishness to her own case.
+
+Her father did not know how to meet it. Never before in her life,
+to his knowledge, had Tillie considered her own benefit before his
+and that of his wife and children. That she should dare to do so
+now seemed to knock the foundations from under him.
+
+"When I'm dead, won't you and the others inherit off of me all
+I've saved?" he feebly inquired.
+
+"But that will be when I'm too old to enjoy or profit by it."
+
+"How much do you want I should give you out of your wages every
+month, then?"
+
+"You can't give me what is not yours to give."
+
+"Now don't you be sassin' me, or I'll learn you!"
+
+They were alone in her school-room on a late February afternoon,
+after school had been dismissed. Tillie quickly rose and reached
+for her shawl and bonnet. She usually tried to avoid giving him an
+opportunity like this for bullying her, with no one by to protect
+her.
+
+"Just stay settin'," he growled sullenly, and she knew from his
+tone that he had surrendered.
+
+"If you'll come home to board, I won't bother you no more, then,"
+he further humbled himself to add. The loss even of the twelve
+dollars' board was more than he could bear.
+
+"It would not be safe," answered Tillie, grimly.
+
+"Och, it 'll be safe enough. I'll leave you be."
+
+"It would not be safe for YOU."
+
+"Fur me? What you talkin'?"
+
+"If you lost your temper and struck me, I might kill you. That's
+why I came away."
+
+The father stared in furtive horror at the white, impassive face
+of his daughter.
+
+Could this be Tillie--his meek, long-suffering Tillie?
+
+"Another thing," she continued resolutely, for she had lost all
+fear of speaking her mind to him, "why should I pay you twelve
+dollars a month board, when I get my board at the store for six,
+because I wait on customers between times?"
+
+Mr. Getz looked very downcast. There was a long silence between
+them.
+
+"I must go now, father. This is the hour that I always spend in
+the store."
+
+"I'll board you fur six, then," he growled.
+
+"And make me work from four in the morning until eight or nine at
+night? It is easier standing in the store. I can read when there
+are no customers."
+
+"To think I brung up a child to talk to me like this here!" He
+stared at her incredulously.
+
+"The rest will turn out even worse," Tillie prophesied with
+conviction, "unless you are less harsh with them. Your harshness
+will drive every child you have to defy you."
+
+"I'll take good care none of the others turns out like you!" he
+threateningly exclaimed. "And YOU'LL see oncet! You'll find out!
+You just wait! I tried everything--now I know what I'm doin'.
+It'll LEARN you!"
+
+In the next few weeks, as nothing turned up to make good these
+threats, Tillie often wondered what her father had meant by them.
+It was not like him to waste time in empty words.
+
+But she was soon to learn. One evening the doctor came over to the
+store to repeat to her some rumors he had heard and which he
+thought she ought to know.
+
+"Tillie! your pop's workin' the directers to have you chased off
+William Penn till the April election a'ready!"
+
+"Oh, Doc!" Tillie gasped, "how do you know?"
+
+"That's what the talk is. He's goin' about to all of 'em whenever
+he can handy leave off from his work, and he's tellin' 'em they
+had ought to set that example to onruly children; and most of
+'em's agreein' with him. Nathaniel Puntz he agrees with him.
+Absalom he talks down on you since you won't leave him come no
+more Sundays, still. Your pop he says when your teachin' is a loss
+to him instead of a help, he ain't leavin' you keep on. He says
+when you don't have no more money, you'll have to come home and
+help him and your mom with the work. Nathaniel Puntz he says this
+is a warnin' to parents not to leave their children have too much
+education--that they get high-minded that way and won't even get
+married."
+
+"But, Doc," Tillie pleaded with him in an agony of mind, "you
+won't let them take my school from me, will you? You'll make them
+let me keep it?"
+
+The doctor gave a little laugh. "By golly, Tillie, I ain't the
+President of America! You think because I got you through oncet or
+twicet, I kin do ANYthing with them directers, still! Well, a body
+can't ALWAYS get ahead of a set of stubborn-headed Dutchmen--and
+with Nathaniel Puntz so wonderful thick in with your pop to work
+ag'in' you, because you won't have that dumm Absalom of hisn!"
