XXVI

TILLIE’S LAST FIGHT

“We are now ready to wote fer the teacher fer William Penn fer the spring term,” announced the president of the Board, when all the preliminary business of the meeting had been disposed of; “and before we perceed to that dooty, we will be glad to hear any remarks.”

The members looked at Mr. Getz, and he promptly rose to his feet to make the speech which all were expecting from him—­the speech which was to sum up the reasons why his daughter should not be reelected for another term to William Penn.  As all these reasons had been expounded many times over in the past few months, to each individual school director, Mr. Getz’s statements to-night were to be merely a more forcible repetition of his previous arguments.

But scarcely had he cleared his throat to begin, when there was a knock on the door; it opened, and, to their amazement, Tillie walked into the room.  Her eyes sparkling, her face flushed, her head erect, she came straight across the room to the table about which the six educational potentates were gathered.

That she had come to plead her own cause, to beg to be retained at her post, was obviously the object of this intrusion upon the sacred privacy of their weighty proceedings.

Had that, in very truth, been her purpose in coming to them, she would have found little encouragement in the countenances before her.  Every one of them seemed to stiffen into grim disapproval of her unfilial act in thus publicly opposing her parent.

But there was something in the girl’s presence as she stood before them, some potent spell in her fresh girlish beauty, and in the dauntless spirit which shone in her eyes, that checked the words of stern reproof as they sprang to the lips of her judges.

“John Kettering,”—­her clear, soft voice addressed the Amish president of the Board, adhering, in her use of his first name, to the mode of address of all the “plain” sects of the county,—­“have I your permission to speak to the Board?”

“It wouldn’t be no use.”  The president frowned and shook his head.  “The wotes of this here Board can’t be influenced.  There’s no use your wastin’ any talk on us.  We’re here to do our dooty by the risin’ generation.”  Mr. Kettering, in his character of educator, was very fond of talking about “the rising generation.”  “And,” he added, “what’s right’s right.”

“As your teacher at William Penn, I have a statement to make to the Board,” Tillie quietly persisted.  “It will take me but a minute.  I am not here to try to influence the vote you are about to take.”

“If you ain’t here to influence our wotes, what are you here fer?”

“That’s what I ask your permission to tell the Board.”

“Well,” John Kettering reluctantly conceded, “I’ll give you two minutes, then.  Go on.  But you needn’t try to get us to wote any way but the way our conscience leads us to.”