On Sunday morning, in spite of her aunt's protestations, Tillie went to
meeting with her curls outside her cap.
"They'll set you back!" protested Mrs. Wackernagel, in great trouble of
spirit.
"It would be worse to be deceitful than to be vain," Tillie answered.
"If I am going to let my hair curl week-days, I won't be a coward and
deceive the meeting about myself."
"But whatever made you take it into your head to act so vain, Tillie?"
her bewildered aunt inquired for the hundredth time. "It can't be fur
Absalom, fur you don't take to him. And, anyways, he says he wants to
be led of the Spirit to give hisself up. To be sure, I hope he ain't
tempted to use religion as a means of gettin' the girl he wants!"
"I know I'm doing wrong, Aunty Em," Tillie replied sorrowfully. "Maybe
the meeting to-day will help me to conquer the Enemy."
She and her aunt realized during the course of the morning that the
curls were creating a sensation. An explanation would certainly be
demanded of Tillie before the week was out.
After the service, they did not stop long for "sociability,"--the
situation was too strained,--but hurried out to their buggy as soon as
they could escape.
Tillie marveled at herself as, on the way home, she found how small was
her concern about the disapproval of the meeting, and even about her
sin itself, before the fact that the teacher thought her curls adorable.
Aunty Em, too, marveled as she perceived the girl's strange
indifference to the inevitable public disgrace at the hands of the
brethren and sisters. Whatever was the matter with Tillie?
At the dinner-table, to spare Tillie's evident embarrassment (perhaps
because of the teacher's presence), Mrs. Wackernagel diverted the
curiosity of the family as to how the meeting had received the curls.
"What did yous do all while we was to meeting?" she asked of her two
daughters.
"Me and Amanda and Teacher walked to Buckarts Station," Rebecca
answered.
"Did yous, now?"
"Up the pike a piece was all the fu'ther I felt fur goin'," continued
Eebecca, in a rather injured tone; "but Amanda she was so fur seein'
oncet if that fellah with those black MUStache was at the blacksmith's
shop yet, at Buckarts! I tole her she needn't be makin' up to HIM, fur
he's keepin' comp'ny with Lizzie Hershey!"
"Say, mom," announced Amanda, ignoring her sister's rebuke, "I stopped
in this morning to see Lizzie Hershey, and she's that spited about
Teacher's comin' here instead of to their place that she never so much
as ast me would I spare my hat!"
"Now look!" exclaimed Mrs. Wackernagel. "And when I said, after while,
'Now I must go,' she was that unneighborly she never ast me, 'What's
your hurry?'"
"Was she that spited!" said Mrs. Wackernagel, half pityingly. "Well, it
was just like Sister Jennie Hershey, if she didn't want Teacher stayin'
there, to tell him right out. Some ain't as honest. Some talks to
please the people."
"What fur sermont did yous have this morning?" asked Mr. Wackernagel,
his mouth full of chicken.
"We had Levi Harnish. He preached good," said Mrs. Wackernagel. "Ain't
he did, Tillie?"
"Yes," replied Tillie, coloring with the guilty consciousness that
scarcely a word of that sermon had she heard.
"I like to hear a sermont, like hisn, that does me good to my heart,"
said Mrs. Wackernagel.
"Levi Harnish, he's a learnt preacher," said her husband, turning to
Fairchilds. "He reads wonderful much. And he's always thinkin' so
earnest about his learnin' that I've saw him walk along the street in
Lancaster a'ready and a'most walk into people!" "He certainly can stand
on the pulpit elegant!" agreed Mrs. Wackernagel. "Why, he can preach
his whole sermont with the Bible shut, yet! And he can put out
elocution that it's something turrible!"
"You are not a Mennonite, are you?" Fairchilds asked of the landlord.
"No," responded Mr. Wackernagel, with a shrug. "I bothered a whole lot
at one time about religion. Now I never bother."
"We had Silas Trout to lead the singin' this morning," continued Mrs.
