"Yes. Why didn't you write to me?"
"You wrote to me?" she asked incredulously.
"I wrote you three times. You don't mean to tell me you never got my
letters?"
"I never heard from you. I would--I would have been so glad to!"
"But how could you have missed getting them?"
Her eyes fell upon her hands clasped in her lap, and her cheeks grew
pale.
"My father," she half whispered.
"He kept them from you?"
"It must have been so."
Fairchilds looked very grave. He did not speak at once.
"How can you forgive such things?" he presently asked. "One tenth of
the things you have had to bear would have made an incarnate fiend of
me!"
She kept her eyes downcast and did not answer.
"I can't tell you," he went on, "how bitterly disappointed I was when I
didn't hear from you. I couldn't understand why you didn't write. And
it gave me a sense of disappointment in YOU. I thought I must have
overestimated the worth of our friendship in your eyes. I see now--and
indeed in my heart I always knew--that I did you injustice."
She did not look up, but her bosom rose and fell in long breaths.
"There has not been a day," he said, "that I have not thought of you,
and wished I knew all about you and could see you and speak with
you--Tillie, what a haunting little personality you are!"
She raised her eyes then,--a soft fire in them that set his pulse to
bounding. But before she could answer him they were interrupted by the
sound of quick steps coming down the board walk toward the arbor.
Tillie started like a deer ready to flee, but Fairchilds laid a
reassuring hand upon hers. "It's the Doc," he said.
The faithful old fellow joined them, his finger on his lips to warn
them to silence.
"Don't leave no one hear us out here! Jake Getz he's went over to the
hotel to look fer Tillie, but he'll be back here in a jiffy, and we've
got to hurry on. Tillie, you go on up and pack your clo'es in a walise
or whatever, and hurry down here back. I'm hitchin' my buggy fer yous
as quick as I kin. I'll leave yous borry the loan of it off of me till
to-morrow--then, Teacher, you kin fetch it over ag'in. Ain't?"
"All right, Doc; you're a brick!"
Tillie sped into the house to obey the doctor's bidding, and Fairchilds
went with him across the street to the hotel stables.
In the course of ten minutes the three conspirators were together again
in the stable-yard behind the store, the doctor's horse and buggy ready
before them.
"Father's in the store--I heard his voice," panted Tillie, as
Fairchilds took her satchel from her and stowed it in the back of the
buggy.
"Hurry on, then," whispered the doctor, hoarsely, pushing them both,
with scant ceremony, into the carriage. "GOOD-by to yous--and good
luck! Och, that's all right; no thanks necessary! I'm tickled to the
end of my hair at gettin' ahead of Jake Getz! Say, Fairchilds," he
said, with a wink, "this here mare's wonderful safe--you don't HAVE to
hold the reins with both hands! See?"
And he shook in silent laughter at his own delicate and delicious
humor, as he watched them start out of the yard and down the road
toward Millersville.
For a space there was no sound but the rhythmic beat of hoofs and the
rattle of the buggy wheels; but in the heart of the Mennonite maid, who
had fought her last battle for freedom and won, there was ineffable
peace and content; and her happiness smiled from quivering lips and
shone in her steadfast eyes.
Mr. Abe Wackernagel, of the New Canaan hotel, was very fond, in the
years that followed, of bragging to his transient guests of his niece
who was the wife of "such a Millersville Normal perfessor--Perfessor
Fairchilds." And Mr. Jake Getz was scarcely less given to referring to
his daughter "where is married to such a perfessor at the Normal."
"But what do I get out of it?" he was wont ruefully to add. "Where do I
come in, yet?--I where raised her since she was born, a'ready?"