y loss to him either of money or of his child's
labor.

Somehow, her father's reception of her triumph filled her heart with
more bitterness than she had ever felt toward him in all the years of
her hard endeavor. It was on the eve of her first day of teaching that
his unusually affectionate attitude to her at the supper-table suddenly
roused in her a passion of hot resentment such as her gentle heart had
not often experienced.

"I owe YOU no thanks, father, for what education I have!" she burst
forth. "You always did everything in your power to hinder me!"

If a bomb had exploded in the midst of them, Mr. and Mrs. Getz could
not have been more confounded. Mrs. Getz looked to see her husband
order Tillie from the table, or rise from his place to shake her and
box her ears. But he did neither. In amazement he stared at her for a
moment--then answered with a mildness that amazed his wife even more
than Tillie's "sassiness" had done.

"I'd of LEFT you study if I'd knowed you could come to anything like
this by it. But I always thought you'd have to go to the Normal to be
fit fur a teacher yet. And you can't say you don't owe me no
thanks--ain't I always kep' you?"

"Kept me!" answered Tillie, with a scorn that widened her father's
stare and made her stepmother drop her knife on her plate; "I never
worked half so hard at Aunty Em's as I have done here every day of my
life since I was nine years old--and SHE thought my work worth not only
my 'keep,' but two dollars a week besides. When do you ever spend two
dollars on me? You never gave me a dollar that I hadn't earned ten
times over! You owe me back wages!"

Jake Getz laid down his knife, with a look on his face that made his
other children quail. His countenance was livid with anger.

"OWE YOU BACK WAGES!" he choked. "Ain't you my child, then, where I
begat and raised? Don't I own you? What's a child FUR? To grow up to be
no use to them that raised it? You talk like that to me!" he roared.
"You tell me I OWE you back money! Now listen here! I was a-goin' to
leave you keep five dollars every month out of your forty. Yes, I
conceited I'd leave you have all that--five a month! Now fur sassin' me
like what you done, I ain't leavin' you have NONE the first month!"

"And what," Tillie wondered, a strange calm suddenly following her
outburst, as she sat back in her chair, white and silent, "what will he
do and say when I refuse to give him more than the price of my board