“You don’t look so hearty,” her father said, as she quietly hung up her shawl and hood in the kitchen cupboard.  “A body’d think you’d pick up and get fat, now you don’t have to work nothin’, except mornings and evenings.”

“There is no harder work in the world, father, than teaching—­even when you like it.”

“It ain’t no work,” he impatiently retorted, “to set and hear off lessons.”

Tillie did not dispute the point, as she tied a gingham apron over her dress.

Her father was sitting in a corner of the room, shelling corn, with Sammy and Sally at his side helping him.  He stopped short in his work and glanced at Tillie in surprise, as she immediately set about assisting her mother in setting the supper-table.

“You was paid to-day, wasn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, why don’t you gimme the money, then?  Where have you got it?”

Tillie drew a roll of bills from her pocket and came up to him.

He held out his hand.  “You know, Tillie, I tole you I ain’t givin’ you none of your wages this month, fur sassin’ me like what you done.  But next month, if you’re good-behaved till then, I’ll give you mebbe five dollars.  Gimme here,” he said, reaching for the money across the heads of the children in front of him.

But she did not obey.  She looked at him steadily as she stood before him, and spoke deliberately, though every nerve in her body was jumping.

“Aunty Em charged the teacher fifteen dollars a month for board.  That included his washing and ironing.  I really earn my board by the work I do here Saturdays and Sundays, and in the mornings and evenings before and after school.  But I will pay you twelve dollars a month for my board.”

She laid on his palm two five-dollar bills and two ones, and calmly walked back to the table.

Getz sat as one suddenly turned to stone.  Sammy and Sally dropped their corn-cobs into their laps and stared in frightened wonder.  Mrs. Getz stopped cutting the bread and gazed stupidly from her husband to her stepdaughter.  Tillie alone went on with her work, no sign in her white, still face of the passion of terror in her heart at her own unspeakable boldness.

Suddenly two resounding slaps on the ears of Sammy and Sally, followed by their sharp screams of pain and fright, broke the tense stillness.

“Who tole you to stop workin’, heh?” demanded their father, fiercely.  “Leave me see you at it, do you hear?  You stop another time to gape around and I ‘ll lick you good!  Stop your bawlin’ now, this minute!”

He rose from his chair and strode over to the table.  Seizing Tillie by the shoulder, he drew her in froet of him.

“Gimme every dollar of them forty!”

“I have given you all I have.”

“Where are you got the others hid?”

“I have deposited my money in a Lancaster bank.”

Jacob Getz’s face turned apoplectic with rage.