“Do you think you have a right to bring children into the world only to crush everything in them that is worth while?” Margaret dared to say to him, her face flushed, her eyes bright with the intensity of her feelings.

“That’s all blamed foolishness!” Jake Getz affirmed.

“Do you think that your daughter, when she is grown and realizes all that she has lost, will ’rise up and call you blessed’?” she persisted.

“Do I think?  Well, what I think is that it’s a good bit more particular that till she’s growed she’s been learnt to work and serve them that raised her.  And what I think is that a person ain’t fit to be a teacher of the young that sides along with the childern ag’in’ their parents.”

Miss Margaret felt that it was time she took her leave.

“Look-ahere oncet, Teacher!” Mr. Getz suddenly said, fixing on her a suspicious and searching look, “do you uphold to novel-readin’?”

Miss Margaret hesitated perceptibly.  She must shield Tillie even more than herself.  “What a question to ask of the teacher at William Penn!” she gravely answered.

“I know it ain’t such a wery polite question,” returned Mr. Getz, half apologetically.  “But the way you side along with childern ag’in’ their parents suspicions me that the Doc was lyin’ when he sayed them novel-books was hisn.  Now was they hisn or was they yourn?”

Miss Margaret rose with a look and air of injury. “’Mr, Getz, no one ever before asked me such questions.  Indeed,” she said, in a tone of virtuous primness, “I can’t answer such questions.”

“All the same,” sullenly asserted Mr. Getz, “I wouldn’t put it a-past you after the way you passed your opinion to me this after!”

“I must be going,” returned Miss Margaret with dignity.

Mrs. Getz came forward from the stove with a look and manner of apology for her husband’s rudeness to the visitor.

“What’s your hurry?  Can’t you stay and eat along?  We’re not anyways tired of you.”

“Thank you.  But they will be waiting for me at the hotel,” said Miss Margaret gently.

Tillie, a bit frightened, also hovered near, her wistful little face pale.  Miss Margaret drew her to her and held her at her side, as she looked up into the face of Mr. Getz.

“I am very, very sorry, Mr. Getz, that my visit has proved so fruitless.  You don’t realize what a mistake you are making.”

“That ain’t the way a teacher had ought to talk before a scholar to its parent!” indignantly retorted Mr. Getz.  “And I’m pretty near sure it was all the time you where lent them Books to Tillie —­corruptin’ the young!  I can tell you right now, I ain’t votin’ fur you at next election!  And the way I wote is the way two other members always wotes still—­and so you’ll lose your job at William Penn!  That’s what you get fur tryin’ to interfere between a parent and a scholar!  I hope it’ll learn you!”