+
+"What shall I do?" Tillie cried. "I can never, never go back to my
+old life again--that hopeless, dreary drudgery on the farm! I
+can't, indeed I can't! I won't go back. What shall I do?"
+
+"Look-ahere, Tillie!" the doctor spoke soothingly, "I'll do what I
+otherwise kin to help you. I'll do, some back-talkin' myself to
+them directers. But you see," he said in a troubled tone, "none of
+them directers happens to owe me no doctor-bill just now, and that
+makes it a little harder to persuade 'em to see my view of the
+case. Now if only some of their wives would up and get sick for
+'em and I could run 'em up a bill! But," he concluded, shaking his
+head in discouragement, "it's a wonderful healthy season--
+wonderful healthy!"
+
+In the two months that followed, the doctor worked hard to
+counteract Mr. Getz's influence with the Board. Tillie, too,
+missed no least opportunity to plead her cause with them, not only
+by direct argument, but by the indirect means of doing her best
+possible work in her school.
+
+But both she and the doctor realized, as the weeks moved on, that
+they were working in vain; for Mr. Getz, in his statements to the
+directors, had appealed to some of their most deep-rooted
+prejudices. Tillie's filial insubordination, her "high-
+mindedness," her distaste for domestic work, so strong that she
+refused even to live under her father's roof--all these things
+made her unfit to be an instructor and guide to their young
+children. She would imbue the "rising generation" with her worldly
+and wrong-headed ideas.
+
+Had Tillie remained "plain," she would no doubt have had the
+championship of the two New Mennonite members of the Board. But
+her apostasy had lost her even that defense, for she no longer
+wore her nun-like garb. After her suspension from meeting and her
+election to William Penn, she had gradually drifted into the
+conviction that colors other than gray, black, or brown were
+probably pleasing to the Creator, and that what really mattered
+was not what she wore, but what she was. It was without any
+violent struggles or throes of anguish that, in this revolution of
+her faith, she quite naturally fell away from the creed which once
+had held her such a devotee. When she presently appeared in the
+vain and ungodly habiliments of "the world's people," the brethren
+gave her up in despair and excommunicated her.
+
+"No use, Tillie," the doctor would report in discouragement, week
+after week; "we're up against it sure this time! You're losin'
+William Penn till next month, or I'll eat my hat! A body might as
+well TRY to eat his hat as move them pig-headed Dutch once they
+get sot. And they're sot on puttin' you out, all right! You see,
+your pop and Nathaniel Puntz they just fixed 'em! Me and you ain't
+got no show at all."
+
+Tillie could think of no way of escape from her desperate
+position. What was there before her but a return to the farm, or
+perhaps, at best, marriage with Absalom?
+
+"To be sure, I should have to be reduced to utter indifference to
+my fate if I ever consented to marry Absalom," she bitterly told
+herself. "But when it is a question between doing that and living
+at home, I don't know but I might be driven to it!"
+
+At times, the realization that there was no possible appeal from
+her situation did almost drive her to a frenzy. After so many
+years of struggle, just as she was tasting success, to lose all
+the fruits of her labor--how could she endure it? With the work
+she loved taken away from her, how could she bear the gnawing
+hunger at her heart for the presence of him unto whom was every
+thought of her brain and every throbbing pulse of her soul? The
+future seemed to stretch before her, a terrible, an unendurable
+blank.
+
+The first week of April was the time fixed for the meeting of the
+Board at which she was to be "chased off her job"; and as the
+fatal day drew near, a sort of lethargy settled upon her, and she
+ceased to straggle, even in spirit, against the inevitable.
+
+"Well, Tillie," the doctor said, with a long sigh, as he came into
+the store at six o'clock on the eventful evening, and leaned over
+the counter to talk to the girl, "they're all conwened by now,
+over there in the hotel parlor. Your pop and Nathaniel Puntz
+they're lookin' wonderful important. Tour pop," he vindictively
+added, "is just chucklin' at the idea of gettin' you home under
+his thumb ag'in!"
+
+Tillie did not speak. She sat behind the counter, her cheeks
+resting on the backs of her hands, her wistful eyes gazing past
+the doctor toward the red light in the hotel windows across the
+way.
