"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 Underwocht'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 bosom, 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.