“I don’t know.  If I see her pop, I ’ll tell him he better put a stop to such behaviors.”

Tillie stirred restlessly on her pillow.

“What was the subjeck of that there novel, Tillie?” the doctor asked.

“Its subjeck was ‘Iwanhoe,’” Mr. Getz answered.  “Yes, I chucked it right in the stove.”

“’Iwanhoe’!” exclaimed the doctor.  “Why, Elviny must of borrowed the loan of that off of Teacher—­I seen Teacher have it.”

Tillie turned pleading eyes upon his face, but he did not see her.

“Do you mean to say,” demanded Mr. Getz, “that Teacher lends novels to the scholars!”

“Och!” said the doctor, suddenly catching the frantic appeal of Tillie’s eyes, and answering it with ready invention, “what am I talkin’ about!  It was Elviny lent it to Aunty Em’s little Rebecca at the HOtel, and Teacher was tellin’ Rebecca she mustn’t read it, but give it back right aways to Elviny.”

“Well!” said Mr. Getz, “a teacher that would lend novels to the scholars wouldn’t stay long at William Penn if my wote could put her out!  And there ’s them on the Board that thinks just like what I think!”

“To be sure!” the doctor soothed him.  “To be sure!  Yes,” he romanced, “Rebecca she lent that book off of Elviny Dinkleberger, and Teacher she tole Rebecca to give it back.”

“I’ll speak somepin to Elviny’s pop, first time I see him, how Elviny’s lendin’ a novel to the scholars!” affirmed Mr. Getz.

“You needn’t trouble,” said the doctor, coolly.  “Elviny’s pop he give Elviny that there book last Christmas.  I don’t know what he’ll think, Jake, at your burnin’ it up.”

Tillie was gazing at the doctor, now, half in bewilderment, half in passionate gratitude.

“If Tillie did get smallpox,” Mrs. Getz here broke in, “would she mebbe have to be took to the pest-house?”

Tillie started, and her feverish eyes sought in the face of the doctor to know what dreadful place a “pest-house” might be.

“Whether she’d have to be took to the pest-house?” the doctor inquiringly repeated.  “Yes, if she took the smallpox.  But she ain’t takin’ it.  You needn’t worry.”

“Doctors don’t know near as much now as what they used to, still,” Mr. Getz affirmed.  “They didn’t have to have no such pest-houses when I was a boy.  Leastways, they didn’t have ’em.  And they didn’t never ketch such diseases like ’pendycitis and grip and them.”

“Do you mean to say, Jake Getz, that you pass it as your opinion us doctors don’t know more now than what they used to know thirty years ago, when you was a boy?”

“Of course they don’t,” was the dogmatic rejoinder.  “Nor nobody knows as much now as they did in ancient times a’ready.  I mean back in Bible times.”

“Do you mean to say,” hotly argued the doctor, “that they had automobiles in them days?”

“To be sure I do!  Automobiles and all the other lost sciences!”