Wackernagel. "I wisht I could sing by note, like him. I don't know
notes; I just sing by random."
"Where's Doc, anyhow?" suddenly inquired Amanda, for the doctor's place
at the table was vacant.
"He was fetched away. Mary Holzapple's mister come fur him!" Mr.
Wackernagel explained, with a meaning nod.
"I say!" cried Mrs. Wackernagel. "So soon a'ready! And last week it was
Sue Hess! Doc's always gettin' fetched! Nothin' but babies and babies!"
Tillie, whose eyes were always on the teacher, except when he chanced
to glance her way, noted wonderingly the blush that suddenly covered
his face and neck at this exclamation of her aunt's. In the primitive
simplicity of her mind, she could see nothing embarrassing in the mere
statement of any fact of natural history.
"Here comes Doc now!" cried Rebecca, at the opening of the kitchen
door. "Hello, Doc!" she cried as he came into the dining-room. "What IS
it?"
"Twin girls!" the doctor proudly announced, going over to the stove to
warm his hands after his long drive.
"My lands!" exclaimed Amanda.
"Now what do you think!" ejaculated Mrs. Wackernagel.
"How's missus?" Rebecca inquired.
"Doin' fine! But mister he ain't feelin' so well. He wanted a boy--OR
boys, as the case might be. It's gettin' some cold out," he added,
rubbing his hands and holding them to the fire.
That evening, when again Fairchilds was unable to have a chat alone
with Tillie, because of Absalom Puntz's unfailing appearance at the
hotel, he began to think, in his chagrin, that he must have exaggerated
the girl's superiority, since week after week she could endure the
attentions of "that lout."
He could not know that it was for HIS sake--to keep him in his place at
William Penn--that poor Tillie bore the hated caresses of Absalom.
That next week was one never to be forgotten by Tillie. It stood out,
in all the years that followed, as a week of wonder--in which were
revealed to her the depths and the heights of ecstatic bliss--a bliss
which so filled her being that she scarcely gave a thought to the
disgrace hanging over her--her suspension from meeting.
The fact that Tillie and the teacher sat together, now, every evening,
called forth no surmises or suspicions from the Wackernagels, for the
teacher was merely helping Tillie with some studies. The family was
charged to guard the fact from Mr. Getz.
The lessons seldom lasted beyond the early bedtime of the family, for
as soon as Tillie and Fairchilds found the sitting-room abandoned to
their private use, the school-books were put aside. They had somewhat
to say to each other.
Tillie's story of her long friendship with Miss Margaret, which she
related to Fairchilds, made him better understand much about the girl
that had seemed inexplicable in view of her environment; while her
wonder at and sympathetic interest in his own story of how he had come
to apply for the school at New Canaan both amused and touched him.
"Do you never have any doubts, Tillie, of the truth of your creed?" he
asked curiously, as they sat one evening at the sitting-room table, the
school-books and the lamp pushed to one end.
He had several times, in this week of intimacy, found it hard to
reconcile the girl's fine intelligence and clear thought in some
directions with her religious superstition. He hesitated to say a word
to disturb her in her apparently unquestioning faith, though he felt
she was worthy of a better creed than this impossibly narrow one of the
New Mennonites. "She isn't ready yet," he had thought, "to take hold of
a larger idea of religion."
"I have sometimes thought," she said earnestly, "that if the events
which are related in the Bible should happen now, we would not credit
them. An infant born of a virgin, a star leading three travelers, a man
who raised the dead and claimed to be God--we would think the folks who
believed these things were ignorant and superstitious. And because they
happened so long ago, and are in the Book which we are told came from
God, we believe. It is very strange! Sometimes my thoughts trouble me.
I try hard not to leave such thoughts come to me."
"LET, Tillie, not 'leave.'"
"Will I ever learn not to get my 'leaves' and 'lets' mixed!" sighed
Tillie, despairingly.
"Use 'let' whenever you find 'leave' on the end of your tongue, and
vice versa," he advised, with a smile.