"You are a credit to him, Absalom. By the way, will you take a message to him from me? Tell him, please, that the lock on the school-room door is broken, and I'd be greatly obliged if he would send up a lock-smith to mend it."
Absalom looked discouraged. A Harvard graduate was, manifestly, a freak of nature—invulnerable at all points.
"If pop gets down on you, you won't be long at William Penn!" he bullied. "You'll soon get chased off your job!"
"My job at breaking you in? Well, well, I might be spending my time more profitably, that's so."
"You go on out of here and le' me alone with my girl!" quavered Absalom, blinking away tears of rage.
"That will be as she says. How is it, Miss Tillie? Do you want him to go?"
Now Tillie knew that if she allowed Absalom Puntz to leave her in his present state of baffled anger, Fairchilds would not remain in New Canaan a month. Absalom was his father's only child, and Nathaniel Puntz was known to be both suspicious and vindictive. "Clothed in a little brief authority," as school director, he never missed an opportunity to wield his precious power.
With quick insight, Tillie realized that the teacher would think meanly of her if, after her outcry at Absalom's amorous behavior, she now inconsistently ask that he remain with her for the rest of the evening. But what the teacher might think about HER did not matter so much as that he should be saved from the wrath of Absalom.
"Please leave him stay," she answered in a low voice.
Fairchilds gazed in surprise upon the girl's sweet, troubled face. "Let him stay?"