“Are you?”

“Yes.  Some of Mister’s folks from East Bethel.”

“And are they strangers to you?”

Mrs. Getz paused in her scraping of the fish to consider the question.

“If they’re strangers to us?  Och, no.  We knowed them this long time a’ready.  Us we’re well acquainted.  But to be sure they don’t live with us, so we say strangers is comin’.  You don’t talk like us; ain’t?”

“N—­not exactly.”

“I do think now (you must excuse me sayin’ so) but you do talk awful funny,” Mrs. Getz smiled feebly.

“I suppose I do,” Miss Margaret sympathetically replied.

Mr. Getz now came into the room, and Miss Margaret rose to greet him.

“I’m much obliged to meet you,” he said awkwardly as he shook hands with her.

He glanced at the clock on the mantel, then turned to speak to Tillie.

“Are yous home long a’ready?” he inquired.

“Not so very long,” Tillie answered with an apprehensive glance at the clock.

“You’re some late,” he said, with a threatening little nod as he drew up a chair in front of the teacher.

“It’s my fault,” Miss Margaret hastened to say, “I made the children wait to bring me out here.”

“Well,” conceded Mr. Getz, “then we’ll leave it go this time.”

Miss Margaret now bent her mind to the difficult task of persuading this stubborn Pennsylvania Dutchman to accept her views as to what was for the highest and best good of his daughter.  Eloquently she pointed out to him that Tillie being a child of unusual ability, it would be much better for her to have an education than to be forced to spend her days in farm-house drudgery.

But her point of view, being entirely novel, did not at all appeal to him.

“I never thought to leave her go to school after she was twelve.  That’s long enough fur a girl; a female don’t need much book-knowledge.  It don’t help her none to keep house fur her mister.”

“But she could become a teacher and then she could earn money,” Miss Margaret argued, knowing the force of this point with Mr. Getz.

“But look at all them years she’d have to spend learnin’ herself to be intelligent enough fur to be a teacher, when she might be helpin’ me and mom.”

“But she could help you by paying board here when she becomes the New Canaan teacher.”

“That’s so too,” granted Mr. Getz; and Margaret grew faintly hopeful.

“But,” he added, after a moment’s heavy weighing of the matter, “it would take too long to get her enough educated fur to be a teacher, and I’m one of them,” he maintained, “that holds a child is born to help the parent, and not contrarywise—­that the parent must do everything fur the child that way.”

“If you love your children, you must wish for their highest good,” she suggested, “and not trample on their best interests.”

“But they have the right to work for their parents,” he insisted.  “You needn’t plague me to leave Tillie stay in school, Teacher.  I ain’t leavin’ her!”