At the supper-table, the apparently inexhaustible topic of talk was the
refusal of the Hersheys to receive the new teacher into the bosom of
their family. A return to this theme again and again, on the part of
the various members of the Wackernagel household, did not seem to
lessen its interest for them, though the teacher himself did not take a
very animated part in its discussion. Tillie realized, as with an
absorbing interest she watched his fine face, that all he saw and heard
here was as novel to him as the world whence he had come would be to
her and her kindred and neighbors, could they be suddenly transplanted
into it. Tillie had never looked upon any human countenance which
seemed to express so much of that ideal world in which she lived her
real life.
"To turn him off after he got there!" Mrs. Wackernagel exclaimed,
reverting for the third time to the episode which had so excited the
family. "And after Lizzie and Jonas they'd sayed he could come yet!"
"Well, I say!" Mr. Wackernagel shook his head, as though the story,
even at its third recital, were full of surprises.
Mr. Wackernagel was a tall, raw-boned man with conspicuously large feet
and hands. He wore his hair plastered back from his face in a unique,
not to say distinguished style, which he privately considered highly
becoming his position as the proprietor of the New Canaan Hotel. Mr.
Wackernagel's self-satisfaction did indeed cover every detail of his
life--from the elegant fashion of his hair to the quality of the whisky
which he sold over the bar, and of which he never tired of boasting.
Not only was he entirely pleased with himself, but his good-natured
satisfaction included all his possessions--his horse first, then his
wife, his two daughters, his permanent boarder, "the Doc," and his
wife's niece Tillie. For people outside his own horizon, he had a
tolerant but contemptuous pity.
Mr. Wackernagel and the doctor both sat at table in their
shirt-sleeves, the proprietor wearing a clean white shirt (his
extravagance and vanity in using two white shirts a week being one of
the chief historical facts of the village), while the doctor was wont
to appear in a brown cotton shirt, the appearance of which suggested
the hostler rather than the physician.
That Fairchilds should "eat in his coat" placed him, in the eyes of the
Wackernagels, on the high social plane of the drummers from the city,
many of whom yearly visited the town with their wares.
"And Teacher he didn't press 'em none, up at Jonas Hershey's, to take
him in, neither, he says," Mrs. Wackernagel pursued.
"He says?" repeated Mr. Wackernagel, inquiringly. "Well, that's like
what I was, too, when I was a young man," he boasted. "If I thought I
ain't wanted when I went to see a young lady--if she passed any
insinyations--she never wasn't worried with ME ag'in!"
"I guess Lizzie's spited that Teacher's stoppin' at our place," giggled
Rebecca, her pretty face rosy with pleasurable excitement in the turn
affairs had taken. She sat directly opposite Mr. Fairchilds, while
Amanda had the chair at his side.
Tillie could see that the young man's eyes rested occasionally upon the
handsome, womanly form of her very good-looking cousin Amanda. Men
always looked at Amanda a great deal, Tillie had often observed. The
fact had never before had any special significance for her.
"Are you from Lancaster, or wherever?" the doctor inquired of Mr.
Fairchilds.
"From Connecticut," he replied in a tone that indefinably, but
unmistakably checked further questioning.
"Now think! So fur off as that!"
"Yes, ain't!" exclaimed Mrs. Wackernagel. "It's a wonder a body'd ever
be contented to live that fur off."
"We're had strangers here in this HOtel," Mr. Wackernagel began to
brag, while he industriously ate of his fried sausage and fried
potatoes, "from as fur away as Illinois yet! And from as fur south as
down in Maine! Yes, indeed! Ain't, mom?" he demanded of his wife.
"Och, yes, many's the strange meals I cooked a'ready in this house. One
week I cooked forty strange meals; say not, Abe?" she returned.
"Yes, I mind of that week. It was Mrs. Johnson and her daughter we had
from Illinois and Mrs. Snyder from Maine," Abe explained to Mr.
Fairchilds. "And them Johnsons stayed the whole week."
"They stopped here while Mr. Johnson went over the county sellin'
milk-separators," added Mrs. Wackernagel. "And Abe he was in Lancaster
that week, and the Doc he was over to East Donegal, and there was no
man here except only us ladies! Do you mind, Rebecca?"
