United States or Tanzania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Was he foiled in his anticipated revenge upon the girl who had "turned down" his Absalom? Mr. Getz sat stiff and motionless, his eyes fixed upon Tillie. "I resign my position at William Penn," Tillie repeated, "TO GO TO EUROPE FOR FOUR MONTHS' TRAVEL with Miss Margaret." Again she swept them with her eyes.
"Do you mebbe leave her set up readin' books or such pamp'lets, ain't?" Mr. Getz inquired. "I make her go to bed early still," Mrs. Wackernagel said evasively, though her Mennonite conscience reproached her for such want of strict candor. "That dude teacher you got stayin' here mebbe gives her things to read, ain't?" Mr. Getz pursued his suspicions.
Getz went into the house and the doctor, chuckling to himself, drove away. Tillie was in bed, but sleep was far from her eyes, when, late that night, she heard her father return from the Board meeting. Long she lay in her bed, listening with tense nerves to his suppressed tones as he talked to his wife in the room across the hall, but she could not hear what he said.
It happened that while this dialogue was taking place, Tillie was in the room above the kitchen, putting the two most recently arrived Getz babies to bed; and as she sat near the open register with a baby on her lap, every word that passed between her father and stepmother was perfectly audible to her. With growing bitterness she listened to her father's frank avowal of his selfish designs.
Getz was helping her husband make his toilet for a meeting of the School Board at which the application of that suspicious character, the Harvard graduate, was to be considered that the husband and wife discussed these significant Sunday night visits. Mrs.
Mom won't like it when I come without 'em this mornin'. She's needin' 'em fur the childern, and she thought they'd be done till this morning a'ready." "Why don't you hire your washin' or buy her a washin'-machine? Then she'd have time to do her own sewin'." "Work don't hurt a body," Mr. Getz maintained. "It's healthy. What's Tillie doin' this morning?"
Such misdemeanors were always plaintively reported by Mrs. Getz to Tillie's father, who, without fail, conscientiously applied what he considered the undoubted cure. In practising the strenuous economy prescribed by her husband, Mrs.
"I wouldn't do it to go such a muddy night like what this is," he ruefully declared to Miss Margaret, "if I didn't feel it was serious; Jake Getz wouldn't spend any hirin' a doctor, without it was some serious. I'm sorry I got to go." "Good-night, Sammy," said Miss Margaret. "Give Tillie my love; and if she is not able to come to school to-morrow, I shall go to see her."
That took cheek, ain't? fur that little girl to stand there and jaw Jake Getz and make him quit lickin' you! By gum, that minds me of sceneries I've saw a'ready in the theayter! They most gener'ly faints away in a swoond that way, too. Well, Tillie she come round all right, ain't? till a little while?" "Yes. But she was very pale and weak, poor child!"
"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?"
Word Of The Day