"You sayed the Doc give it to you! Did you lend that other 'n' off of
Teacher too? Answer to me! I'll have her chased off of William Penn!
I'll bring it up at next Board meetin'!"
"Hold your whiskers, Jake, or they'll blow off! You're talkin' through
your hat! Don't be so dumm! Teacher she gev me that there book because
she passed me her opinion she don't stand by novel-readin'. She was
goin' to throw out that there book and I says I'd take it if she didn't
want it. So then I left Tillie borrow the loan of it."
"So that's how you come by it, is it?" Mr. Getz eyed the doctor with
suspicion. "How did you come by that there 'Iwanhoe'?"
"That there I bought at the second-hand book-store in there at
Lancaster one time. I ain't just so much fur books, but now and again I
like to buy one too, when I see 'em cheap."
"Well, here!" Mr. Getz tossed the book into tie buggy. "Take your old
'Pump-eye.' And clear out. If I can't make you stop tryin' to spoil my
child fur me, I can anyways learn her what she'll get oncet, if she
don't mind!"
Again his hand grasped Tillie's shoulder as he turned her about to take
her into the house.
"You better watch out, Jake Getz, or you 'll have another doctor's bill
to pay!" the doctor warningly called after him. "That girl of yourn
ain't strong enough to stand your rough handlin', and you'll find it
out some day--to your regret! You'd better go round back and let off
your feelin's choppin' wood fur missus, stead of hittin' that little
girl, you big dopple!"
Mr. Getz stalked on without deigning to reply, thrusting Tillie ahead
of him. The doctor jumped into his buggy and drove off.
His warning, however, was not wholly lost upon the father. Tillie's
recent illness had awakened remorse for the severe punishment he had
given her on the eve of it; and it had also touched his purse; and so,
though she did not escape punishment for this second and, therefore,
aggravated offense, it was meted out in stinted measure. And indeed, in
her relief and thankfulness at again saving Miss Margaret, the child
scarcely felt the few light blows which, in order that parental
authority be maintained, her father forced himself to inflict upon her.
In spite of these mishaps, however, Tillie continued to devour all the
books she could lay hold of and to run perilous risks for the sake of
the delight she found in them.
Miss Margaret stood to her for an image of every heroine of whom she
read in prose or verse, and for the realization of all the romantic
day-dreams in which, as an escape from the joyless and sordid life of
her home, she was learning to live and move and have her being.
Therefore it came to her as a heavy blow indeed when, just after the
Christmas holidays, her father announced to her on the first morning of
the reopening of school, "You best make good use of your time from now
on, Tillie, fur next spring I'm takin' you out of school."
Tillie's face turned white, and her heart thumped in her breast so that
she could not speak.
"You're comin' twelve year old," her father continued, "and you're
enough educated, now, to do you. Me and mom needs you at home."
It never occurred to Tillie to question or discuss a decision of her
father's. When he spoke it was a finality and one might as well rebel
at the falling of the snow or rain. Tillie's woe was utterly hopeless.
Her dreary, drooping aspect in the next few days was noticed by Miss
Margaret.
"Pop's takin' me out of school next spring," she heart-brokenly said
when questioned. "And when I can't see you every day, Miss Margaret, I
won't feel for nothin' no more. And I thought to get more educated than
what I am yet. I thought to go to school till I was anyways fourteen."
So keenly did Miss Margaret feel the outrage and wrong of Tillie's
arrested education, when her father could well afford to keep her in
school until she was grown, if he would; so stirred was her warm
Southern blood at the thought of the fate to which poor Tillie seemed
doomed--the fate of a household drudge with not a moment's leisure from
sunrise to night for a thought above the grubbing existence of a
domestic beast of burden (thus it all looked to this woman from
Kentucky), that she determined, cost what it might, to go herself to
appeal to Mr. Getz.
"He will have me 'chased off of William Penn,'" she ruefully told
herself. "And the loss just now of my munificent salary of thirty-five
dollars a month would be inconvenient. 'The Doc' said he would 'stand
by' me. But that might be more inconvenient still!" she thought, with a
little shudder. "I suppose this is an impolitic step for me to take.
But policy 'be blowed,' as the doctor would say! What are we in this
world for but to help one another? I MUST try to help little
Tillie--bless her!"
So the following Monday afternoon after school, found Miss Margaret, in
a not very complacent or confident frame of mind, walking with Tillie
and her younger brother and sister out over the snow-covered road to
the Getz farm to face the redoubtable head of the family.