Eebecca nodded, her mouth too full for utterance.
"Mrs. Johnson she looked younger than her own daughter yet," Mrs.
Wackernagel related, with animation, innocent of any suspicion that the
teacher might not find the subject of Mrs. Johnson as absorbing as she
found it.
"There is nothing like good health as a preserver of youth," responded
Fairchilds.
"HOtel-keepin' didn't pay till we got the license," Mr. Wackernagel
chatted confidentially to the stranger. "Mom, to be sure, she didn't
favor my havin' a bar, because she belonged to meetin'. But I seen I
couldn't make nothin' if I didn't. It was never no temptation to me--I
was always among the whisky and I never got tight oncet. And it ain't
the hard work farmin' was. I had to give up followin' farmin'. I got it
so in my leg. Why, sometimes I can't hardly walk no more."
"And can't your doctor cure you?" Fairchilds asked, with a curious
glance at the unkempt little man across the table.
"Och, yes, he's helped me a heap a'ready. Him he's as good a doctor as
any they're got in Lancaster even!" was the loyal response. "Here a
couple months back, a lady over in East Donegal Township she had wrote
him a letter over here, how the five different kinds of doses where he
give her daughter done her so much good, and she was that grateful, she
sayed she just felt indebted fur a letter to him! Ain't, Doc? She sayed
now her daughter's engaged to be married and her mind's more
settled--and to be sure, that made somepin too. Yes, she sayed her
gettin' engaged done her near as much good as the five different kind
of doses done her."
"Are you an Allopath?" Fairchilds asked the doctor.
"I'm a Eclectic," he responded glibly. "And do you know, Teacher, I'd
been practisin' that there style of medicine fur near twelve years
before I knowed it was just to say the Eclectic School, you understand."
"Like Moliere's prose-writer!" remarked the teacher, then smiled at
himself for making such an allusion in such a place.
"Won't you have some more sliced radishes, Teacher?" urged the hostess.
"I made a-plenty."
"No, I thank you," Fairchilds replied, with his little air of courtesy
that so impressed the whole family. "I can't eat radishes in the
evening with impunity."
"But these is with WINEGAR," Mrs. Wackernagel corrected him.
Before Mr. Fairchilds could explain, Mr. Wackernagel broke in,
confirming the doctor's proud claim.
"Yes, Doc he's a Eclectic," he repeated, evidently feeling that the
fact reflected credit on the hotel. "You can see his sign on the side
door."
"I was always interested in science," explained the doctor, under the
manifest impression that he was continuing the subject. "Phe-non-e-ma.
That's what I like. Odd things. I'm stuck on 'em! Now this here
wireless teleGRAPHY. I'm stuck on that, you bet! To me that there's a
phe-non-e-ma."
"Teacher," interrupted Mrs. Wackernagel, "you ain't eatin' hearty.
Leave me give you some more sausage."
"If you please," Mr. Fairchilds bowed as he handed his plate to her.
"Why don't you leave him help hisself," protested Mr. Wackernagel. "He
won't feel to make hisself at home if he can't help hisself like as if
he was one of us that way."
"Och, well," confessed Mrs. Wackernagel, "I just keep astin' him will
he have more, so I can hear him speak his manners so nice." She laughed
aloud at her own vanity. "You took notice of it too, Tillie, ain't? You
can't eat fur lookin' at him!"
A tide of color swept Tillie's face as the teacher, with a look of
amusement, turned his eyes toward her end of the table. Her glance fell
upon her plate, and she applied herself to cutting up her untouched
sausage.
"Now, there's Doc," remarked Amanda, critically, "he's GOT good
manners, but he don't use 'em."
"Och," said the doctor, "it ain't worth while to trouble."
"I think it would be wonderful nice, Teacher," said Mrs. Wackernagel,
"if you learnt them manners you got to your scholars this winter. I
wisht 'Manda and Rebecca knowed such manners. THEY're to be your
scholars this winter."
"Indeed?" said Fairchilds; "are they?"