+
+"Golly! but I'd of liked to beat 'em out on this here game! But
+they've got us, Tillie! They'll be wotin' you out of your job any
+minute now. And then your pop'll be comin' over here to fetch you
+along home! Oh! If he wasn't your pop I c'd say somethin' real
+perfane about him."
+
+Tillie drew a long breath; but she did not speak. She could not.
+It seemed to her that she had come to the end of everything.
+
+"Look-ahere, Tillie," the doctor spoke suddenly, "you just up and
+get ahead of 'em all--you just take yourself over to the
+Millersville Normal! You've got some money saved, ain't you?"
+
+"Yes!" A ray of hope kindled in her eyes. "I have saved one
+hundred and twenty-five dollars! I should have more than that if I
+had not returned to the world's dress."
+
+"A hundred and twenty-five's plenty enough for a good starter at
+the Millersville Normal," said the doctor.
+
+"But," Tillie hesitated, "this is April, and the spring term
+closes in three months. What should I do and where could I go
+after that? If I made such a break with father, he might refuse to
+take me home even if I had nowhere else to go. Could I risk that?"
+
+The doctor leaned his head on his hand and heavily considered the
+situation.
+
+"I'm blamed if I dare adwise you, Tillie. It's some serious
+adwisin' a young unprotected female to leave her pop's rooft to go
+out into the unbeknownst world," he said sentimentally. "To be
+sure, Miss Margaret would see after you while you was at the
+Normal. But when wacation is here in June she might mebbe be goin'
+away for such a trip like, and then if you couldn't come back
+home, you'd be throwed out on the cold wide world, where there's
+many a pitfall for the onwary."
+
+"It seems too great a risk to run, doesn't it? There seems to be
+nothing--nothing--that I can do but go back to the farm," she
+said, the hope dying out of her eyes.
+
+"Just till I kin get you another school, Tillie," he consoled her.
+"I'll be lookin' out for a wacancy in the county for you, you
+bet!"
+
+"Thank you, Doc," she answered wearily; "but you know another
+school couldn't possibly be open to me until next fall--five
+months from now."
+
+She threw her head back upon the palm of her hand. "I'm so tired--
+so very tired of it all. What's the use of struggling? What am I
+struggling FOR?"
+
+"What are you struggling FUR?" the doctor repeated. "Why, to get
+shed of your pop and all them kids out at the Getz farm that wears
+out your young life workin' for 'em! That's what! And to have some
+freedom and money of your own--to have a little pleasure now and
+ag'in! I tell you, Tillie, I don't want to see you goin' out there
+to that farm ag'in!"
+
+"Do you think I should dare to run away to the Normal?" she asked
+fearfully.
+
+The doctor tilted back his hat and scratched his head.
+
+"Leave me to think it over oncet, Tillie, and till to-morrow
+mornin' a'ready I'll give you my answer. My conscience won't give
+me the dare to adwise you offhand in a matter that's so serious
+like what this is."
+
+"Father will want to make me go out to the farm with him this
+evening, I am sure," she said; "and when once I am out there, I
+shall not have either the spirit or the chance to get away, I'm
+afraid."
+
+The doctor shook his head despondently. "We certainly are up
+ag'in' it! I can't see no way out."
+
+"There is no way out," Tillie said in a strangely quiet voice.
+"Doc," she added after an instant, laying her hand on his rough
+one and pressing it, "although I have failed in all that you have
+tried to help me to be and to do, I shall never forget to be
+grateful to you--my best and kindest friend!"
+
+The doctor looked down almost reverently at the little white hand
+resting against his dark one.
+
+Suddenly Tillie's eyes fixed themselves upon the open doorway,
+where the smiling presence of Walter Fairchilds presented itself
+to her startled gaze.
+
+"Tillie! AND the Doc! Well, it's good to see you. May I break in
+on your conference--I can see it '& important." He spoke lightly,
+but his voice was vibrant with some restrained emotion. At the
+first sight of him, Tillie's hand instinctively crept up to feel
+if those precious curls were in their proper place. The care and
+devotion she had spent upon them during all these weary, desolate
+months! And all because a man--the one, only man--had once said
+they were pretty! Alas, Tillie, for your Mennonite principles!
+
+And now, at sight of the dear, familiar face and form, the girl
+trembled and was speechless.
