“Fur settin’ and doin’ nothin’ but hearin’ off spellin’ and readin’ and whatever, it’s too much!  Pop says he’s goin’ to ast your pop and the rest of the Board if they hadn’t ought to ast this here Harvard gradyate to take a couple dollars less, seein’ he ain’t no Millersville Normal.”

They had by this time reached the farm, and Tillie, not very warmly, asked Absalom whether he would “come in and sit awhile.”  She almost sighed audibly as he eagerly consented.

When he had left at twelve o’clock that night, she softly climbed the stairs to her room, careful not to disturb the sleeping household.  Tillie wondered why it was that every girl of her acquaintance exulted in being asked to keep company with a gentleman friend.  She had found “sitting up” a more fatiguing task than even the dreaded Monday’s washing which would confront her on the morrow.

“Seein’ it’s the first time me and you set up together, I mebbe better not stay just so late,” Absalom had explained when, after three hours’ courting, he had reluctantly risen to take his leave, under the firm conviction, as Tillie plainly saw, that she felt as sorry to have him go as evidently he was to part from her!

“How late,” thought Tillie, “will he stay the second time he sits up with me?  And what,” she wondered, “do other girls see in it?”

The following Sunday night, Absalom came again, and this time he stayed until one o’clock, with the result that on the following Monday morning Tillie overslept herself and was one hour late in starting the washing.

It was that evening, after supper, while Mrs. Getz was helping her husband make his toilet for a meeting of the School Board—­at which the application of that suspicious character, the Harvard graduate, was to be considered—­that the husband and wife discussed these significant Sunday night visits.  Mrs. Getz opened up the subject while she performed the wifely office of washing her husband’s neck, his increasing bulk making that duty a rather difficult one for him.  Standing over him as he sat in a chair in the kitchen, holding on his knees a tin basin full of soapy water, she scrubbed his fat, sunburned neck with all the vigor and enthusiasm that she would have applied to the cleaning of the kitchen porch or the scouring of an iron skillet.

A custom prevailed in the county of leaving one’s parlor plainly furnished, or entirely empty, until the eldest daughter should come of age; it was then fitted up in style, as a place to which she and her “regular friend” could retire from the eyes of the girl’s folks of a Sunday night to do their “setting up.”  The occasion of a girl’s “furnishing” was a notable one, usually celebrated by a party; and it was this fact that led her stepmother to remark presently: 

“Say, pop, are you furnishin’ fur Tillie, now she’s comin’ eighteen years old?”

“I ain’t thought about it,” Mr. Getz answered shortly.  “That front room’s furnished good enough a’ready.  No—­I ain’t spendin’ any!”