Tillie: A Mennonite Maid | Page 6

rare times when
obliged to change one's clothes. Every one washed at the pump and
used the one family roller-towel hanging on the porch. Miss Margaret,
ever since her arrival in the neighborhood, had been the subject of
wide-spread remark and even suspicion, because she "washed
up-stairs" and even sat up-stairs!--in her bedroom! It was an unheard-of
proceeding in New Canaan.
Tillie helped her father in the celery-beds until dark; then, weary, but
excited at the prospect of her book, she went in from the fields and
up-stairs to the little low-roofed bed-chamber which she shared with
her two half-sisters. They were already in bed and asleep, as was their
mother in the room across the hall, for every one went to bed at
sundown in Canaan Township, and got up at sunrise.
Tillie was in bed in a few minutes, rejoicing in the feeling of the book
under her pillow. Not yet dared she venture to light a candle and read
it--not until she should hear her father's heavy snoring in the room
across the hall.
The candles which she used for this surreptitious reading of
Sunday-school "li-bries" and any other chance literature which fell in
her way, were procured with money paid to her by Miss Margaret for
helping her to clean the school-room on Friday afternoons after school.
Tillie would have been happy to help her for the mere joy of being with
her, but Miss Margaret insisted upon paying her ten cents for each such
service.
The little girl was obliged to resort to a deep-laid plot in order to do this
work for the teacher. It had been her father's custom-- ever since, at the

age of five, she had begun to go to school--to "time" her in coming
home at noon and afternoon, and whenever she was not there on the
minute, to mete out to her a dose of his ever-present strap.
"I ain't havin' no playin' on the way home, still! When school is done,
you come right away home then, to help me or your mom, or I 'll learn
you once!"
But it happened that Miss Margaret, in her reign at "William Perm"
school-house, had introduced the innovation of closing school on
Friday afternoons at half-past three instead of four, and Tillie, with
bribes of candy bought with part of her weekly wage of ten cents,
secured secrecy as to this innovation from her little sister and brother
who went to school with her--making them play in the school-grounds
until she was ready to go home with them.
Before Miss Margaret had come to New Canaan, Tillie had done her
midnight reading by the light of the kerosene lamp which, after every
one was asleep, she would bring up from the kitchen to her bedside.
But this was dangerous, as it often led to awkward inquiries as to the
speedy consumption of the oil. Candles were safer. Tillie kept them and
a box of matches hidden under the mattress.
It was eleven o'clock when at last the child, trembling with mingled
delight and apprehension, rose from her bed, softly closed her bedroom
door, and with extremely judicious carefulness lighted her candle,
propped up her pillow, and settled down to read as long as she should
be able to hold her eyes open. The little sister at her side and the one in
the bed at the other side of the room slept too soundly to be disturbed
by the faint flickering light of that one candle.
To-night her stolen pleasure proved more than usually engrossing. At
first the book was interesting principally because of the fact, so vividly
present with her, that Miss Margaret's eyes and mind had moved over
every word and thought which, she was now absorbing. But soon her
intense interest in the story excluded every other idea--even the fear of
discovery. Her young spirit was "out of the body" and following, as in a
trance, this tale, the like of which she had never before read.
The clock down-stairs in the kitchen struck twelve--one--two, but Tillie
never heard it. At half-past two o'clock in the morning, when the tallow
candle was beginning to sputter to its end, she still was reading, her
eyes bright as stars, her usually pale face flushed with excitement, her

sensitive lips parted in breathless interest--when, suddenly, a stinging
blow of "the strap" on her shoulders brought from her a cry of pain and
fright.
"What you mean, doin' somepin like, this yet!" sternly demanded her
father. "What fur book's that there?"
He took the book from her hands and Tillie cowered beneath the covers,
the wish flashing through her mind that the book could change into a
Bible as he looked at it!--which miracle would surely temper the
punishment that in a moment