week was one never to be forgotten by Tillie. It stood out,
in all the years that followed, as a week of wonder--in which were
revealed to her the depths and the heights of ecstatic bliss--a bliss
which so filled her being that she scarcely gave a thought to the
disgrace hanging over her--her suspension from meeting.

The fact that Tillie and the teacher sat together, now, every evening,
called forth no surmises or suspicions from the Wackernagels, for the
teacher was merely helping Tillie with some studies. The family was
charged to guard the fact from Mr. Getz.

The lessons seldom lasted beyond the early bedtime of the family, for
as soon as Tillie and Fairchilds found the sitting-room abandoned to
their private use, the school-books were put aside. They had somewhat
to say to each other.

Tillie's story of her long friendship with Miss Margaret, which she
related to Fairchilds, made him better understand much about the girl
that had seemed inexplicable in view of her environment; while her
wonder at and sympathetic interest in his own story of how he had come
to apply for the school at New Canaan both amused and touched him.

"Do you never have any doubts, Tillie, of the truth of your creed?" he
asked curiously, as they sat one evening at the sitting-room table, the
school-books and the lamp pushed to one end.

He had several times, in this week of intimacy, found it hard to
reconcile the girl's fine intelligence and clear thought in some
directions with her religious superstition. He hesitated to say a word
to disturb her in her apparently unquestioning faith, though he felt
she was worthy of a better creed than this impossibly narrow one of the
New Mennonites. "She isn't ready yet," he had thought, "to take hold of
a larger idea of religion."

"I have sometimes thought," she said earnestly, "that if the events
which are related in the Bible should happen now, we would not credit
them. An infant born of a virgin, a star leading three travelers, a man
who raised the dead and claimed to be God--we would think the folks who
believed these things were ignorant and superstitious. And because they
happened so long ago, and are in the Book which we are told came from
God, we believe. It is very strange! Sometimes my thoughts trouble me.
I try hard not to leave such thoughts come to me."

"LET, Tillie, not 'leave.'"

"Will I ever learn not to get my 'leaves' and 'lets' mixed!" sighed
Tillie, despairingly.

"Use '