I won't mebbe be here till ten o'clock."

"Oh, doctor," whispered Tillie, in a tone of distress, "can't I go to
school? Can't I? I'll be well enough, won't I? It's Friday to-morrow,
and I--I want to go!" she sobbed. "I want to go to Miss Margaret!"

"No, you can't go to school to-morrow, Tillie," her father said, "even
if you're some better; I'm keepin' you home to lay still one day
anyhow."

"But I don't want to stay home!" the child exclaimed, casting off the
shawl with which her father had covered her and throwing out her arms.
"I want to go to school! I want to, pop!" she sobbed, almost screaming.
"I want to go to Miss Margaret! I will, I will!"

"Tillie--Tillie!" her father soothed her in that unwonted tone of
gentleness that sounded so strange to her. His face had turned pale at
her outcries, delirious they seemed to him, coming from his usually
meek and submissive child. "There now," he said, drawing the cover over
her again; "now lay still and be a good girl, ain't you will?"

"Will you leave me go to school to-morrow?" she pleaded piteously.
"DARE I go to school to-morrow?"

"No, you dassent, Tillie. But if you're a good girl, mebbe I 'll leave
Sammy ast Teacher to come to see you after school."

"Oh, pop!" breathed the child ecstatically, as in supreme contentment
she sank back again on her pillow. "I wonder will she come? Do you
think she will come to see me, mebbe?"

"To be sure will she."

"Now think," said the doctor, "how much she sets store by Teacher! And
a lot of 'em's the same way--girls AND boys."

"I didn't know she was so much fur Teacher," said Mr. Getz. "She never
spoke nothin'."

"She never spoke nothin' to me about it neither," said Mrs. Getz.

"Well, I 'll give you all good-by, then," said the doctor; and he went
away.

On his slow journey home through the mud he mused on the inevitable
clash which he foresaw must some day come between the warm-hearted
teacher (whom little Tillie so loved, and who so injudiciously lent her
"novel-books") and the stern and influential school director, Jacob
Getz.

"There MY chanct comes in," thought the doctor; "there's where I mebbe
put in my jaw and pop the question--just when Jake Getz is makin' her
trouble and she's gettin' chased off her job. I passed my word I'd
stand by her, and, by gum, I 'll do it! When she's out of a job--that's
the time she 'll be dead easy! Ain't? She's the most allurin' female I
seen since my wife up't and died fu