“Hold your whiskers, Jake, or they’ll blow off!  You’re talkin’ through your hat!  Don’t be so dumm!  Teacher she gev me that there book because she passed me her opinion she don’t stand by novel-readin’.  She was goin’ to throw out that there book and I says I’d take it if she didn’t want it.  So then I left Tillie borrow the loan of it.”

“So that’s how you come by it, is it?” Mr. Getz eyed the doctor with suspicion.  “How did you come by that there ’Iwanhoe’?”

“That there I bought at the second-hand book-store in there at Lancaster one time.  I ain’t just so much fur books, but now and again I like to buy one too, when I see ’em cheap.”

“Well, here!” Mr. Getz tossed the book into tie buggy.  “Take your old ‘Pump-eye.’  And clear out.  If I can’t make you stop tryin’ to spoil my child fur me, I can anyways learn her what she’ll get oncet, if she don’t mind!”

Again his hand grasped Tillie’s shoulder as he turned her about to take her into the house.

“You better watch out, Jake Getz, or you ’ll have another doctor’s bill to pay!” the doctor warningly called after him.  “That girl of yourn ain’t strong enough to stand your rough handlin’, and you’ll find it out some day—­to your regret!  You’d better go round back and let off your feelin’s choppin’ wood fur missus, stead of hittin’ that little girl, you big dopple!”

Mr. Getz stalked on without deigning to reply, thrusting Tillie ahead of him.  The doctor jumped into his buggy and drove off.

His warning, however, was not wholly lost upon the father.  Tillie’s recent illness had awakened remorse for the severe punishment he had given her on the eve of it; and it had also touched his purse; and so, though she did not escape punishment for this second and, therefore, aggravated offense, it was meted out in stinted measure.  And indeed, in her relief and thankfulness at again saving Miss Margaret, the child scarcely felt the few light blows which, in order that parental authority be maintained, her father forced himself to inflict upon her.

In spite of these mishaps, however, Tillie continued to devour all the books she could lay hold of and to run perilous risks for the sake of the delight she found in them.

Miss Margaret stood to her for an image of every heroine of whom she read in prose or verse, and for the realization of all the romantic day-dreams in which, as an escape from the joyless and sordid life of her home, she was learning to live and move and have her being.

Therefore it came to her as a heavy blow indeed when, just after the Christmas holidays, her father announced to her on the first morning of the reopening of school, “You best make good use of your time from now on, Tillie, fur next spring I’m takin’ you out of school.”

Tillie’s face turned white, and her heart thumped in her breast so that she could not speak.

“You’re comin’ twelve year old,” her father continued, “and you’re enough educated, now, to do you.  Me and mom needs you at home.”