his buggy, he let his horse jog at his own gait along the muddy
country road, "I jus' don't feel fur NOTHIN' to-day. She was now
certainly a sweet lady," he thought pensively, as though alluding to
one who had died. "If there's one sek I do now like, it's the
female--and she was certainly a nice party!"

In the course of her career at William Penn, Miss Margaret had
developed such a genuine fondness for the shaggy, good-natured,
generous, and unscrupulous little doctor, that before she abandoned her
post at the end of the term, and shook the dust of New Canaan from her
feet, she took him into her confidence and begged him to take care of
Tillie.

"She is an uncommon child, doctor, and she must--I am determined that
she must--be rescued from the life to which that father of hers would
condemn her. You must help me to bring it about."

"Nothin' I like better, Teacher, than gettin' ahead of Jake Getz," the
doctor readily agreed. "Or obligin' YOU. To tell you the truth,--and it
don't do no harm to say it now,--if you hadn't been promised, I was
a-goin' to ast you myself! You took notice I gave you an inwitation
there last week to go buggy-ridin' with me. That was leadin' up to it.
After that Sunday night you left me set up with you, I never conceited
you was promised a'ready to somebody else--and you even left me set
with my feet on your chair-rounds!" The doctor's tone was a bit injured.

"Am I to understand," inquired Miss Margaret, wonderingly, "that the
permission to sit with one's feet on the rounds of a lady's chair is
taken in New Canaan as an indication of her favor--and even of her
inclination to matrimony?"

"It's looked to as meanin' gettin' down to BIZ!" the doctor affirmed.

"Then," meekly, "I humbly apologize."

"That's all right," generously granted the doctor, "if you didn't know
no better. But to be sure, I'm some disappointed."

"I'm sorry for that!"

"Would you of mebbe said yes, if you hadn't of been promised a'ready to
one of them tony Millersville Normal professors," the doctor inquired
curiously--"me bein' a professional gentleman that way?"

"I'm sure," replied this daughter of Eve, who wished to use the doctor
in her plans for Tillie, "I should have been highly honored."

The rueful, injured look on the doctor's face cleared to flattered
complacency. "Well," he said, "I'd like wery well to do what you ast
off of me fur little Tillie Getz. But, Teacher, what can a body do
against a felle