hatever, it's too much! Pop says he's goin' to ast your pop and the
rest of the Board if they hadn't ought to ast this here Harvard
gradyate to take a couple dollars less, seein' he ain't no Millersville
Normal."

They had by this time reached the farm, and Tillie, not very warmly,
asked Absalom whether he would "come in and sit awhile." She almost
sighed audibly as he eagerly consented.

When he had left at twelve o'clock that night, she softly climbed the
stairs to her room, careful not to disturb the sleeping household.
Tillie wondered why it was that every girl of her acquaintance exulted
in being asked to keep company with a gentleman friend. She had found
"sitting up" a more fatiguing task than even the dreaded Monday's
washing which would confront her on the morrow.

"Seein' it's the first time me and you set up together, I mebbe better
not stay just so late," Absalom had explained when, after three hours'
courting, he had reluctantly risen to take his leave, under the firm
conviction, as Tillie plainly saw, that she felt as sorry to have him
go as evidently he was to part from her!

"How late," thought Tillie, "will he stay the SECOND time he sits up
with me? And what," she wondered, "do other girls see in it?"

The following Sunday night, Absalom came again, and this time he stayed
until one o'clock, with the result that on the following Monday morning
Tillie overslept herself and was one hour late in starting the washing.

It was that evening, after supper, while Mrs. Getz was helping her
husband make his toilet for a meeting of the School Board--at which the
application of that suspicious character, the Harvard graduate, was to
be considered--that the husband and wife discussed these significant
Sunday night visits. Mrs. Getz opened up the subject while she
performed the wifely office of washing her husband's neck, his
increasing bulk making that duty a rather difficult one for him.
Standing over him as he sat in a chair in the kitchen, holding on his
knees a tin basin full of soapy water, she scrubbed his fat, sunburned
neck with all the vigor and enthusiasm that she would have applied to
the cleaning of the kitchen porch or the scouring of an iron skillet.

A custom prevailed in the county of leaving one's parlor plainly
furnished, or entirely empty, until the eldest daughter should come of
age; it was then fitted up in style, as a place to which she and her
"regular friend" could retire from the eye