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?
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 doIlook 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.
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.