Tillie's heart leaped high for an instant in the hope that now she had effectually cooled his ardor. But it sank again as she recalled the necessity of retaining at least his good-will and friendship, that she might protect the teacher.
"Now, Absalom," she feebly protested, "did you ever see me afraid of work?"
"Well, then, if you ain't afraid of workin', what makes you talk so CONTRARY?"
"I don't know. Come, let me read this nice book you've brought me," she urged, much as she might have tried to divert one of her little sisters or brothers.
"I'd ruther just set. I ain't much fur readin'. Jake Getz he says he's goin' to chase you to bed at ten—and ten comes wonderful soon Sundays. Leave us just set."
Tillie well understood that this was to endure Absalom's clownish wooing. But for the sake of the cause, she said to herself, she would conquer her repugnance and bear it.
For two weeks after Tillie's return home, she did not once have a word alone with Fairchilds. He came several times, ostensibly on errands from her aunt; but on each occasion he found her hard at work in her father's presence. At his first visit, Tillie, as he was leaving, rose from her corn-husking in the barn to go with him to the gate, but her father interfered.
"You stay where you're at!"
With burning face, she turned to her work. And Fairchilds, carefully suppressing an impulse to shake Jake Getz till his teeth rattled, walked quietly out of the gate and up the road.
Her father was more than usually stern and exacting with her in these days of her suspension from meeting, inasmuch as it involved her dismissal from the hotel and the consequent loss to him of two dollars a week.