When, at five o'clock, she reached home and walked into the kitchen, her father's eagerness for her return, that he might lay his itching palms on her earnings, was perfectly manifest to her in his unduly affectionate, "Well, Tillie!"
She was pale, but outwardly composed. It was to be one of those supreme crises in life which one is apt to meet with a courage and a serenity that are not forthcoming in the smaller irritations and trials of daily experience.
"You don't look so hearty," her father said, as she quietly hung up her shawl and hood in the kitchen cupboard. "A body'd think you'd pick up and get fat, now you don't have to work nothin', except mornings and evenings."
"There is no harder work in the world, father, than teaching—even when you like it."
"It ain't no work," he impatiently retorted, "to set and hear off lessons."
Tillie did not dispute the point, as she tied a gingham apron over her dress.
Her father was sitting in a corner of the room, shelling corn, with Sammy and Sally at his side helping him. He stopped short in his work and glanced at Tillie in surprise, as she immediately set about assisting her mother in setting the supper-table.
"You was paid to-day, wasn't you?"
"Yes."
"Well, why don't you gimme the money, then? Where have you got it?"