"Tillie, ain't you afraid of your pop no more?"
"Oh, Aunty Em! YES, I am afraid of him."
"I'm all fidgety myself, thinkin' about how mad he'll be. Dear knows what YOU must feel yet, Tillie—and what all your little life you've been feelin', with his fear always hangin' over you still. Sometimes when I think how my brother Jake trains up his childern!"—indignation choked her—"I have feelin's that are un-Christlike, Tillie!"
"And yet, Aunty Em," the girl said earnestly, "father does care for me too—even though he always did think I ought to want nothing else but to work for him. But he does care for me. The couple of times I was sick already, he was concerned. I can't forget it."
"To be sure, he'd have to be a funny man if he wasn't concerned when his own child's sick, Tillie. I don't give him much for THAT."
"But it always puzzled me, Aunty Em—if father's concerned to see me sick or suffering, why will he himself deliberately make me suffer more than I ever suffered in any sickness? I never could understand that."
"He always thinks he's doin' his duty by you. That we must give him. Och, my! there's his wagon stoppin' NOW! Go on out to the stable, Tillie! Quick!"
"Aunty Em!" Tillie faltered, "I'd sooner stay and have it done with now, than wait and have it hanging over me all the week till next Saturday."
There was another reason for her standing her ground and facing it out. Ever since she had yielded to the temptation to buy the caps and let her hair curl about her face, her conscience had troubled her for her vanity; and a vague feeling that in suffering her father's displeasure she would be expiating her sin made her almost welcome his coming this morning.
There was the familiar heavy tread in the bar-room which adjoined the kitchen. Tillie flushed and paled by turns as it drew near, and her aunt rolled out the paste with a vigor and an emphasis that expressed her inward agitation. Even Fairchilds, in the next room, felt himself infected with the prevailing suspense.