“Because she’s been bothered into a sickness with this here thing a’ready, and it ’s time it stopped now!”

“It was you started it, leavin’ her lend the book off of you!”

“That’s why I feel fur sparin’ her some more trouble, seein’ I was the instrument in the hands of Providence fur gettin’ her into all this here mess.  See?”

“I can’t be sure when to know if you’re lyin’ or not,” said Mr. Getz helplessly.

“Mebbe you can’t, Jake.  Sometimes I’m swangfid if I’m sure, still, myself.  But there’s one thing you kin be cocksure of—­and that’s a big doctor-bill unlest you do what I sayed.”

“Now that I know who she lent the book off of there ain’t nothin’ to bother her about,” sullenly granted Mr. Getz.  “And as fur punishment—­she’s had punishment a-plenty, I guess, in her bein’ so sick.”

“All right,” the doctor said magnanimously.  “There’s one thing I ’ll give you, Jake:  you’re a man of your word, if you are a Dutch hog!”

“A—­whatever?” Mr. Getz angrily demanded.

“And I don’t see,” the doctor complacently continued, rising and pulling his hat down to his eyebrows, preparatory to leaving, “where Tillie gets her fibbin’ from.  Certainly not from her pop.”

“I don’t mind her ever tellin’ me no lie before.”

“Och, Jake, you drive your children to lie to you, the way you bring ’em up to be afraid of you.  They got to lie, now and again, to a feller like you!  Well, well,” he soothingly added as he saw the black look in the father’s face at the airing of such views in the presence of his children, “never mind, Jake, it ’s all in the day’s work!”

He turned for a parting glance at Tillie.  “She ’s better.  She ’ll be well till a day or two, now, and back to school—­if she’s kep’ quiet, and her mind ain’t bothered any.  Now, good-by to yous.”

VII

“The last day of pump-eye”

For a long time after her unhappy experiences with “Ivanhoe” Tillie did not again venture to transgress against her father’s prohibition of novels.  But her fear of the family strap, although great, did not equal the keenness of her mental hunger, and was not sufficient, therefore, to put a permanent check upon her secret midnight reading, though it did lead her to take every precaution against detection.  Miss Margaret continued to lend her books and magazines from time to time, and in spite of the child’s reluctance to risk involving the teacher in trouble with the School Board through her father, she accepted them.  And so during all this winter, through her love for books and her passionate devotion to her teacher, the little girl reveled in feasts of fancy and emotion and this term at school was the first season of real happiness her young life had ever known.

Once on her return from school the weight of a heavy volume had proved too great a strain on her worn and thin undergarment during the long walk home; the skirt had torn away from the band, and as she entered the kitchen, her stepmother discovered the book.  Tillie pleaded with her not to tell her father, and perhaps she might have succeeded in gaining a promise of secrecy had it not happened that just at the critical moment her father walked into the kitchen.