XXI
"I'LL MARRY HIM TO-MORROW!"
Mr. Getz had plainly given Absalom to understand that he did not want him to sit up with Tillie, as he "wasn't leaving her marry." Absalom had answered that he guessed Tillie would have something to say to that when she was "eighteen a'ready." And on the first Sunday evening after her return home he had boldly presented himself at the farm.
"That's where you'll get fooled, Absalom, fur she's been raised to mind her pop!" Mr. Getz had responded. "If she disobeyed to my word, I wouldn't give her no aus styer. I guess you wouldn't marry a girl where wouldn't bring you no aus styer!"
Absalom, who was frugal, had felt rather baffled at this threat. Nevertheless, here he was again on Sunday evening at the farm to assure Tillie that HE would stand by her, and that if she was not restored to membership in the meeting, he wouldn't give himself up, either.
Mr. Getz dared not go to the length of forbidding Absalom his house, for that would have meant a family feud between all the Getzes and all the Puntzes of the county. He could only insist that Tillie "dishearten him," and that she dismiss him not later than ten o'clock. To almost any other youth in the neighborhood, such opposition would have proved effectual. But every new obstacle seemed only to increase Absalom's determination to have what he had set out to get.
To-night he produced another book, which he said he had bought at the second-hand book-store in Lancaster.
"'Cupid and Psyche,'" Tillie read the title. "Oh, Absalom, thank you. This is lovely. It's a story from Greek mythology—I've been hearing some of these stories from the teacher"—she checked herself, suddenly, at Absalom's look of jealous suspicion.
"I'm wonderful glad you ain't in there at the HOtel no more," he said. "I hadn't no fair chancet, with Teacher right there on the GROUNDS."
"Absalom," said Tillie, gravely, with a little air of dignity that did not wholly fail to impress him, "I insist on it that you never speak of the teacher in that way in connection with me. You might as well speak of my marrying the County Superintendent! He'd be just as likely to ask me!"