“Tillie!” said her aunt, with a sharpness unusual to her, as she closed the oven door with a spasmodic bang, “you put on your shawl and bonnet and go right up to Sister Jennie Hershey’s for some bacon.”

“Why, Aunty Em!” said Tillie, in surprise, looking up from the table where she was rolling out paste; “I can’t let these pies.”

“I’ll finish them pies.  You just go now.”

“But we’ve got plenty of bacon.”

“If we’ve got bacon a-plenty, then get some ponhaus.  Or some mush.  Hurry up and go, Tillie!”

She came to the girl’s side and took the rolling-pin from her hands.  “And don’t hurry back.  Set awhile.  Now get your things on quick.”

“But, Aunty Em—­”

“Are you mindin’ me, Tillie, or ain’t you?” her aunt sharply demanded.

“But in about ten minutes father will be stopping on his way from Lancaster market,” Tillie said, though obediently going toward the corner where hung her shawl and bonnet, “to get my wages and see me, Aunty Em—­like what he does every Saturday still.”

“Well, don’t be so dumm, Tillie!  That’s why I’m sendin’ you off!”

“Oh, Aunty Em, I don’t want to go away and leave you to take all the blame for those new caps!  And, anyhow, father will stop at Sister Jennie Hershey’s if he don’t find me here.”

“I won’t tell him you’re there.  And push them curls under your cap, or Sister Jennie’ll be tellin’ the meeting, and you’ll be set back yet!  I don’t know what’s come over you, Tillie, to act that vain and unregenerate!”

“Father will guess I’m at Sister Jennie’s, and he’ll stop to see.”

“That’s so, too.”  Aunty Em thoughtfully considered the situation.  “Go out and hide in the stable, Tillie.”

Tillie hesitated as she nervously twisted the strings of her bonnet.  “What’s the use of hiding, Aunty Em?  I’d have to see him next Saturday.”

“He won’t be so mad about it till next Saturday.”

Tillie shook her head.  “He’ll keep getting angrier—­until he has satisfied himself by punishing me in some way for spending that money without leave.”

The girl’s face was pale, but she spoke very quietly, and her aunt looked at her curiously.

“Tillie, ain’t you afraid of your pop no more?”

“Oh, Aunty Em!  Yes, I am afraid of him.”

“I’m all fidgety myself, thinkin’ about how mad he’ll be.  Dear knows what you must feel yet, Tillie—­and what all your little life you’ve been feelin’, with his fear always hangin’ over you still.  Sometimes when I think how my brother Jake trains up his childern!”—­indignation choked her—­“I have feelin’s that are un-Christlike, Tillie!”

“And yet, Aunty Em,” the girl said earnestly, “father does care for me too—­even though he always did think I ought to want nothing else but to work for him.  But he does care for me.  The couple of times I was sick already, he was concerned.  I can’t forget it.”