It was half-past four o'clock when they reached the farm-house, and
they found the weary, dreary mother of the family cleaning fish at the
kitchen sink, one baby pulling at her skirts, another sprawling on the
floor at her feet.
Miss Margaret inquired whether she might see Mr. Getz.
"If you kin? Yes, I guess," Mrs. Getz dully responded. "Sammy, you go
to the barn and tell pop Teacher's here and wants to speak somepin to
him. Mister's out back," she explained to Miss Margaret, "choppin'
wood."
Sammy departed, and Miss Margaret sat down in the chair which Tillie
brought to her. Mrs. Getz went on with her work at the sink, while
Tillie set to work at once on a crock of potatoes waiting to be pared.
"You are getting supper very early, aren't you?' Miss Margaret asked,
with a friendly attempt to make conversation.
"No, we're some late. And I don't get it ready yet, I just start it.
We're getting strangers fur supper."
"Are you?"
"Yes. Some of Mister's folks from East Bethel."
"And are they strangers to you?"
Mrs. Getz paused in her scraping of the fish to consider the question.
"If they're strangers to us? Och, no. We knowed them this long time
a'ready. Us we're well acquainted. But to be sure they don't live with
us, so we say strangers is comin'. You don't talk like us; ain't?"
"N--not exactly."
"I do think now (you must excuse me sayin' so) but you do talk awful
funny," Mrs. Getz smiled feebly.
"I suppose I do," Miss Margaret sympathetically replied.
Mr. Getz now came into the room, and Miss Margaret rose to greet him.
"I'm much obliged to meet you," he said awkwardly as he shook hands
with her.
He glanced at the clock on the mantel, then turned to speak to Tillie.
"Are yous home long a'ready?" he inquired.
"Not so very long," Tillie answered with an apprehensive glance at the
clock.
"You're some late," he said, with a threatening little nod as he drew
up a chair in front of the teacher.
"It's my fault," Miss Margaret hastened to say, "I made the children
wait to bring me out here."
"Well," conceded Mr. Getz, "then we'll leave it go this time."
Miss Margaret now bent her mind to the difficult task of persuading
this stubborn Pennsylvania Dutchman to accept her views as to what was
for the highest and best good of his daughter. Eloquently she pointed
out to him that Tillie being a child of unusual ability, it would be
much better for her to have an education than to be forced to spend her
days in farm-house drudgery.
But her point of view, being entirely novel, did not at all appeal to
him.
"I never thought to leave her go to school after she was twelve. That's
long enough fur a girl; a female don't need much book-knowledge. It
don't help her none to keep house fur her mister."
"But she could become a teacher and then she could earn money," Miss
Margaret argued, knowing the force of this point with Mr. Getz.
"But look at all them years she'd have to spend learnin' herself to be
intelligent enough fur to be a teacher, when she might be helpin' me
and mom."
"But she could help you by paying board here when she becomes the New
Canaan teacher."
"That's so too," granted Mr. Getz; and Margaret grew faintly hopeful.
"But," he added, after a moment's heavy weighing of the matter, "it
would take too long to get her enough educated fur to be a teacher, and
I'm one of them," he maintained, "that holds a child is born to help
the parent, and not contrarywise--that the parent must do everything
fur the child that way."
"If you love your children, you must wish for their highest good," she
suggested, "and not trample on their best interests."
"But they have the right to work for their parents," he insisted. "You
needn't plague me to leave Tillie stay in school, Teacher. I ain't
leavin' her!"
"Do you think you have a right to bring children into the world only to
crush everything in them that is worth while?" Margaret dared to say to
him, her face flushed, her eyes bright with the intensity of her
feelings.
"That's all blamed foolishness!" Jake Getz affirmed.
"Do you think that your daughter, when she is grown and realizes all
that she has lost, will 'rise up and call you blessed'?" she persisted.
"Do I think? Well, what I think is that it's a good bit more particular
that till she's growed she's been learnt to work and serve them that
raised her. And what I think is that a person ain't fit to be a teacher
of the young that sides along with the childern ag'in' their parents."
Miss Margaret felt that it was time she took her leave.
"Look-ahere oncet, Teacher!" Mr. Getz suddenly said, fixing on her a
suspicious and searching look, "do you uphold to novel-readin'?"
Miss Margaret hesitated perceptibly. She must shield Tillie even more
than herself. "What a question to ask of the teacher at William Penn!"
she gravely answered.
"I know it ain't such a wery polite question," returned Mr. Getz, half
apologetically. "But the way you side along with childern ag'in' their
parents suspicions me that the Doc was lyin' when he sayed them
novel-books was hisn. Now was they hisn or was they yourn?"
Miss Margaret rose with a look and air of injury. "'Mr. Getz, no one
ever before asked me such questions. Indeed," she said, in a tone of
virtuous primness, "I can't answer such questions."
