"Good fur you, Tillie!" laughed her uncle. "You're gettin' learnt here to take your own head a little fur things. Well, I'd like to get you spoilt good fur your pop—that's what I'd like to do!"
"We darsent go too fur," warned Aunty Em, "or he won't leave her stay with us at all."
"Now there's you, Abe," remarked the doctor, dryly; "from the time your childern could walk and talk a'ready all you had to say was 'Go'—and they stayed. Ain't?"
Mr. Wackernagel joined in the loud laughter of his wife and daughters.
Tillie realized that the teacher, as he sipped his coffee, was listening to the dialogue with astonishment and curiosity, and she hungered to know all that was passing through his mind.
Her second temptation came to her upon hearing Fairchilds, as they rose from the breakfast-table, suggest a walk in the woods with Amanda and Rebecca. "And won't Miss Tillie go too?" he inquired.
Her aunt answered for her. "Och, she wouldn't have dare, her bein' a member, you know. It would be breakin' the Sabbath. And anyways, even if it wasn't Sunday, us New Mennonites don't take walks or do anything just fur pleasure when they ain't nothin' useful in it. If Tillie went, I'd have to report her to the meetin', even if it did go ag'in' me to do it."
"And then what would happen?" Mr. Fairchilds inquired curiously.
"She'd be set back."
"'Set back'?"