A grass-plot, ornamented with a circular flower-bed, extended a short distance on either side of the house.  But not too much land was put to such unproductive use; and the small lawn was closely bordered by a corn-field on the one side and on the other by an apple orchard.  Beyond stretched the tobacco—­and wheat-fields, and behind the house were the vegetable garden and the barn-yard.

Arrived at home by half-past three, Tillie hid her “Ivanhoe” under the pillow of her bed when she went up-stairs to change her faded calico school dress for the yet older garment she wore at her work.

If she had not been obliged to change her dress, she would have been puzzled to know how to hide her book, for she could not, without creating suspicion, have gone up-stairs in the daytime.  In New Canaan one never went up-stairs during the day, except at the rare times when obliged to change one’s clothes.  Every one washed at the pump and used the one family roller-towel hanging on the porch.  Miss Margaret, ever since her arrival in the neighborhood, had been the subject of wide-spread remark and even suspicion, because she “washed up-stairs” and even sat up-stairs!—­in her bedroom!  It was an unheard-of proceeding in New Canaan.

Tillie helped her father in the celery-beds until dark; then, weary, but excited at the prospect of her book, she went in from the fields and up-stairs to the little low-roofed bed-chamber which she shared with her two half-sisters.  They were already in bed and asleep, as was their mother in the room across the hall, for every one went to bed at sundown in Canaan Township, and got up at sunrise.

Tillie was in bed in a few minutes, rejoicing in the feeling of the book under her pillow.  Not yet dared she venture to light a candle and read it—­not until she should hear her father’s heavy snoring in the room across the hall.

The candles which she used for this surreptitious reading of Sunday-school “li-bries” and any other chance literature which fell in her way, were procured with money paid to her by Miss Margaret for helping her to clean the school-room on Friday afternoons after school.  Tillie would have been happy to help her for the mere joy of being with her, but Miss Margaret insisted upon paying her ten cents for each such service.

The little girl was obliged to resort to a deep-laid plot in order to do this work for the teacher.  It had been her father’s custom—­ ever since, at the age of five, she had begun to go to school—­to “time” her in coming home at noon and afternoon, and whenever she was not there on the minute, to mete out to her a dose of his ever-present strap.

“I ain’t havin’ no playin’ on the way home, still!  When school is done, you come right away home then, to help me or your mom, or I ’ll learn you once!”

But it happened that Miss Margaret, in her reign at “William Perm” school-house, had introduced the innovation of closing school on Friday afternoons at half-past three instead of four, and Tillie, with bribes of candy bought with part of her weekly wage of ten cents, secured secrecy as to this innovation from her little sister and brother who went to school with her—­making them play in the school-grounds until she was ready to go home with them.