"'Manda there," said her father, "she's so much fur actin' up you'll
have to keep her right by you to keep her straight, still."
"That's where I shall be delighted to keep her," returned Fairchilds,
gallantly, and Amanda laughed boisterously and grew several shades
rosier as she looked boldly up into the young man's eyes.
"Ain't you fresh though!" she exclaimed coquettishly.
How dared they all make so free with this wonderful young man, marveled
Tillie. Why didn't they realize, as she did, how far above them he was?
She felt almost glad that in his little attentions to Amanda and
Rebecca he had scarcely noticed her at all; for the bare thought of
talking to him overwhelmed her with shyness.
"Mind Tillie!" laughed Mr. Wackernagel, suddenly, "lookin' scared at
the way yous are all talkin' up to Teacher! Tillie she's afraid of
you," he explained to Mr. Fairchilds. "She ain't never got her tongue
with her when there's strangers. Ain't, Tillie?"
Tillie's burning face was bent over her plate, and she did not attempt
to answer. Mr. Fairchilds' eyes rested for an instant on the delicate,
sensitive countenance of the girl. But his attention was diverted by an
abrupt exclamation from Mrs. Wackernagel.
"Oh, Abe!" she suddenly cried, "you ain't tole Teacher yet about the
Albright sisters astin' you, on market, what might your name be!"
The tone in which this serious omission was mentioned indicated that it
was an anecdote treasured among the family archives.
"Now, I would mebbe of forgot that!" almost in consternation said Mr.
Wackernagel. "Well," he began, concentrating his attention upon the
teacher, "it was this here way. The two Miss Albrights they had bought
butter off of us, on market, for twenty years back a'ready, and all
that time we didn't know what was their name, and they didn't know
ourn; fur all, I often says to mom, 'Now I wonder what's the name of
them two thin little women.' Well, you see, I was always a wonderful
man fur my jokes. Yes, I was wery fond of makin' a joke, still. So here
one day the two sisters come along and bought their butter, and then
one of 'em she says, 'Excuse me, but here I've been buyin' butter off
of yous fur this twenty years back a'ready and I ain't never heard your
name. What might your name BE?' Now I was such a man fur my jokes,
still, so I says to her"--Mr. Wackernagel's whole face twinkled with
amusement, and his shoulders shook with laughter as he contemplated the
joke he had perpetrated--"I says, 'Well, it MIGHT be Gener'l
Jackson'"--laughter again choked his utterance, and the stout form of
Mrs. Wackernagel also was convulsed with amusement, while Amanda and
Rebecca giggled appreciatively. Tillie and the doctor alone remained
unaffected. "'It might be Gener'l Jackson,' I says. 'But it ain't. It's
Abe Wackernagel,' I says. You see," he explained, "she ast me what
MIGHT my name be.--See?--and I says 'It might be Jackson'--MIGHT be,
you know, because she put it that way, what might it be. 'But it
ain't,' I says. 'It's Wackernagel.'"
Mr. and Mrs. Wackernagel and their daughters leaned back in their
chairs and gave themselves up to prolonged and exuberant laughter, in
which the teacher obligingly joined as well as he was able.
When this hilarity had subsided, Mr. Wackernagel turned to Mr.
Fairchilds with a question. "Are you mebbe feelin' oneasy, Teacher,
about meetin' the school directors to-night? You know they meet here in
the HOtel parlor at seven o'clock to take a look at you; and if you
suit, then you and them signs the agreement."
"And if I don't suit?"
"They'll turn you down and send you back home!" promptly answered the
doctor. "That there Board ain't conferrin' William Penn on no one where
don't suit 'em pretty good! They're a wonderful partic'lar Board!"
After supper the comely Amanda agreed eagerly to the teacher's
suggestion that she go with him for a walk, before the convening of the
School Board at seven o'clock, and show him the school-house, as he
would like to behold, he said, "the seat of learning" which, if the
Board elected him, was to be the scene of his winter's campaign.
Amanda improved this opportunity to add her word of warning to that of
the doctor.
