“But, Doc,” Tillie pleaded with him in an agony of mind, “you won’t let them take my school from me, will you?  You’ll make them let me keep it?”

The doctor gave a little laugh.  “By golly, Tillie, I ain’t the President of America!  You think because I got you through oncet or twicet, I kin do ANYthing with them directers, still!  Well, a body can’t always get ahead of a set of stubborn-headed Dutchmen—­and with Nathaniel Puntz so wonderful thick in with your pop to work ag’in’ you, because you won’t have that dumm Absalom of hisn!”

“What shall I do?” Tillie cried.  “I can never, never go back to my old life again—­that hopeless, dreary drudgery on the farm!  I can’t, indeed I can’t!  I won’t go back.  What shall I do?”

“Look-ahere, Tillie!” the doctor spoke soothingly, “I’ll do what I otherwise kin to help you.  I’ll do, some back-talkin’ myself to them directers.  But you see,” he said in a troubled tone, “none of them directers happens to owe me no doctor-bill just now, and that makes it a little harder to persuade ’em to see my view of the case.  Now if only some of their wives would up and get sick for ’em and I could run ’em up a bill!  But,” he concluded, shaking his head in discouragement, “it’s a wonderful healthy season—­ wonderful healthy!”

In the two months that followed, the doctor worked hard to counteract Mr. Getz’s influence with the Board.  Tillie, too, missed no least opportunity to plead her cause with them, not only by direct argument, but by the indirect means of doing her best possible work in her school.

But both she and the doctor realized, as the weeks moved on, that they were working in vain; for Mr. Getz, in his statements to the directors, had appealed to some of their most deep-rooted prejudices.  Tillie’s filial insubordination, her “high-mindedness,” her distaste for domestic work, so strong that she refused even to live under her father’s roof—­all these things made her unfit to be an instructor and guide to their young children.  She would imbue the “rising generation” with her worldly and wrong-headed ideas.

Had Tillie remained “plain,” she would no doubt have had the championship of the two New Mennonite members of the Board.  But her apostasy had lost her even that defense, for she no longer wore her nun-like garb.  After her suspension from meeting and her election to William Penn, she had gradually drifted into the conviction that colors other than gray, black, or brown were probably pleasing to the Creator, and that what really mattered was not what she wore, but what she was.  It was without any violent struggles or throes of anguish that, in this revolution of her faith, she quite naturally fell away from the creed which once had held her such a devotee.  When she presently appeared in the vain and ungodly habiliments of “the world’s people,” the brethren gave her up in despair and excommunicated her.