"All the same," sullenly asserted Mr. Getz, "I wouldn't put it a-past
you after the way you passed your opinion to me this after!"
"I must be going," returned Miss Margaret with dignity.
Mrs. Getz came forward from the stove with a look and manner of apology
for her husband's rudeness to the visitor.
"What's your hurry? Can't you stay and eat along? We're not anyways
tired of you."
"Thank you. But they will be waiting for me at the hotel," said Miss
Margaret gently.
Tillie, a bit frightened, also hovered near, her wistful little face
pale. Miss Margaret drew her to her and held her at her side, as she
looked up into the face of Mr. Getz.
"I am very, very sorry, Mr. Getz, that my visit has proved so
fruitless. You don't realize what a mistake you are making."
"That ain't the way a teacher had ought to talk before a scholar to its
parent!" indignantly retorted Mr. Getz. "And I'm pretty near sure it
was all the time YOU where lent them Books to Tillie--corruptin' the
young! I can tell you right now, I ain't votin' fur you at next
election! And the way I wote is the way two other members always wotes
still--and so you'll lose your job at William Penn! That's what you get
fur tryin' to interfere between a parent and a scholar! I hope it'll
learn you!"
"And when is the next election?" imperturbably asked Miss Margaret.
"Next month on the twenty-fifth of February. Then you'll see oncet!"
"According to the terms of my agreement with the Board I hold my
position until the first of April unless the Board can show reasons why
it should be taken from me. What reasons can you show?"
"That you side along with the--"
"That I try to persuade you not to take your child out of school when
you can well afford to keep her there. That's what you have to tell the
Board."
Mr. Getz stared at her, rather baffled. The children also stared in
wide-eyed curiosity, realizing with wonder that Teacher was "talkin' up
to pop!" It was a novel and interesting spectacle.
"Well, anyways," continued Mr. Getz, rallying, "I'll bring it up in
Board meeting that you mebbe leave the scholars borry the loan of
novels off of you."
"But you can't prove it. I shall hold the Board to their contract. They
can't break it."
Miss Margaret was taking very high ground, of which, in fact, she was
not at all sure.
Mr. Getz gazed at her with mingled anger and fascination. Here was
certainly a new species of woman! Never before had any teacher at
William Penn failed to cringe to his authority as a director.
"This much I KIN say," he finally declared. "Mebbe you kin hold us to
that there contract, but you won't, anyways, be elected to come back
here next term! That's sure! You'll have to look out fur another place
till September a'ready. And we won't give you no recommend, neither, to
get yourself another school with!"
Just here it was that Miss Margaret had her triumph, which she was
quite human enough to thoroughly enjoy.
"You won't have a chance to reelect me, for I am going to resign at the
end of the term. I am going to be married the week after school closes."
Never had Mr. Getz felt himself so foiled. Never before had any one
subject in any degree to his authority so neatly eluded a reckoning at
his hands. A tingling sensation ran along his arm and he had to
restrain his impulse to lift it, grasp this slender creature standing
so fearlessly before him, and thoroughly shake her.
"Who's the party?" asked Mrs. Getz, curiously. "It never got put out
that you was promised. I ain't heard you had any steady comp'ny. To be
sure, some says the Doc likes you pretty good. Is it now, mebbe, the
Doc? But no," she shook her head; "Mister's sister Em at the hotel
would have tole me. Is it some one where lives around here?"
"I don't mind telling you," Miss Margaret graciously answered,
realizing that her reply would greatly increase Mr. Getz's sense of
defeat. "It is Mr. Lansing, a nephew of the State Superintendent of
schools and a professor at the Millersville Normal School."
"Well, now just look!" Mrs. Getz exclaimed wonderingly. "Such a tony
party! The State Superintendent's nephew! That's even a more way-up
person than what the county superintendent is! Ain't? Well, who'd 'a'
thought!"
"Miss Margaret!" Tillie breathed, gazing up at her, her eyes wide and
strained with distress, "if you go away and get married, won't I NEVER
see you no more?"
"But, dear, I shall live so near--at the Normal School only a few miles
away. You can come to see me often."
"But pop won't leave me, Miss Margaret--it costs too expensive to go
wisiting, and I got to help with the work, still. O Miss Margaret!"
Tillie sobbed, as Margaret sat down and held the clinging child to her,
"I'll never see you no more after you go away!"
"Tillie, dear!" Margaret tried to soothe her. "I 'll come to see YOU,
then, if you can't come to see me. Listen, Tillie,--I've just thought
of something."
Suddenly she put the little girl from her and stood up.
"Let me take Tillie to live with me next fall at the Normal School.
Won't you do that, Mr. Getz!" she urged him. "She could go to the
preparatory school, and if we stay at Millersville, Dr. Lansing and I
would try to have her go through the Normal School and graduate. Will
you consent to it, Mr. Getz?"
"And who'd be payin' fur all this here?" Mr. Getz ironically inquired.
