"Well," conceded Mr. Getz, "then we'll leave it go this time."

Miss Margaret now bent her mind to the difficult task of persuading
this stubborn Pennsylvania Dutchman to accept her views as to what was
for the highest and best good of his daughter. Eloquently she pointed
out to him that Tillie being a child of unusual ability, it would be
much better for her to have an education than to be forced to spend her
days in farm-house drudgery.

But her point of view, being entirely novel, did not at all appeal to
him.

"I never thought to leave her go to school after she was twelve. That's
long enough fur a girl; a female don't need much book-knowledge. It
don't help her none to keep house fur her mister."

"But she could become a teacher and then she could earn money," Miss
Margaret argued, knowing the force of this point with Mr. Getz.

"But look at all them years she'd have to spend learnin' herself to be
intelligent enough fur to be a teacher, when she might be helpin' me
and mom."

"But she could help you by paying board here when she becomes the New
Canaan teacher."

"That's so too," granted Mr. Getz; and Margaret grew faintly hopeful.

"But," he added, after a moment's heavy weighing of the matter, "it
would take too long to get her enough educated fur to be a teacher, and
I'm one of them," he maintained, "that holds a child is born to help
the parent, and not contrarywise--that the parent must do everything
fur the child that way."

"If you love your children, you must wish for their highest good," she
suggested, "and not trample on their best interests."

"But they have the right to work for their parents," he insisted. "You
needn't plague me to leave Tillie stay in school, Teacher. I ain't
leavin' her!"

"Do you think you have a right to bring children into the world only to
crush everything in them that is worth while?" Margaret dared to say to
him, her face flushed, her eyes bright with the intensity of her
feelings.

"That's all blamed foolishness!" Jake Getz affirmed.

"Do you think that your daughter, when she is grown and realizes all
that she has lost, will 'rise up and call you blessed'?" she persisted.

"Do I think? Well, what I think is that it's a good bit more particular
that till she's growed she's been learnt to work and serve them that
raised her. And what I think is that a person ain't fit to be a teacher
of the young that sides along with the childern ag'in' their parents."

Miss