“I’ll risk your father’s wrath, Tillie.  You don’t suppose I’d let a small matter like that stand in the way of our friendship?”

“But father will not l—­let—­me spend time with you.  And if you come when he told you not to he would put you out of William Penn!”

“I’m coming, all the same, Tillie.”

“Father will blame me, if you do.”

“Can’t you take your own part, Tillie?” he gravely asked.  “No, no,” he hastily added, for he did not forget the talk he had overheard about the new caps, in which Mr. Getz had threatened personal violence to his daughter.  “I know you must not suffer for my sake.  But you cannot mean that we are not to meet at all after this?”

“Only at chance times,” faltered Tillie; “that is all.”

Very simply and somewhat constrainedly they said good-by the next morning, Fairchilds to go to his work at William Penn and Tillie to drive out with her Uncle Abe to meet her father’s displeasure.

XXI

“I’ll marry him to-morrow!”

Mr. Getz had plainly given Absalom to understand that he did not want him to sit up with Tillie, as he “wasn’t leaving her marry.”  Absalom had answered that he guessed Tillie would have something to say to that when she was “eighteen a’ready.”  And on the first Sunday evening after her return home he had boldly presented himself at the farm.

“That’s where you’ll get fooled, Absalom, fur she’s been raised to mind her pop!” Mr. Getz had responded.  “If she disobeyed to my word, I wouldn’t give her no aus styer.  I guess you wouldn’t marry a girl where wouldn’t bring you no aus styer!”

Absalom, who was frugal, had felt rather baffled at this threat.  Nevertheless, here he was again on Sunday evening at the farm to assure Tillie that he would stand by her, and that if she was not restored to membership in the meeting, he wouldn’t give himself up, either.

Mr. Getz dared not go to the length of forbidding Absalom his house, for that would have meant a family feud between all the Getzes and all the Puntzes of the county.  He could only insist that Tillie “dishearten him,” and that she dismiss him not later than ten o’clock.  To almost any other youth in the neighborhood, such opposition would have proved effectual.  But every new obstacle seemed only to increase Absalom’s determination to have what he had set out to get.

To-night he produced another book, which he said he had bought at the second-hand book-store in Lancaster.

“‘Cupid and Psyche,’” Tillie read the title.  “Oh, Absalom, thank you.  This is lovely.  It’s a story from Greek mythology—­I’ve been hearing some of these stories from the teacher”—­she checked herself, suddenly, at Absalom’s look of jealous suspicion.

“I’m wonderful glad you ain’t in there at the HOtel no more,” he said.  “I hadn’t no fair chancet, with Teacher right there on the grounds.”