← catalogue

Amanda: A Daughter of the Mennonites

by Anna Balmer Myers · English · Gutenberg #6330 · 391,015 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Amanda: A Daughter of the Mennonites
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Amanda: A Daughter of the Mennonites

Author: Anna Balmer Myers


        
Release date: August 1, 2004 [eBook #6330]
                Most recently updated: December 29, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6330

Credits: Produced by Curtis A. Weyant, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMANDA: A DAUGHTER OF THE MENNONITES ***




Produced by Curtis A. Weyant, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.





[Illustration: She still felt the wonder of being rescued from the
fire.]



AMANDA

A DAUGHTER OF THE MENNONITES

BY

ANNA BALMER MYERS


ILLUSTRATED BY
HELEN MASON GROSS




_To My Sister_




CONTENTS


    I. "WHILE THE HEART BEATS YOUNG"
   II. THE SNITZING PARTY
  III. BOILING APPLE BUTTER
   IV. A VISIT TO MARTIN'S MOTHER
    V. AT AUNT REBECCA'S HOUSE
   VI. SCHOOL DAYS
  VII. AMANDA REIST, TEACHER
 VIII. THE SPELLING BEE
   IX. AT THE MARKET
    X. PINK MOCCASINS
   XI. THE BOARDER
  XII. UNHAPPY DAYS
 XIII. THE TROUBLE MAKER
  XIV. THE COUNTY SUPERINTENDENT'S VISIT
   XV. "MARTIN'S GIRL"
  XVI. AUNT REBECCA'S WILL
 XVII. MARTIN'S DARK HOUR
XVIII. THE COMFORTER
  XIX. VINDICATION
   XX. DINNER AT LANDIS'S
  XXI. BERRYING
 XXII. ON THE MOUNTAIN TOP
XXIII. TESTS
 XXIV. "YOU SAVED THE WRONG ONE"
  XXV. THE HEART OF MILLIE
 XXVI. "ONE HEART MADE O'TWO"




ILLUSTRATIONS


She Still Felt the Wonder of Being Rescued From the Fire
The Rhubarb Leaf Parasol
"What Did Lyman Tell You? I Must Know"





CHAPTER I

"WHILE THE HEART BEATS YOUNG"


The scorching heat of a midsummer day beat mercilessly upon the earth.
Travelers on the dusty roads, toilers in the fields, and others exposed
to the rays of the sun, thought yearningly of cooling winds and running
streams. They would have looked with envy upon the scene being enacted
in one of the small streams of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. There a
little red-haired girl, barefooted, her short gingham skirt tucked up
unevenly here and there, was wading in the cool, shallow waters of a
creek that was tree-bordered and willow-arched. Her clear, rippling
laughter of sheer joy broke through the Sabbatical calm of that quiet
spot and echoed up and down the meadow as she splashed about in the
brook.

"Ach," she said aloud, "this here's the best fun! Abody wouldn't hardly
know it's so powerful hot out to-day. All these trees round the crick
makes it cool. I like wadin' and pickin' up the pebbles, some of 'em
washed round and smooth like little white soup beans--ach, I got to
watch me," she exclaimed, laughing, as she made a quick movement to
retain her equilibrium. "The big stones are slippery from bein' in the
water. Next I know I'll sit right down in the crick. Then wouldn't Phil
be ready to laugh at me! It wonders me now where he is. I wish he'd
come once and we'd have some fun."

As if in answer to her wish a boyish whistle rang out, followed by a
long-drawn "Oo-oh, Manda, where are you?"

"Here. Wadin' in the crick," she called. "Come on in."

She splashed gleefully about as her brother came into sight and walked
with mock dignity through the meadow to the stream. He held his red-
crowned head high and sang teasingly, "Manda, Manda, red-headed Manda;
tee-legged, toe-legged, bow-legged Manda!"

"Philip Reist," she shouted crossly, "I am not! My legs are
straighter'n yours! You dare, you just dare once, to come in the crick
and say that and see what you get!"

Although two years her junior he accepted the challenge and repeated
the doggerel as he planted his bare feet in the water. She splashed him
and he retaliated, but the boy, though smaller, was agile, and in an
unguarded moment he caught the girl by the wrists and pushed her so she
sat squarely in the shallow waters of the brook.

"Hey, smarty," he exulted impishly as he held her there, "you will get
fresh with me, you will, huh?"

