Tillie: A Mennonite Maid | Page 9

ketch an awful lickin' fur doin' such a dumm thing like what that was. Sammy!" she called to her little eight-year-old son, who was playing on the kitchen porch, "you go out and tell pop Tillie she's got sick fur me, and I'm leavin' her lay a while. Now hurry on, or he'll come in here to see, once, ain't she home yet, or what. Go on now!"
Sammy departed on his errand, and Mrs. Getz diligently resumed her potato-paring.
"I don't know what pop'll say to you not comin' out to help," she presently remarked.
Tillie's head moved restlessly, but she did not speak. She was past caring what her father might say or do.
Mrs. Getz thoughtfully considered a doubtful potato, and, concluding at length to discard it, "I guess," she said, throwing it back into the pan, "I'll let that one; it's some poor. Do you feel fur eatin' any supper?" she asked. "I'm havin' fried smashed- potatoes and wieners [Frankfort sausages]. Some days I just don't know what to cook all."
Tillie's lips moved, but gave no sound.
"I guess you're right down sick fur all; ain't? I wonder if pop'll have Doc in. He won't want to spend any fur that. But you do look wonderful bad. It's awful onhandy comin' just to-day. I did feel fur sayin' to pop I'd go to the rewiwal to-night, of he didn't mind. It's a while back a'ready since I was to a meetin'--not even on a funeral. And they say they do now make awful funny up at Bethel rewiwal this week. I was thinkin' I'd go once. But if you can't redd up after supper and help milk and put the childern to bed, I can't go fur all."
No response from Tillie.
Mrs. Getz sighed her disappointment as she went on with her work. Presently she spoke again. "This after, a lady agent come along. She had such a complexion lotion. She talked near a half-hour. She was, now, a beautiful conversationist! I just set and listened. Then she was some spited that I wouldn't buy a box of complexion lotion off of her. But she certainly was, now, a beautiful conversationist!"
The advent of an agent in the neighborhood was always a noteworthy event, and Tillie's utterly indifferent reception of the news that to-day one had "been along" made Mrs. Getz look at her wonderingly.
"Are you too sick to take interest?" she asked.
The child made no answer. The woman rose to put her potatoes on the stove.
It was an hour later when, as Tillie still lay motionless on the settee, and Mrs. Getz was dishing up the supper and putting it on the table, which stood near the wall at one end of the kitchen, Mr. Getz came in, tired, dirty, and hungry, from the celery-beds.
The child opened her eyes at the familiar and often dreaded step, and looked up at him as he came and stood over her.
"What's the matter? What's hurtin' you, Tillie?" he asked, an unwonted kindness in his voice as he saw how ill the little girl looked.
"I don'--know," Tillie whispered, her heavy eyelids falling again.
"You don' know! You can't be so worse if you don' know what's hurtin' you! Have you fever, or the headache, or whatever?"
He laid his rough hand on her forehead and passed it over her cheek.
"She's some feverish," he said, turning to his wife, who was busy at the stove. "Full much so!"
"She had the cold a little, and I guess she's took more to it," Mrs. Getz returned, bearing the fried potatoes across the kitchen to the table.
"I heard the Doc talkin' there's smallpox handy to us, only a mile away at New Canaan," said Getz, a note of anxiety in his voice that made the sick child wearily marvel. Why was he anxious about her? she wondered. It wasn't because he liked her, as Miss Margaret did. He was afraid of catching smallpox himself, perhaps. Or he was afraid she would be unable to help him to-morrow, and maybe for many days, out in the celery-beds. That was why he spoke anxiously--not because he liked her and was sorry.
No bitterness was mingled with Tillie's quite matter-of-fact acceptance of these conclusions.
"It would be a good much trouble to us if she was took down with the smallpox," Mrs. Getz's tired voice replied.
"I guess not as much as it would be to HER," the father said, a rough tenderness in his voice, and something else which Tillie vaguely felt to be a note of pain.
"Are you havin' the Doc in fur her, then?" his wife asked.
"I guess I better, mebbe," the man hesitated. His thrifty mind shrank at the thought of the expense.
He turned again to Tillie and bent over her.
"Can't you tell pop what's hurtin' you, Tillie?"
"No--sir."
Mr. Getz looked doubtfully and rather helplessly