+
+Not so the doctor. With a yell, he turned upon the visitor,
+grasped both his hands, and nearly wrung them off.
+
+"Hang me, of I was ever so glad to see a feller like wot I am you.
+Teacher," he cried in huge delight, "the country's saved!
+Providence fetched you here in the nick of time! You always was a
+friend to Tillie, and you kin help her out now!"
+
+Walter Fairchilds did not reply at first. He stood, gazing over
+the doctor's shoulder at the new Tillie, transformed in
+countenance by the deep waters through which she had passed in the
+five months that had slipped round since he had gone out of her
+life; and so transformed in appearance by the dropping of her
+Mennonite garb that he could hardly believe the testimony of his
+eyes.
+
+"Is it--is it really you, Tillie?" he said, holding out his hand.
+"And aren't you even a little bit glad to see me?"
+
+The familiar voice brought the life-blood back to her face. She
+took a step toward him, both hands outstretched,--then, suddenly,
+she stopped and her cheeks crimsoned. "Of course we're glad to see
+you--very!" she said softly but constrainedly.
+
+"Lemme tell you the news," shouted the doctor. "You 'll mebbe save
+Tillie from goin' out there to her pop's farm ag'in! She's teacher
+at William Penn, and her pop's over there at the Board meetin'
+now, havin' her throwed off, and then he'll want to take her home
+to work herself to death for him and all them baker's dozen of
+children he's got out there! And Tillie she don't want to go--and
+waste all her nice education that there way!"
+
+Fairchilds took her hand and looked down into her shining eyes.
+
+"I hardly know you, Tillie, in your new way of dressing!"
+
+"What--what brings you here?" she asked, drawing away her hand.
+
+"I've come from the Millersville Normal School with a letter for
+you from Mrs. Lansing," he explained, "and I've promised to bring
+you back with me by way of answer.
+
+"I am an instructor in English there now, you know, and so, of
+course, I have come to know your 'Miss Margaret,'" he added, in
+answer to Tillie's unspoken question.
+
+The girl opened the envelop with trembling fingers and read:
+
+"MY DEAR LITTLE MENNONITE MAID: We have rather suddenly decided to
+go abroad in July--my husband needs the rest and change, as do we
+all; and I want you to go with me as companion and friend, and to
+help me in the care of the children. In the meantime there is much
+to be done by way of preparation for such a trip; so can't you
+arrange to come to me at once and you can have the benefit of the
+spring term at the Normal. I needn't tell you, dear child, how
+glad I shall be to have you with me. And what such a trip ought to
+mean to YOU, who have struggled so bravely to live the life the
+Almighty meant that you should live, you only can fully realize.
+You're of age now and can act for yourself. Break with your
+present environment now, or, I'm afraid, Tillie, it will be never.
+
+"Come to me at once, and with the bearer of this note. With love,
+I am, as always, your affectionate
+
+"'Miss MARGARET.'"
+
+When she had finished Tillie looked up with brimming eyes.
+
+"Doc," she said, "listen!" and she read the letter aloud, speaking
+slowly and distinctly that he might fully grasp the glory of it
+all. At the end the sweet voice faltered and broke.
+
+"Oh, Doc!" sobbed Tillie, "isn't it wonderful!"
+
+The shaggy old fellow blinked his eyes rapidly, then suddenly
+relieved his feelings with an outrageous burst of profanity. With
+a rapidity bewildering to his hearers, his tone instantly changed
+again to one of lachrymose solemnity:
+
+    "'Gawd moves in a mysterious way
+    His wonders to perform!'"
+
+he piously repeated. "AIN'T, now, he does, Tillie! Och!" he
+exclaimed, "I got a thought! You go right straight over there to
+that there Board meetin' and circumwent 'em! Before they're got
+TIME to wote you off your job, you up and throw their old William
+Penn in their Dutch faces, and tell 'em be blowed to 'em! Tell 'em
+you don't WANT their blamed old school--and you're goin' to
+EUROPE, you are! To EUROPE, yet!"
+
+He seized her hand as he spoke and almost pulled her to the store
+door.
+
+"Do it, Tillie!" cried Fairchilds, stepping after them across the
+store. "Present your resignation before they have a chance to vote
+you out! Do it!" he said eagerly.
