“But it’s the Word of Gawd I go by, pop, not by the weak brethren.”

“Well, you’ll go by your pop’s word and not join to them New Mennonites!  Now I don’t want to hear no more!”

“Won’t you buy me the plain garb, pop?”

“Buy you the plain garb!  Now look here, Tillie.  If ever you ast me again to leave you join to anything but the Evangelicals, or speak somepin to me about buyin’ you the plain garb, I’m usin’ the strap.  Do you hear me?”

“Pop,” said Tillie, solemnly, her face very white, “I’ll always obey to you where I can—­where I think it’s right to.  But if you won’t buy me the plain dress and cap, Aunty Em Wackernagel’s going to.  She says she never knew what happiness it was to be had in this life till she gave herself up and dressed plain and loosed herself from all worldly things.  And I feel just like her.”

“All right—­just you come wearin’ them Mennonite costumes ’round me oncet!  I’ll burn ’em up like what I burned up them novels where you lent off of your teacher!  And I’ll punish you so’s you won’t try it a second time to do what I tell you you haven’t the dare to do!”

The color flowed back into Tillie’s white face as he spoke.  She was crimson now as she rose from the porch step and turned away from him to go into the house.

Jake Getz realized, as with a sort of dull wonder his eyes followed her, that there was a something in his daughter’s face this day, and in the bearing of her young frame as she walked before him, which he was not wont to see, which he did not understand, and with which he felt he could not cope.  The vague sense of uneasiness which it gave him strengthened his resolve to crush, with a strong hand, this budding insubordination.

Two uneventful weeks passed by, during which Tillie’s quiet and dutiful demeanor almost disarmed her father’s threatening watchfulness of her; so that when, one Sunday afternoon, at four o’clock, she returned from a walk to her Aunty Em Wackernagel’s, clad in the meek garb of the New Mennonites, his amazement at her intrepidity was even greater than his anger.

The younger children, in high glee at what to them was a most comical transformation in their elder sister, danced around her with shrieks of laughter, crying out at the funny white cap which she wore. and the prim little three-cornered cape falling over her b’osom, designed modestly to cover the vanity of woman’s alluring form.

Mrs. Getz, mechanically moving about the kitchen to get the supper, paused in her work only long enough to remark with stupid astonishment, “Did you, now, get religion, Tillie?”

“Yes, ma’am.  I’ve gave myself up.”

“Where did you come by the plain dress?”

“Aunty Em bought it for me and helped me make it.”

Her father had followed her in from the porch and now came up to her as she stood in the middle of the kitchen.  The children scattered at his approach.