"That there Board's awful hard to suit, still. Oncet they got a
Millersville Normal out here, and when she come to sign they seen she
was near-sighted that way, and Nathaniel Puntz--he's a director--he up
and says that wouldn't suit just so well, and they sent her back home.
And here oncet a lady come out to apply and she should have sayed [she
is reported to have said] she was afraid New Canaan hadn't no
accommodations good enough fur her, and the directors ast her, 'Didn't
most of our Presidents come out of log cabins?' So they wouldn't elect
her. Now," concluded Amanda, "you see!"
"Thanks for your warning. Can you give me some pointers?"
"What's them again?"
"Well, I must not be near-sighted, for one thing, and I must not demand
'all the modern improvements.' Tell me what manner of man this School
Board loves and admires. To be in the dark as to their tastes, you
know--"
"You must make yourself nice and common," Amanda instructed him. "You
haven't dare to put on no city airs. To be sure, I guess they come a
good bit natural to you, and, as mom says still, a body can't help fur
their dispositions; but our directors is all plain that way and they
don't like tony people that wants to come out here and think they're
much!"
"Yes? I see. Anything else?"
"Well, they'll be partic'lar about your bein' a perfessor."
"How do you mean?"
Amanda looked at him in astonishment. "If you're a perfessor or no.
They'll be sure to ast you."
Mr. Fairchilds thoughtfully considered it.
"You mean," he said, light coming to him, "they will ask me whether I
am a professor of religion, don't you?"
"Why, to be sure!"
"Oh!"
"And you better have your answer ready."
"What, in your judgment, may I ask, would be a suitable answer to that?"
"Well, ARE you a perfessor?"
"Oh, I'm anything at all that will get me this 'job.' I've got to have
it as a makeshift until I can get hold of something better. Let me
see--will a Baptist do?"
"Are you a Baptist?" the girl stolidly asked.
"When circumstances are pressing. Will they be satisfied with a
Baptist?"
"That's one of the fashionable churches of the world," Amanda replied
gravely. "And the directors is most all Mennonites and Amish and
Dunkards. All them is PLAIN churches and loosed of the world, you know."
"Oh, well, I'll wriggle out somehow! Trust to luck!" Fairchilds
dismissed the subject, realizing the injudiciousness of being too
confidential with this girl on so short an acquaintance.
At the momentous hour of seven, the directors promptly assembled. When
Tillie, at her aunt's request, carried two kerosene lamps into the
parlor, a sudden determination came to the girl to remain and witness
the reception of the new teacher by the School Board.
She was almost sick with apprehension lest the Board should realize, as
she did, that this Harvard graduate was too fine for such as they. It
was an austere Board, hard to satisfy, and there was nothing they would
so quickly resent and reject as evident superiority in an applicant.
The Normal School students, their usual candidates, were for the most
part, though not always, what was called in the neighborhood "nice and
common." The New Canaan Board was certainly not accustomed to sitting
in judgment upon an applicant such as this Pestalozzi Fairchilds.
(Tillie's religion forbade her to call him by the vain and worldly form
of Mr.)
No one noticed the pale-faced girl as, after placing one lamp on the
marble-topped table about which the directors sat and another on the
mantelpiece, she moved quietly away to the farthest corner of the long,
narrow parlor and seated herself back of the stove.
The applicant, too, when he came into the room, was too much taken up
with what he realized to be the perils of his case to observe the
little watcher in the corner, though he walked past her so close that
his coat brushed her shoulder, sending along her nerves, like a faint
electric shock, a sensation so novel and so exquisite that it made her
suddenly close her eyes to steady her throbbing head.
There were present six members of the Board--two Amishmen, one Old
Mennonite, one patriarchal-looking Dunkard, one New Mennonite, and one
Evangelical, the difference in their religious creeds being attested by
their various costumes and the various cuts of beard and hair. The
Evangelical, the New Mennonite, and the Amishmen were farmers, the
Dunkard kept the store and the post-office, and the Old Mennonite was
the stage-driver. Jacob Getz was the Evangelical; and Nathaniel Puntz,
Absalom's father, the New Mennonite.
