ap. "I see I
wouldn't be doin' right to oppose you in this here, Tillie. Well, I'm
glad, fur all, that I ain't whippin' you. It goes ag'in' me to hit you
since you was sick that time. You're gettin' full big, too, to be
punished that there way, fur all I always sayed still I'd never leave a
child of mine get ahead of me, no matter how big they was, so long as
they lived off of me. But this here's different. You're feelin'
conscientious about this here matter, and I ain't hinderin' you."

To Tillie's unspeakable amazement, he laid his hand on her head and
held it there for an instant. "Gawd bless you, my daughter, and help
you to serve the Lord acceptable!"

So that crisis was past.

But Tillie knew, that night, as she rubbed witch-hazel on her sore
shoulder, that a far worse struggle was before her. In seeking to carry
out the determination that burned in her heart to get an education, no
aid could come to her as it had to-day, from her father's sense of
religious awe. Would she be able, she wondered, to stand firm against
his opposition when, a second time, it came to an issue between them?

XII

ABSALOM KEEPS COMPANY

Tillie wrote to Miss Margaret (she could not learn to call her Mrs.
Lansing) how that she had "given herself up and turned plain," and Miss
Margaret, seeing how sacred this experience was to the young girl,
treated the subject with all respect and even reverence.

The correspondence between these two, together with the books which
from time to time came to the girl from her faithful friend, did more
toward Tillie's growth and development along lines of which her parents
had no suspicion, than all the schooling at William Penn, under the
instruction of the average "Millersville Normal," could ever have
accomplished.

And her tongue, though still very provincial, soon lost much of its
native dialect, through her constant reading and study.

Of course whenever her father discovered her with her books he made her
suffer.

"You're got education enough a'ready," he would insist. "And too much
fur your own good. Look at me--I was only educated with a Testament and
a spelling-book and a slate. We had no such a blackboards even, to
recite on. And do _I_ look as if I need to know any more 'n what I know
a'ready?"

Tillie bore her punishments like a martyr--and continued
surreptitiously to read and to study whenever and whatever she could;
and not even the extreme conscientiousness of a New M