“Absalom!” Tillie flashed her beautiful eyes upon him.  “You are unworthy to mention his name to me!  Don’t dare to speak to me of him—­or I shall leave you and go up-stairs right away!”

Absalom sullenly subsided.

When, later, he left her, she saw that her firm refusal to marry him had in no wise baffled him.

This impression was confirmed when on the next Sunday night, in spite of her prohibition, he again presented himself.

Tillie was mortally weary that night.  Her letter had not come, and her nervous waiting, together with the strain of her unwonted work of teaching, had told on her endurance.  So poor Absalom’s reception at her hands was even colder than her father’s greeting at the kitchen door; for since Tillie’s election to William Penn, Mr. Getz was more opposed than ever to her marriage, and he did not at all relish the young man’s persistency in coming to see her in the face of his own repeated warning.

“Tillie,” Absalom began when they were alone together after the family had gone to bed, “I thought it over oncet, and I come to say I’d ruther have you ‘round, even if you didn’t do nothin’ but set and knit mottos and play the organ, than any other woman where could do all my housework fur me.  I’ll hire fur you, Tillie—­and you can just set and enjoy yourself musin’, like what Doc says book-learnt people likes to do.”

Tillie’s eyes rested on him with a softer and a kindlier light in them than she had ever shown him before; for such a magnanimous offer as this, she thought, could spring only from the fact that Absalom was really deeply in love, and she was not a little touched.

She contemplated him earnestly as he sat before her, looking so utterly unnatural in his Sunday clothes.  A feeling of compassion for him began to steal into her heart.

“If I am not careful,” she thought in consternation, “I shall be saying, ‘Yes,’ out of pity.”

But a doubt quickly crept into her heart.  Was it really that he loved her so very much, or was it that his obstinacy was stronger than his prudence, and that if he could not get her as he wanted her,—­as his housekeeper and the mother of numberless children,—­ he would take her on her own conditions?  Only so he got her—­that was the point.  He had made up his mind to have her—­it must be accomplished.

“Absalom,” she said, “I am not going to let you waste any more of your time.  You must never come to see me again after to-night.  I won’t ever marry you, and I won’t let you go on like this, with your false hope.  If you come again, I won’t see you.  I’ll go up-stairs!”

One would have thought that this had no uncertain ring.  But again Tillie knew, when Absalom left her, that his resolution not only was not shaken,—­it was not even jarred.

The weeks moved on, and the longed-for letter did not come.  Tillie tried to gather courage to question the doctor as to whether Fairchilds had made any arrangement with him for the delivery of a letter to her.  But an instinct of maidenly reserve and pride which, she could not conquer kept her lips closed on the subject.