“Those thoughts have come to me still,” said Tillie.  “But I know they were sent to me by the Enemy.”

“’The Enemy’?”

“The Enemy of our souls.”

“Oh!” he nodded; then abruptly added, “Now do you know, little girl, I wouldn’t let him bother me at this stage of the game, if I were you!  He’s a back number, really!” He checked himself, remembering how dangerous such heresies were in New Canaan.  “Don’t you find it dull working alone?” he asked hastily, “and rather uphill?”

“It is often very hard.”

“Often?  Then you have been doing it for some time?”

“Yes,” Tillie answered hesitatingly.  No one except the doctor shared her secret with Miss Margaret.  Self-concealment had come to be the habit of her life—­her instinct for self-preservation.  And yet, the teacher’s evident interest, his presence so close to her, brought all her soul to her lips.  She had a feeling that if she could overcome her shyness, she would he able to speak to him as unrestrainedly, as truly, as she talked in her letters to Miss Margaret.

“Do you have no help at all?” he pursued.

Could she trust him with the secret of Miss Margaret’s letters?  The habit of secretiveness was too strong upon her.  “There is no one here to help me—­unless you would sometimes,” she timidly answered.

“I am at your service always.  Nothing could give me greater pleasure.”

“Thank you.”  Her face flushed with delight.

“You have, of course, been a pupil at William Penn?” he asked.

“Yes, but father took me out of school when I was twelve.  Ever since then I’ve been trying to educate myself, but—­” she lifted troubled eyes to his face, “no one here knows it but the doctor.  No one must know it.”

“Trust me,” he nodded.  “But why must they not know it?”

“Father would stop it if he found it out.”

“Why?”

“He wouldn’t leave me waste the time.”

“You have had courage—­to have struggled against such odds.”

“It has not been easy.  But—­it seems to me the things that are worth having are never easy to get.”

Fairchilds looked at her keenly.

“‘The things that are worth having’?  What do you count as such things?”

“Knowledge and truth; and personal freedom to be true to one’s self.”

He concealed the shock of surprise he felt at her words.  “What have we here?” he wondered, his pulse quickening as he looked into the shining upraised eyes of the girl and saw the tumultuous heaving of her bosom.  He had been right after all, then, in feeling that she was different from the rest of them!  He could see that it was under the stress of unusual emotion that she gave expression to thoughts which of necessity she must seldom or never utter to those about her.

“’Personal freedom to be true to one’s self’?” he repeated.  “What would it mean to you if you had it?”