+
+Tillie looked from one to the other of the two men before her,
+excitement sparkling in her eyes, her breath coming short and
+fast.
+
+"I will!"
+
+Turning away, she ran down the steps, sped across the street, and
+disappeared in the hotel.
+
+The doctor expressed his overflowing feelings by giving Fairchilds
+a resounding slap on the shoulders. "By gum, I'd like to be behind
+the skeens and witness Jake Getz gettin' fooled ag'in! This is the
+most fun I had since I got 'em to wote you five dollars a month
+extry, Teacher!" he chuckled. "Golly! I'm glad you got here in
+time! It was certainly, now," he added piously, "the hand of
+Providence that led you!"
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+TILLIE'S LAST FIGHT
+
+
+"We are now ready to wote fer the teacher fer William Penn fer the
+spring term," announced the president of the Board, when all the
+preliminary business of the meeting had been disposed of; "and
+before we perceed to that dooty, we will be glad to hear any
+remarks."
+
+The members looked at Mr. Getz, and he promptly rose to his feet
+to make the speech which all were expecting from him--the speech
+which was to sum up the reasons why his daughter should not be
+reelected for another term to William Penn. As all these reasons
+had been expounded many times over in the past few months, to each
+individual school director, Mr. Getz's statements to-night were to
+be merely a more forcible repetition of his previous arguments.
+
+But scarcely had he cleared his throat to begin, when there was a
+knock on the door; it opened, and, to their amazement, Tillie
+walked into the room. Her eyes sparkling, her face flushed, her
+head erect, she came straight across the room to the table about
+which the six educational potentates were gathered.
+
+That she had come to plead her own cause, to beg to be retained at
+her post, was obviously the object of this intrusion upon the
+sacred privacy of their weighty proceedings.
+
+Had that, in very truth, been her purpose in coming to them, she
+would have found little encouragement in the countenances before
+her. Every one of them seemed to stiffen into grim disapproval of
+her unfilial act in thus publicly opposing her parent.
+
+But there was something in the girl's presence as she stood before
+them, some potent spell in her fresh girlish beauty, and in the
+dauntless spirit which shone in her eyes, that checked the words
+of stern reproof as they sprang to the lips of her judges.
+
+"John Kettering,"--her clear, soft voice addressed the Amish
+president of the Board, adhering, in her use of his first name, to
+the mode of address of all the "plain" sects of the county,--"have
+I your permission to speak to the Board?"
+
+"It wouldn't be no use." The president frowned and shook his head.
+"The wotes of this here Board can't be influenced. There's no use
+your wastin' any talk on us. We're here to do our dooty by the
+risin' generation." Mr. Kettering, in his character of educator,
+was very fond of talking about "the rising generation." "And," he
+added, "what's right's right."
+
+"As your teacher at William Penn, I have a statement to make to
+the Board," Tillie quietly persisted. "It will take me but a
+minute. I am not here to try to influence the vote you are about
+to take."
+
+"If you ain't here to influence our wotes, what are you here fer?"
+
+"That's what I ask your permission to tell the Board."
+
+"Well," John Kettering reluctantly conceded, "I'll give you two
+minutes, then. Go on. But you needn't try to get us to wote any
+way but the way our conscience leads us to."
+
+Tillie's eyes swept the faces before her, from the stern, set
+features of her father on her left, to the mild-faced, long-
+haired, hooks-and-eyes Amishman on her right. The room grew
+perfectly still as they stared at her in expectant curiosity; for
+her air and manner did not suggest the humble suppliant for their
+continued favor,--rather a self-confidence that instinctively
+excited their stubborn opposition. "She'll see oncet if she kin do
+with us what she wants," was the thought in the minds of most of
+them.
+
+"I am here," Tillie spoke deliberately and distinctly, "to tender
+my resignation."
+
+There was dead silence.
+
+"I regret that I could not give you a month's notice, according to
+the terms of my agreement with you. But I could not foresee the
+great good fortune that was about to befall me."
+
+Not a man stirred, but an ugly look of malicious chagrin appeared
+upon the face of Nathaniel Puntz. Was he foiled in his anticipated
+revenge upon the girl who had "turned down" his Absalom? Mr. Getz
+sat stiff and motionless, his eyes fixed upon Tillie.