The investigation of the applicant was opened up by the president of
the Board, a long-haired Amishman, whose clothes were fastened by hooks
and eyes instead of buttons and buttonholes, these latter being
considered by his sect as a worldly vanity.
"What was your experience a'ready as a teacher?"
Fairchilds replied that he had never had any.
Tillie's heart sank as, from her post in the corner, she heard this
answer. Would the members think for one moment of paying forty dollars
a month to a teacher without experience? She was sure they had never
before done so. They were shaking their heads gravely over it, she
could see.
But the investigation proceeded.
"What was your Persuasion then?"
Tillie saw, in the teacher's hesitation, that he did not understand the
question.
"My 'Persuasion'? Oh! I see. You mean my Church?"
"Yes, what's your conwictions?"
He considered a moment. Tillie hung breathlessly upon his answer. She
knew how much depended upon it with this Board of "plain" people. Could
he assure them that he was "a Bible Christian"? Otherwise, they would
never elect him to the New Canaan school. He gave his reply, presently,
in a tone suggesting his having at that moment recalled to memory just
what his "Persuasion" was. "Let me see--yes--I'm a Truth-Seeker."
"What's that again?" inquired the president, with interest. "I have not
heard yet of that Persuasion."
"A Truth-Seeker," he gravely explained, "is one who believes in--eh--in
a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite,
coherent heterogeneity."
The members looked at each other cautiously.
"Is that the English you're speakin', or whatever?" asked the Dunkard
member. "Some of them words ain't familiar with me till now, and I
don't know right what they mean."
"Yes, I'm talking English," nodded the applicant. "We also believe," he
added, growing bolder, "in the fundamental, biogenetic law that
ontogenesis is an abridged repetition of philogenesis."
"He says they believe in Genesis," remarked the Old Mennonite,
appealing for aid, with bewildered eyes, to the other members.
"Maybe he's a Jew yet!" put in Nathaniel Puntz. "We also believe," Mr.
Fairchilds continued, beginning to enjoy himself, "in the revelations
of science."
"He believes in Genesis and in Revelations," explained the president to
the others.
"Maybe he's a Cat'lic!" suggested the suspicious Mr. Puntz.
"No," said Fairchilds, "I am, as I said, a Truth-Seeker. A Truth-Seeker
can no more be a Catholic or a Jew in faith than an Amishman can, or a
Mennonite, or a Brennivinarian."
Tillie knew he was trying to say "Winebrennarian," the name of one of
the many religious sects of the county, and she wondered at his not
knowing better.
"You ain't a gradyate, neither, are you?" was the president's next
question, the inscrutable mystery of the applicant's creed being for
the moment dropped.
"Why, yes, I thought you knew that. Of Harvard."
"Och, that!" contemptuously; "I mean you ain't a gradyate of
Millersville Normal?"
"No," humbly acknowledged Fairchilds.
"When I was young," Mr. Getz irrelevantly remarked, "we didn't have no
gradyate teachers like what they have now, still. But we anyhow learnt
more ACCORDING."
"How long does it take you to get 'em from a, b, c's to the Testament?"
inquired the patriarchal Dunkard.
"That depends upon the capacity of the pupil," was Mr. Fairchilds's
profound reply.
"Can you learn 'em 'rithmetic good?" asked Nathaniel Puntz. "I got a
son his last teacher couldn't learn 'rithmetic to. He's wonderful dumm
in 'rithmetic, that there boy is. Absalom by name. After the
grandfather. His teacher tried every way to learn him to count and
figger good. He even took and spread toothpicks out yet--but that
didn't learn him neither. I just says, he ain't appointed to learn
'rithmetic. Then the teacher he tried him with such a Algebry. But
Absalom he'd get so mixed up!--he couldn't keep them x's spotted."
"I have a method," Mr. Fairchilds began, "which I trust--"
To Tillie's distress, her aunt's voice, at this instant calling her to
"come stir the sots [yeast] in," summoned her to the kitchen.
It was very hard to have to obey. She longed so to stay till Fairchilds
should come safely through his fiery ordeal. For a moment she was
tempted to ignore the summons, but her conscience, no less than her
grateful affection for her aunt, made such behavior impossible. Softly
she stole out of the room and noiselessly closed the door behind her.
