His wife, Tillie’s stepmother, was as submissive to his authority as were her five children and Tillie.  Apathetic, anemic, overworked, she yet never dreamed of considering herself or her children abused, accepting her lot as the natural one of woman, who was created to be a child-bearer, and to keep man well fed and comfortable.  The only variation from the deadly monotony of her mechanical and unceasing labor was found in her habit of irritability with her stepchild.  She considered Tillie “a dopple” (a stupid, awkward person); for though usually a wonderful little household worker, Tillie, when very much tired out, was apt to drop dishes; and absent-mindedly she would put her sunbonnet instead of the bread into the oven, or pour molasses instead of batter on the griddle.  Such misdemeanors were always plaintively reported by Mrs. Getz to Tillie’s father, who, without fail, conscientiously applied what he considered the undoubted cure.

In practising the strenuous economy prescribed by her husband, Mrs. Getz had to manoeuver very skilfully to keep her children decently clothed, and Tillie in this matter was a great help to her; for the little girl possessed a precocious skill in combining a pile of patches into a passably decent dress or coat for one of her little brothers or sisters.  Nevertheless, it was invariably Tillie who was slighted in the small expenditures that were made each year for the family clothing.  The child had always really preferred that the others should have “new things” rather than herself—­until Miss Margaret came; and now, before Miss Margaret’s daintiness, she felt ashamed of her own shabby appearance and longed unspeakably for fresh, pretty clothes.  Tillie knew perfectly well that her father had plenty of money to buy them for her if he would.  But she never thought of asking him or her stepmother for anything more than what they saw fit to give her.

The Getz family was a perfectly familiar type among the German farming class of southeastern Pennsylvania.  Jacob Getz, though spoken of in tha neighborhood as being “wonderful near,” which means very penurious, and considered by the more gentle-minded Amish and Mennonites of the township to be “overly strict” with his family and “too ready with the strap still,” was nevertheless highly respected as one who worked hard and was prosperous, lived economically, honestly, and in the fear of the Lord, and was “laying by.”

The Getz farm was typical of the better sort to be found in that county.  A neat walk, bordered by clam shells, led from a wooden gate to the porch of a rather large, and severely plain frame house, facing the road.  Every shutter on the front and sides of the building was tightly closed, and there was no sign of life about the place.  A stranger, ignorant of the Pennsylvania Dutch custom of living in the kitchen and shutting off the “best rooms,”—­to be used in their mustiness and stiff unhomelikeness on Sunday only,—­would have thought the house temporarily empty.  It was forbiddingly and uncompromisingly spick-and-span.