+
+"I resign my position at William Penn," Tillie repeated, "TO GO TO
+EUROPE FOR FOUR MONTHS' TRAVEL with Miss Margaret."
+
+Again she swept them with her eyes. Her father's face was
+apoplectic; he was leaning forward, trying to speak, but he was
+too choked for utterance. Nathaniel Puntz looked as though a wet
+sponge had been dashed upon his sleek countenance. The other
+directors stared, dumfounded. This case had no precedent in their
+experience. They were at a loss how to take it.
+
+"My resignation," Tillie continued, "must take effect immediately
+--to-night. I trust you will have no difficulty in getting a
+substitute."
+
+She paused--there was not a movement or a sound in the room.
+
+"I thank you for your attention." Tillie bowed, turned, and walked
+across the room. Not until she reached the door was the spell
+broken. With her hand on the knob, she saw her father rise and
+start toward her.
+
+She had no wish for an encounter with him; quickly she went out
+into the hall, and, in order to escape him, she opened the street
+door, stepped out, and closed it very audibly behind her. Then
+hurrying in at the adjoining door of the bar-room, she ran out to
+the hotel kitchen, where she knew she would find her aunt.
+
+Mrs. Wackernagel was alone, washing dishes at the sink. She looked
+up with a start at Tillie's hurried entrance, and her kindly face
+showed distress as she saw who it was; for, faithful to the Rules,
+she would not speak to this backslider and excommunicant from the
+faith. But Tillie went straight up to her, threw her arms about
+her neck, and pressed her lips to her aunt's cheek.
+
+"Aunty Em! I can't go away without saying good-by to you. I am
+going to Europe! TO EUROPE, Aunty Em!" she cried. The words
+sounded unreal and strange to her, and she repeated them to make
+their meaning clear to herself. "Miss Margaret has sent for me to
+take me with her TO EUROPE!"
+
+She rapidly told her aunt all that had happened, and Mrs.
+Wackernagel's bright, eager face of delight expressed all the
+sympathy and affection which Tillie craved from her, but which the
+Mennonite dared not utter.
+
+"Aunty Em, no matter where I go or what may befall me, I shall
+never forget your love and kindness. I shall remember it always,
+ALWAYS."
+
+Aunty Em's emotions were stronger, for the moment, than her
+allegiance to the Rules, and her motherly arms drew the girl to
+her bosom and held her there in a long, silent embrace.
+
+She refrained, however, from kissing her; and presently Tillie
+drew herself away and, dashing the tears from her eyes, went out
+of the house by the back kitchen door. From here she made her way,
+in a roundabout fashion, to the rear entrance of the store-
+keeper's house across the road, for she was quite sure that her
+father had gone into the store in search of her.
+
+Cautiously stepping into the kitchen, she found Fairchilds
+restlessly pacing the floor, and he greeted her return with a look
+of mingled pleasure and apprehension.
+
+"Your father is out front, in the store, Tillie," he whispered,
+coming close to her. "He's looking for you. He doesn't know I'm in
+town, of course. Come outside and I 'll tell you our plan."
+
+He led the way out of doors, and they sought the seclusion of a
+grape-arbor far down the garden.
+
+"We'll leave it to the Doc to entertain your father," Fairchilds
+went on; "you will have to leave here with me to-night, Tillie,
+and as soon as possible, for your father will make trouble for us.
+We may as well avoid a conflict with him--especially for your
+sake. For myself, I shouldn't mind it!" He smiled grimly.
+
+He was conscious, as his eyes rested on Tillie's fair face under
+the evening light, of a reserve in her attitude toward him that
+was new to her. It checked his warm impulse to take her hands in
+his and tell her how glad he was to see her again.
+
+"How can we possibly get away to-night?" she asked him. "There are
+no stages until the morning."
+
+"We shall have to let the Doc's fertile brain solve it for us,
+Tillie. He has a plan, I believe. Of course, if we have to wait
+until morning and fight it out with your father, then we'll have
+to, that's all. But I hope that may be avoided and that we may get
+away quietly."
+
+They sat in silence for a moment. Suddenly Fairchilds leaned
+toward her and spoke to her earnestly.
