“Who took it to Lancaster fur you?”

“I sent it.”

“What fur bank?”

“I prefer not to tell you that.”

“You PERFER!  I’ll learn you PERFER!  Who took it in fur you—­and what fur bank?  Answer to me!”

“Father, the money is mine.”

“It’s no such thing!  You ain’t but seventeen.  And I don’t care if you’re eighteen or even twenty-one!  You’re my child and you ’ll obey to me and do what I tell you!”

“Father, I will not submit to your robbing me, You can’t force me to give you my earnings.  If you could, I wouldn’t teach at all!”

“You won’t submit!  And I darsent rob you!” he spluttered.  “Don’t you know I can collect your wages off the secretary of the Board myself?”

“Before next pay-day I shall be eighteen.  Then you can’t legally do that.  If you could, I would resign.  Then you wouldn’t even get your twelve dollars a month for my board.  That’s four dollars more than I can earn living out at Aunty Em’s.”

Beside himself with his fury, Getz drew her a few steps to the closet where his strap hung, and jerking it from its nail, he swung out his arm.

But Tillie, with a strength born of a sudden fury almost matching his own, and feeling in her awakened womanhood a new sense of outrage and ignominy in such treatment, wrenched herself free, sprang to the middle of the room, and faced him with blazing eyes.

“Dare to touch me—­ever again so long as you live!—­and I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!”

Such madness of speech, to ears accustomed to the carefully tempered converse of Mennonites, Amish, and Dunkards, was in itself a wickedness almost as great as the deed threatened.  The family, from the father down to six-year-old Zephaniah, trembled to hear the awful words.

“Ever dare to touch me again so long as we both live—­and I’ll stab you dead!”

Mrs. Getz shrieked.  Sally and Sammy clung to each other whimpering in terror, and the younger children about the room took up the chorus.

“Tillie!” gasped her father.

The girl tottered, her eyes suddenly rolled back in her head, she stretched out her hands, and fell over on the floor.  Once more Tillie had fainted.

XXV

GETZ “LEARNS” TILLIE

As a drowning man clings to whatever comes in his way, Tillie, in these weary days of heart-ache and yearning, turned with new intensity of feeling to Miss Margaret, who had never failed her, and their interchange of letters became more frequent.

Her father did not easily give up the struggle with her for the possession of her salary.  Finding that he could not legally collect it himself from the treasurer of the Board, he accused his brother-in-law, Abe Wackernagel, of having taken it to town for her; and when Abe denied the charge, with the assurance, however, that he “Would do that much for Tillie any day he got the chancet,” Mr. Getz next taxed the doctor, who, of course, without the least scruple, denied all knowledge of Tillie’s monetary affairs.