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.