A half-hour later, when her aunt and cousins had gone to bed, and while
the august School Board still occupied the parlor, Tillie sat sewing in
the sitting-room, while the doctor, at the other side of the table,
nodded over his newspaper.
Since Tillie had come to live at the hotel, she and the doctor were
often together in the evening; the Doc was fond of a chat over his pipe
with the child whom he so helped and befriended in her secret struggles
to educate herself. There was, of course, a strong bond of sympathy and
friendship between them in their common conspiracy with Miss Margaret,
whom the doctor had never ceased to hold in tender memory.
Just now Tillie's ears were strained to catch the sounds of the
adjourning of the Board. When at last she heard their shuffling
footsteps in the hall, her heart beat fast with suspense. A moment more
and the door leading from the parlor opened and Fairchilds came out
into the sitting-room.
Tillie did not lift her eyes from her sewing, but the room seemed
suddenly filled with his presence.
"Well!" the doctor roused himself to greet the young man; "were you
'lected?"
Breathlessly, Tillie waited to hear his answer.
"Oh, yes; I've escaped alive!" Fairchilds leaned against the table in
an attitude of utter relaxation. "They roasted me brown, though!
Galileo at Rome, and Martin Luther at Worms, had a dead easy time
compared to what I've been through!"
"I guess!" the doctor laughed. "Ain't!"
"I'm going to bed," the teacher announced in a tone of collapse. "Good
night!"
"Good night!" answered the doctor, cordially.
Fairchilds drew himself up from the table and took a step toward the
stairway; this brought him to Tillie's side of the table, and he paused
a moment and looked down upon her as she sewed.
Her fingers trembled, and the pulse in her throat beat suffocatingly,
but she did not look up.
"Good night, Miss--Tillie, isn't it?"
"Matilda Maria," Tillie's soft, shy voice replied as her eyes, full of
light, were raised, for an instant, to the face above her.
The man smiled and bowed his acknowledgment; then, after an instant's
hesitation, he said, "Pardon me: the uniform you and Mrs. Wackernagel
wear--may I ask what it is?"
"'Uniform'?" breathed Tillie, wonderingly. "Oh, you mean the garb? We
are members of meeting. The world calls us New Mennonites."
"And this is the uni--the garb of the New Mennonites?"
"Yes, sir."
"It is a very becoming garb, certainly," Fairchilds smiled, gazing down
upon the fair young girl with a puzzled look in his own face, for he
recognized, not only in her delicate features, and in the light of her
beautiful eyes, but also in her speech, a something that set her apart
from the rest of this household.
Tillie colored deeply at his words, and the doctor laughed outright.
"By gum! They wear the garb to make 'em look UNbecomin'! And he ups and
tells her it's becomin' yet! That's a choke, Teacher! One on you,
ain't? That there cap's to hide the hair which is a pride to the sek!
And that cape over the bust is to hide woman's allurin' figger. See?
And you ups and tells her it's a becomin' UNYFORM! Unyforms is what New
Mennonites don't uphold to! Them's fur Cat'lics and 'Piscopals--and fur
warriors--and the Mennonites don't favor war! Unyforms yet!" he
laughed. "I'm swanged if that don't tickle me!"
"I stand corrected. I beg pardon if I've offended," Fairchilds said
hastily. "Miss--Matilda--I hope I've not hurt your feelings? Believe
me, I did not mean to."
"Och!" the doctor answered for her, "Tillie she ain't so easy hurt to
her feelin's, are you, Tillie? Gosh, Teacher, them manners you got must
keep you busy! Well, sometimes I think I'm better off if I stay common.
Then I don't have to bother."
The door leading from the bar-room opened suddenly and Jacob Getz stood
on the threshold.
"Well, Tillie," he said by way of greeting. "Uncle Abe sayed you wasn't
went to bed yet, so I stopped to see you a minute."
"Well, father," Tillie answered as she put down her sewing and came up
to him.