"Phil, let me up, leave me go, I'm all wet."

"Now, how did that happen, I wonder. My goodness, what will Mamma say?"
he teased.

"Phil," the girl half coaxed, but he read a desire for revenge in her
face.

"Jiminy Christmas, don't cry." He puckered up his lips in imitation of
a whimpering girl. "Got enough?"

"Phil," the word rang crossly, "you let me be now."

"All right, cry baby." He loosened his hold on her wrists. "But because
you're such a fraid cat I'll not give you what I brought for you."

"What is it?" The girl scrambled to her feet, curiosity helping her to
forget momentarily the boy's tricks. "What did you bring me?"

"Something that's little and almost round and blue and I got it in a
tree. Now if you're not a blockhead mebbe you can guess what it is."
He moved his hand about in his pocket.

"Phil, let me see." The words were plain coaxing then.

"Here." And he drew from his pocket a robin's egg.

"Philip Reist! Where did you get that?" The girl's voice was stern and
loud.

"Ach, I found the dandiest nest out on one of the cherry trees and I
know you like dinky birds and thought I'd get you an egg. There's three
more in the nest; I guess that's enough for any robin. Anyhow, they had
young ones in that nest early in the summer."

"You bad boy! How dare you rob a bird's nest? God will punish you for
that!" Her eyes blazed with wrath at the thoughtless deed of the lad.

"Ach," he answered boldly, "what's the use fussin' 'bout a dinky bird's
egg? You make me sick, Manda. Cry about it now! Oh, the poor little
birdie lost its egg," he whined in falsetto voice.

"You--you--I guess I won't wait for God to punish you, Philip Reist."
With the words she grabbed and sat him in the water. "You need
something _right now_ to make you remember not to take eggs from
nests. And here it is! When you want to do it after this just think of
the day I sat you down in the crick. I'm goin' to tell Mom on you, too,
that's what I am."

"Yea, tattle-tale, girls are all tattle-tales!"

He struggled to escape but the hold of his sister was vise-like.

"Will you leave nests alone?" she demanded.

"Ah, who wants to steal eggs? I just brought you one 'cause I thought
you'd like it."

"Well, I don't. So let the eggs where they belong," she said as she
relaxed her clasp and he rose.

"Now look at us," he began, then the funny spectacle of wet clothes
sent each laughing.

"Gee," he said, "won't we get Sam Hill from Mom?"

"What's Sam Hill?" she asked. "And where do you learn such awful slang?
Abody can hardly understand you half the time. Mom says you should stop
it."

"Yea, that reminds me, Manda, what I come for. Mom said you're to come
in and get your dresses tried on. And mebbe you'd like to know that
Aunt Rebecca's here again. She just come and is helpin' to sew and if
she sees our clothes wet--oh, yea!"

"Oh yea," echoed Amanda with the innocent candor of a twelve-year-old.
"Aunt Rebecca--is she here again? Ach, if she wasn't so cranky I'd be
glad still when she comes, but you know how she acts all the time."

"Um-uh. Uncle Amos says still she's prickly like a chestnut burr.
Jiminy crickets, she's worse'n any burr I ever seen!"

"Well," the girl said thoughtfully, "but chestnut burrs are like velvet
inside. Mebbe she'd be nice inside if only abody had the dare to find
out."

"Ach, come on," urged the boy, impatient at the girl's philosophy. "Mom
wants you to fit. Come on, get pins stuck in you and then I'll laugh.
Gee, I'm glad I'm not a girl! Fittin' dresses on a day like this--whew!
"

"Well," she tossed her red head proudly, "I'm glad I'm one!" A sudden
thought came to her--"Come in, Phil, while I fit and then we'll set in
the kitchen and count how often Aunt Rebecca says, My goodness."

"Um-uh," he agreed readily, "come on, Manda. That'll be peachy."

The children laughed in anticipation of a good time as they ran through
the hot sun of the pasture lot, up the narrow path along the cornfield
fence and into the back yard of their home.

The Reist farm with its fine orchards and great fields of grain was
manifestly the home of prosperous, industrious farmers. From its big
gardens were gathered choice vegetables to be sold in the famous
markets of Lancaster, five miles distant. The farmhouse, a big square
brick building of old-fashioned design, was located upon a slight
elevation and commanded from its wide front porch a panoramic view of a
large section of the beautiful Garden Spot of America.

