Tillie, a Mennonite Maid Part 32

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 embarra.s.sment (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 embarra.s.sing in the mere statement of any fact of natural history.

"Here comes Doc now!" cried Rebecca, at the opening of the kitchen door. "h.e.l.lo, 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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 superst.i.tion. 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 G.o.d--we would think the folks who believed these things were ignorant and superst.i.tious. And because they happened so long ago, and are in the Book which we are told came from G.o.d, 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.

She looked at him doubtfully. "Are you joking?"

"Indeed, no! I couldn't give you a better rule."

"There's another thing I wish you would tell me, please," she said, her eyes downcast.

"Well?"

"I can't call you 'Mr.' Fairchilds, because such complimentary speech is forbidden to us New Mennonites. It would come natural to me to call you 'Teacher,' but you would think that what you call 'provincial.'"

"But you say 'Miss' Margaret."

"I could not get out of the way of it, because I had called her that so many years before I gave myself up. That makes it seem different. But you--what must I call you?"