“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?”

“I don’t see what’s left—­unless you call me ’Say’!”

“I must have something to call you,” she pleaded.  “Would you mind if I called you by your Christian name?”

“I should like nothing better.”

He drew forward a volume of Mrs. Browning’s poems which lay among his books on the table, opened it at the fly-leaf, and pointed to his name.

“’Walter’?” read Tillie.  “But I thought—­”

“It was Pestalozzi?  That was only my little joke.  My name’s Walter.”

On the approach of Sunday, Fairchilds questioned her one evening about Absalom.

“Will that lad be taking up your whole Sunday evening again?” he demanded.

She told him, then, why she suffered Absalom’s unwelcome attentions.  It was in order that she might use her influence over him to keep the teacher in his place.

“But I can’t permit such a thing!” he vehemently protested.  “Tillie, I am touched by your kindness and self-sacrifice!  But, dear child, I trust I am man enough to hold my own here without your suffering for me!  You must not do it.”

“You don’t know Nathaniel Puntz!” She shook her head.  “Absalom will never forgive you, and, at a word from him, his father would never rest until he had got rid of you.  You see, none of the directors like you—­they don’t understand you—­they say you are ‘too tony.’  And then your methods of teaching—­they aren’t like those of the Millersville Normal teachers we’ve had, and therefore are unsound!  I discovered last week, when I was out home, that my father is very much opposed to you.  They all felt just so to Miss Margaret.”

“I see.  Nevertheless, you shall not bear my burdens.  And don’t you see it’s not just to poor Absalom?  You can’t marry him, so you ought not to encourage him.”

“’If I refused to le-let Absalom come, you would not remain a month at New Canaan,” was her answer.

“But it isn’t a matter of life and death to me to stay at New Canaan!  I need not starve if I lose my position here.  There are better places.”

Tillie gazed down upon the chenille table-cover, and did not speak.  She could not tell him that it did seem to her a matter of life and death to have him stay.