now," thought Tillie, remembering vividly a school entertainment
that had been given during her own first year at school, when
Absalom, nine years old, had spoken his first piece. His pious
Methodist grandmother had endeavored to teach him a little hymn to
speak on the great occasion, while his frivolous aunt from the
city of Lancaster had tried at the same time to teach him "Bobby
Shafto." New Canaan audiences were neither discriminating nor
critical, but the assembly before which little Absalom had risen
to "speak his piece off," had found themselves confused when he
told them that

"On Jordan's bank the Baptist stands,
Silver buckles on his knee."

Tillie would never forget her own infantine agony of suspense as
she sat, a tiny girl of five, in the audience, listening to
Absalom's mistakes. But Eli Darmstetter, the teacher, had not
scolded him.

Then there was the time that Absalom had forced a fight at recess
and had made little Adam Oberholzer's nose bleed--it was little
Adam (whose father was not at that time a school director) that
had to stay after school; and though every one knew it wasn't
fair, it had been accepted without criticism, because even the
young rising generation of New Canaan understood the impossibility
and folly of quarreling with one's means of earning money.

But Miss Margaret appeared to be perfectly blind to the perils of
her position. Tillie was deeply troubled about it.