“I don’t care!  I hope he hears me sayin’ that if he ever comes tryin’ to get my girl off me, I ’ll get pop to have him put off his job!”

“None of you know what you are talking about,” Tillie indignantly whispered.  “You can’t understand.  The teacher is a man that wouldn’t any more keep company with one of us country girls than you would keep company, Absalom, with a gipsy.  He’s above us!”

“Well, I guess if you’re good enough fur me, Tillie Getz, you’re good enough fur anybody else—­leastways fur a man that gets his job off the wotes of your pop and mine!”

“The teacher is a—­a gentleman, Absalom.”

Absalom did not understand.  “Well, I guess I know he ain’t a lady.  I guess I know what his sek is!”

Tillie sighed in despair, and sank back on the settee.  For a few minutes they sat in strained silence.

“I never seen a girl like what you are!  You’re wonderful different to the other girls I’ve knew a’ready.”

Tillie did not reply.

“Where d’you come by them books you read?”

“The Doc gets them for me.”

“Well, Tillie, look-ahere.  I spoke somepin to the Doc how I wanted to fetch you somepin along when I come over sometime, and I ast him what, now, he thought you would mebbe like.  And he sayed a book.  So I got Cousin Sally Puntz to fetch one along fur me from the Methodist Sunday-school li-bry, and here I brung it over to you.”

He produced a small volume from his coat pocket.

“I was ’most ashamed to bring it, it’s so wonderful little.  I tole Cousin Sally, ‘Why didn’t you bring me a bigger book?’ And she sayed she did try to get a bigger one, but they was all.  There’s one in that li-bry with four hunderd pages.  I tole her, now, she’s to try to get me that there one next Sunday before it’s took by somebody.  This one’s’most too little.”

Tillie smiled as she took it from him.  “Thank you, Absalom.  I don’t care if it’s little, so long as it’s interesting—­and instructive,” she spoke primly.

“The Bible’s such a big book, I thought the bigger the book was, the nearer it was like the Bible,” said Absalom.

“But there’s the dictionary, Absalom.  It’s as big as the Bible.”

“Don’t the size make nothin’?” Absalom asked.

Tillie shook her head, still smiling.  She glanced down and read aloud the title of the book she held:  “’What a Young Husband Ought to Know.’”

“But, Absalom!” she faltered.

“Well?  What?”

She looked up into his heavy, blank face, and suddenly a faint sense of humor seemed born in her—­and she laughed.

The laugh illumined her face, and it was too much for Absalom.  He seized her and kissed her, with resounding emphasis, squarely on the mouth.