“Yes, sir.”

A vague idea of something unusual in the light of Tillie’s eyes arrested him.  He glanced suspiciously at the doctor, who was speaking in a low tone to the teacher.

“Look-ahere, Tillie.  If Teacher there wants to keep comp’ny with one of yous girls, it ain’t to be you, mind.  He ain’t to be makin’ up to you!  I don’t want you to waste your time that there way.”

Apprehensively, Tillie darted a sidelong glance at the teacher to see if he had heard—­for though no tender sentiment was associated in her mind with the idea of “keeping company,” yet intuitively she felt the unseemliness of her father’s warning and its absurdity in the eyes of such as this stranger.

Mr. Fairchilds was leaning against the table, his arms folded, his lips compressed and his face flushed.  She was sure that he had overheard her father.  Was he angry, or—­almost worse—­did that compressed mouth mean concealed amusement?

“Well, now, I must be goin’,” said Mr. Getz.  “Be a good girl, mind.  Och, I ’most forgot to tell you.  Me and your mom’s conceited we’d drive up to Puntz’s Sunday afternoon after the dinner work’s through a’ready.  And if Aunty Em don’t want you partic’lar, you’re to come home and mind the childern, do you hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, don’t forget.  Well, good-by, then.”

Again he bent to kiss her, and Tillie felt Fairchilds’s eyes upon her, as unresponsively she submitted to the caress.

“Good night to you, Teacher.”  Mr. Getz gruffly raised his voice to speak to the pair by the table.  “And to you, Doc.”

They answered him and he went away.  When Tillie slowly turned back to the table, the teacher hastily took his leave and moved away to the stairway at the other end of the room.  As she took up her sewing, she heard him mount the steps and presently close and lock the door of his room at the head of the stairs.

“He was, now, wonderful surprised, Tillie,” the doctor confided to her, “when I tole him Jake Getz was your pop.  He don’t think your pop takes after you any.  I says to him, ’Tillie’s pop, there, bein’ one of your bosses, you better make up to Tillie,’ I says, and he sayed, ’You don’t mean to tell me that that Mr. Getz of the School Board is the father of this girl?’ ‘That’s what,’ I says.  ‘He’s that much her father,’ I says, ’that you’d better keep on the right side of him by makin’ up to Tillie,’ I says, just to plague him.  And just then your pop up and sayed if Teacher wanted to keep comp’ny he must pick out ’Manda or Rebecca—­and I seen Teacher wanted to laugh, but his manners wouldn’t leave him.  He certainly has, now, a lot of manners, ain’t, Tillie?”

Tillie’s head was bent over her sewing and she did not answer.

The doctor yawned, stretched himself, and guessed he would step into the bar-room.

Tillie bent over her sewing for a long time after she was left alone.  The music of the young man’s grave voice as he had spoken her name and called her “Miss Matilda” sang in her brain.  The fascination of his smile as he had looked down into her eyes, and the charm of his chivalrous courtesy, so novel to her experience, haunted and intoxicated her.  And tonight, Tillie felt her soul flooded with a life and light so new and strange that she trembled as before a miracle.