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.