Awkwardly he bent to kiss her, and Tillie, even in her emotional
excitement, realized, with a passing wonder, that he appeared glad to
see her after a week of separation.
"It's been some lonesome, havin' you away," he told her.
"Is everybody well?" she asked.
"Yes, middlin'. You was sewin', was you?" he inquired, glancing at the
work on the table.
"Yes, sir."
"All right. Don't waste your time. Next Saturday I 'll stop off after
market on my way out from Lancaster and see you oncet, and get your
wages off of Aunty Em."
"Yes, sir."
A vague idea of something unusual in the light of Tillie's eyes
arrested him. He glanced suspiciously at the doctor, who was speaking
in a low tone to the teacher.
"Look-ahere, Tillie. If Teacher there wants to keep comp'ny with one of
yous girls, it ain't to be you, mind. He ain't to be makin' up to you!
I don't want you to waste your time that there way."
Apprehensively, Tillie darted a sidelong glance at the teacher to see
if he had heard--for though no tender sentiment was associated in her
mind with the idea of "keeping company," yet intuitively she felt the
unseemliness of her father's warning and its absurdity in the eyes of
such as this stranger.
Mr. Fairchilds was leaning against the table, his arms folded, his lips
compressed and his face flushed. She was sure that he had overheard her
father. Was he angry, or--almost worse--did that compressed mouth mean
concealed amusement?
"Well, now, I must be goin'," said Mr. Getz. "Be a good girl, mind.
Och, I 'most forgot to tell you. Me and your mom's conceited we'd drive
up to Puntz's Sunday afternoon after the dinner work's through a'ready.
And if Aunty Em don't want you partic'lar, you're to come home and mind
the childern, do you hear?"
"Yes, sir."
"Now, don't forget. Well, good-by, then."
Again he bent to kiss her, and Tillie felt Fairchilds's eyes upon her,
as unresponsively she submitted to the caress.
"Good night to you, Teacher." Mr. Getz gruffly raised his voice to
speak to the pair by the table. "And to you, Doc."
They answered him and he went away. When Tillie slowly turned back to
the table, the teacher hastily took his leave and moved away to the
stairway at the other end of the room. As she took up her sewing, she
heard him mount the steps and presently close and lock the door of his
room at the head of the stairs.
"He was, now, wonderful surprised, Tillie," the doctor confided to her,
"when I tole him Jake Getz was your pop. He don't think your pop takes
after you any. I says to him, 'Tillie's pop, there, bein' one of your
bosses, you better make up to Tillie,' I says, and he sayed, 'You don't
mean to tell me that that Mr. Getz of the School Board is the father of
this girl?' 'That's what,' I says. 'He's that much her father,' I says,
'that you'd better keep on the right side of him by makin' up to
Tillie,' I says, just to plague him. And just then your pop up and
sayed if Teacher wanted to keep comp'ny he must pick out 'Manda or
Rebecca--and I seen Teacher wanted to laugh, but his manners wouldn't
leave him. He certainly has, now, a lot of manners, ain't, Tillie?"
Tillie's head was bent over her sewing and she did not answer.
The doctor yawned, stretched himself, and guessed he would step into
the bar-room.
Tillie bent over her sewing for a long time after she was left alone.
The music of the young man's grave voice as he had spoken her name and
called her "Miss Matilda" sang in her brain. The fascination of his
smile as he had looked down into her eyes, and the charm of his
chivalrous courtesy, so novel to her experience, haunted and
intoxicated her. And tonight, Tillie felt her soul flooded with a life
and light so new and strange that she trembled as before a miracle.
Meanwhile, Walter Fairchilds, alone in his room, his mind too full of
the events and characters to which the past day had introduced him to
admit of sleep, was picturing, with mingled amusement and regret, the
genuine horror of his fastidious relatives could they know of his
present environment, among people for whom their vocabulary had but one
word--a word which would have consigned them all, even that
sweet-voiced, clear-eyed little Puritan, Matilda Maria, to outer
darkness; and that he, their adopted son and brother, should be
breaking bread and living on a footing of perfect equality with these
villagers he knew would have been, in their eyes, an offense only
second in heinousness to that of his apostasy.