"Tillie could earn her own way as my little maid--helping me keep my
few rooms in the Normal School building and doing my mending and
darning for me. And you know after she was graduated she could earn her
living as a teacher."
Margaret saw the look of feverish eagerness with which Tillie heard
this proposal and awaited the outcome.
Before her husband could answer, Mrs. Getz offered a weak protest.
"I hear the girls hired in town have to set away back in the kitchen
and never dare set front--always away back, still. Tillie wouldn't like
that. Nobody would."
"But I shall live in a small suite of rooms at the school--a library, a
bedroom, a bath-room, and a small room next to mine that can be
Tillie's bedroom. We shall take our meals in the school dining-room."
"Well, that mebbe she wouldn't mind. But 'way back she wouldn't be
satisfied to set. That's why the country girls don't like to hire in
town, because they dassent set front with the missus. Here last
market-day Sophy Haberbush she conceited she'd like oncet to hire out
in town, and she ast me would I go with her after market to see a lady
that advertised in the newspaper fur a girl, and I sayed no, I wouldn't
mind. So I went along. But Sophy she wouldn't take the place fur all.
She ast the lady could she have her country company, Sundays--he was
her company fur four years now and she wouldn't like to give him up
neither. She tole the lady her company goes, still, as early as eleven.
But the lady sayed her house must be darkened and locked at half-past
ten a'ready. She ast me was I Sophy's mother and I sayed no, I'm
nothin' to her but a neighbor woman. And she tole Sophy, when they eat,
still, Sophy she couldn't eat along. I guess she thought Sophy
Haberbush wasn't good enough. But she's as good as any person. Her
mother's name is Smith before she was married, and them Smiths was well
fixed. She sayed Sophy'd have to go in and out the back way and never
out the front. Why, they say some of the town people's that proud, if
the front door-bell rings and the missus is standin' right there by it,
she won't open that there front door but wants her hired girl to come
clear from the kitchen to open it. Yes, you mightn't b'lee me, but I
heerd that a'ready. And Mary Hertzog she tole me when she hired out
there fur a while one winter in town, why, one day she went to the
missus and she says, 'There's two ladies in the parlor and I tole 'em
you was helpin' in the kitchen,' and the missus she ast her, 'What fur
did you tell 'em that? Why, I'm that ashamed I don't know how to walk
in the parlor!' And Mary she ast the colored gentleman that worked
there, what, now, did the missus mean?--and he sayed, 'Well, Mary,
you've a heap to learn about the laws of society. Don't you know you
must always leave on the ladies ain't doin' nothin'?' Mary sayed that
colored gentleman was so wonderful intelligent that way. He'd been a
restaurant waiter there fur a while and so was throwed in with the best
people, and he was, now, that tony and high-minded! Och, I wouldn't
hire in town! To be sure, Mister can do what he wants. Well," she
added, "it's a quarter till five--I guess I'll put the peppermint on a
while. Mister's folks'll be here till five."
She moved away to the stove, and Margaret resumed her assault upon the
stubborn ignorance of the father.
"Think, Mr. Getz, what a difference all this would make in Tillie's
life," she urged.
"And you'd be learnin' her all them years to up and sass her pop when
she was growed and earnin' her own livin'!" he objected.
"I certainly would not."
"And all them years till she graduated she'd be no use to us where owns
her," he said, as though his child were an item of live stock on the
farm.
"She could come home to you in the summer vacations," Margaret
suggested.
"Yes, and she'd come that spoilt we couldn't get no work out of her.
No, if I hire her out winters, it'll be where I kin draw her wages
myself--where's my right as her parent. What does a body have childern
fur? To get no use out of 'em? It ain't no good you're plaguin' me. I
ain't leavin' her go. Tillie!" he commanded the child with a twirl of
his thumb and a motion of his head; "go set the supper-table!"
Margaret laid her arm about Tillie's shoulder. "Well, dear," she said
sorrowfully, "we must give it all up, I suppose. But don't lose heart,
Tillie. I shall not go out of your life. At least we can write to each
other. Now," she concluded, bending and kissing her, "I must go, but
you and I shall have some talks before you stop school, and before I go
away from New Canaan."
She pressed her lips to Tillie's in a long kiss, while the child clung
to her in passionate devotion. Mr. Getz looked on with dull
bewilderment. He knew, in a vague way, that every word the teacher
spoke to the child, no less than those useless caresses, was "siding
along with the scholar ag'in' the parent," and yet he could not
definitely have stated just how. He was quite sure that she would not
dare so to defy him did she not know that she had the whip-handle in
the fact that she did not want her "job" next year, and that the Board
could not, except for definite offenses, break their contract with her.
It was only in view of these considerations that she played her game of
"plaguing" him by championing Tillie. Jacob Getz was incapable of
recognizing in the teacher's attitude toward his child an unselfish
interest and love.
So, in dogged, sullen silence, he saw this extraordinary young woman
take her leave and pass out of his house.