It never occurred to Tillie to question or discuss a decision of her father’s.  When he spoke it was a finality and one might as well rebel at the falling of the snow or rain.  Tillie’s woe was utterly hopeless.

Her dreary, drooping aspect in the next few days was noticed by Miss Margaret.

“Pop’s takin’ me out of school next spring,” she heart-brokenly said when questioned.  “And when I can’t see you every day, Miss Margaret, I won’t feel for nothin’ no more.  And I thought to get more educated than what I am yet.  I thought to go to school till I was anyways fourteen.”

So keenly did Miss Margaret feel the outrage and wrong of Tillie’s arrested education, when her father could well afford to keep her in school until she was grown, if he would; so stirred was her warm Southern blood at the thought of the fate to which poor Tillie seemed doomed—­the fate of a household drudge with not a moment’s leisure from sunrise to night for a thought above the grubbing existence of a domestic beast of burden (thus it all looked to this woman from Kentucky), that she determined, cost what it might, to go herself to appeal to Mr. Getz.

“He will have me ‘chased off of William Penn,’” she ruefully told herself.  “And the loss just now of my munificent salary of thirty-five dollars a month would be inconvenient.  ‘The Doc’ said he would ‘stand by’ me.  But that might be more inconvenient still!” she thought, with a little shudder.  “I suppose this is an impolitic step for me to take.  But policy ‘be blowed,’ as the doctor would say!  What are we in this world for but to help one another?  I must try to help little Tillie—­bless her!”

So the following Monday afternoon after school, found Miss Margaret, in a not very complacent or confident frame of mind, walking with Tillie and her younger brother and sister out over the snow-covered road to the Getz farm to face the redoubtable head of the family.

VIII

MISS MARGARET’S ERRAND

It was half-past four o’clock when they reached the farm-house, and they found the weary, dreary mother of the family cleaning fish at the kitchen sink, one baby pulling at her skirts, another sprawling on the floor at her feet.

Miss Margaret inquired whether she might see Mr. Getz.

“If you kin?  Yes, I guess,” Mrs. Getz dully responded.  “Sammy, you go to the barn and tell pop Teacher’s here and wants to speak somepin to him.  Mister’s out back,” she explained to Miss Margaret, “choppin’ wood.”

Sammy departed, and Miss Margaret sat down in the chair which Tillie brought to her.  Mrs. Getz went on with her work at the sink, while Tillie set to work at once on a crock of potatoes waiting to be pared.

“You are getting supper very early, aren’t you?’ Miss Margaret asked, with a friendly attempt to make conversation.

“No, we’re some late.  And I don’t get it ready yet, I just start it.  We’re getting strangers fur supper.”