+
+"Tillie, I want to ask you something. Please tell me--why did you
+never answer my letters?"
+
+She lifted her startled eyes to his. "Your letters?"
+
+"Yes. Why didn't you write to me?"
+
+"You wrote to me?" she asked incredulously.
+
+"I wrote you three times. You don't mean to tell me you never got
+my letters?"
+
+"I never heard from you. I would--I would have been so glad to!"
+
+"But how could you have missed getting them?"
+
+Her eyes fell upon her hands clasped in her lap, and her cheeks
+grew pale.
+
+"My father," she half whispered.
+
+"He kept them from you?"
+
+"It must have been so."
+
+Fairchilds looked very grave. He did not speak at once.
+
+"How can you forgive such things?" he presently asked. "One tenth
+of the things you have had to bear would have made an incarnate
+fiend of me!"
+
+She kept her eyes downcast and did not answer.
+
+"I can't tell you," he went on, "how bitterly disappointed I was
+when I didn't hear from you. I couldn't understand why you didn't
+write. And it gave me a sense of disappointment in YOU. I thought
+I must have overestimated the worth of our friendship in your
+eyes. I see now--and indeed in my heart I always knew--that I did
+you injustice."
+
+She did not look up, but her bosom rose and fell in long breaths.
+
+"There has not been a day," he said, "that I have not thought of
+you, and wished I knew all about you and could see you and speak
+with you--Tillie, what a haunting little personality you are!"
+
+She raised her eyes then,--a soft fire in them that set his pulse
+to bounding. But before she could answer him they were interrupted
+by the sound of quick steps coming down the board walk toward the
+arbor. Tillie started like a deer ready to flee, but Fairchilds
+laid a reassuring hand upon hers. "It's the Doc," he said.
+
+The faithful old fellow joined them, his finger on his lips to
+warn them to silence.
+
+"Don't leave no one hear us out here! Jake Getz he's went over to
+the hotel to look fer Tillie, but he'll be back here in a jiffy,
+and we've got to hurry on. Tillie, you go on up and pack your
+clo'es in a walise or whatever, and hurry down here back. I'm
+hitchin' my buggy fer yous as quick as I kin. I'll leave yous
+borry the loan of it off of me till to-morrow--then, Teacher, you
+kin fetch it over ag'in. Ain't?"
+
+"All right, Doc; you're a brick!"
+
+Tillie sped into the house to obey the doctor's bidding, and
+Fairchilds went with him across the street to the hotel stables.
+
+In the course of ten minutes the three conspirators were together
+again in the stable-yard behind the store, the doctor's horse and
+buggy ready before them.
+
+"Father's in the store--I heard his voice," panted Tillie, as
+Fairchilds took her satchel from her and stowed it in the back of
+the buggy.
+
+"Hurry on, then," whispered the doctor, hoarsely, pushing them
+both, with scant ceremony, into the carriage. "GOOD-by to yous--
+and good luck! Och, that's all right; no thanks necessary! I'm
+tickled to the end of my hair at gettin' ahead of Jake Getz! Say,
+Fairchilds," he said, with a wink, "this here mare's wonderful
+safe--you don't HAVE to hold the reins with both hands! See?"
+
+And he shook in silent laughter at his own delicate and delicious
+humor, as he watched them start out of the yard and down the road
+toward Millersville.
+
+For a space there was no sound but the rhythmic beat of hoofs and
+the rattle of the buggy wheels; but in the heart of the Mennonite
+maid, who had fought her last battle for freedom and won, there
+was ineffable peace and content; and her happiness smiled from
+quivering lips and shone in her steadfast eyes.
+
+Mr. Abe Wackernagel, of the New Canaan hotel, was very fond, in
+the years that followed, of bragging to his transient guests of
+his niece who was the wife of "such a Millersville Normal
+perfessor--Perfessor Fairchilds." And Mr. Jake Getz was scarcely
+less given to referring to his daughter "where is married to such
+a perfessor at the Normal."
+
+"But what do I get out of it?" he was wont ruefully to add. "Where
+do I come in, yet?--I where raised her since she was born,
+a'ready?"
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, TILLIE: A MENNONITE MAID ***
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