The household consisted of Mrs. Reist, a widow, her two children, her
brother Amos Rohrer, who was responsible for the success of the farm,
and a hired girl, Millie Hess, who had served the household so long and
faithfully that she seemed an integral part of the family.

Mrs. Reist was a sweet-faced, frail little woman, a member of the
Mennonite Church. She wore the plain garb adopted by the women of that
sect--the tight-fitting waist covered by a pointed shoulder cape, the
full skirt and the white cap upon smoothly combed, parted hair. Her
red-haired children were so like their father had been, that at times
her heart contracted at sight of them. His had been a strong, buoyant
spirit and when her hands, like Moses' of old, had required steadying,
he had never failed her. At first his death left her helpless and
discouraged as she faced the task of rearing without his help the two
young children, children about whom they had dreamed great dreams and
for whom they had planned wonderful things. But gradually the widowed
mother developed new courage, and though frail in body grew brave in
spirit and faced cheerfully the rearing of Amanda and Philip.

The children had inherited the father's strength, his happy
cheerfulness, his quick-to-anger and quicker-to-repent propensity, but
the mother's gentleness also dwelt in them. Laughing, merry, they sang
their way through the days, protesting vehemently when things went
contrary to their desires, but laughing the next moment in the
irresponsible manner of youth the world over. That August day the
promise of fun at Aunt Rebecca's expense quite compensated for the
unpleasantness of her visit.

Aunt Rebecca Miller was an elder sister to Mrs. Reist, so said the
inscription in the big family Bible. But it was difficult to understand
how the two women could have been mothered by one person.

Millie, the hired girl, expressed her opinion freely to Amanda one day
after a particularly trying time with the old woman. "How that Rebecca
Miller can be your mom's sister now beats me. She's more like a wasp
than anything I ever seen without wings. It's sting, sting all the time
with her; nothin' anybody does or says is just right. She's
faultfindin' every time she comes. It wonders me sometimes if she'll
like heaven when she gets up there, or if she'll see some things she'd
change if she had her way. And mostly all the plain people are so nice
that abody's got to like 'em, but she's not like the others, I guess.
Most every time she comes she makes me mad. She's too bossy. Why,
to-day when I was fryin' doughnuts she bothered me so that I just
wished the fat would spritz her good once and she'd go and leave me be."

It will be seen that Millie felt free to voice her opinions at all
times in the Reist family. She was a plain-faced, stout little woman of
thirty-five, a product of the Pennsylvania Dutch country. Orphaned at
an early age she had been buffeted about sorely until the happy day she
entered the Reist household. Their kindness to her won her heart and
she repaid them by a staunch devotion. The Reist joys, sorrows,
perplexities and anxieties were shared by her and she naturally came in
for a portion of Aunt Rebecca's faultfinding.

Cross-grained and trying, Rebecca Miller was unlike the majority of the
plain, unpretentious people of that rural community. In all her years
she had failed to appreciate the futility of fuss, the sin of useless
worry, and had never learned the invaluable lesson of minding her own
business. "She means well," Mrs. Reist said in conciliatory tones when
Uncle Amos or the children resented the interference of the dictatorial
relative, but secretly she wondered how Rebecca could be so--so--she
never finished the sentence.

"Well, my goodness, here she comes once!" Amanda heard her aunt's
rasping voice as they entered the house.

Stifling an "Oh yea" the girl walked into the sitting-room.

"Hello, Aunt Rebecca," she said dutifully, then turned to her mother--
"You want me?"

"My goodness, your dress is all wet in the back!" Aunt Rebecca said
shrilly. "What in the world did you do?"

Before she could reply Philip turned about so his wet clothes were on
view. "And you too!" cried the visitor. "My goodness, what was you two
up to? Such wet blotches like you got!" "We were wadin' in the crick,"
Amanda said demurely, as her mother smoothed the tousled red hair back
from the flushed forehead.

"My goodness! Wadin' in the crick in dog days!" exploded Aunt Rebecca.

"Now for that she'll turn into a doggie, ain't, Mom?" said the boy
roguishly.

Aunt Rebecca looked over her steel-rimmed spectacles at the two
children who were bubbling over with laughter. "I think," she said
sternly, "people don't learn children no manners no more."

"Ach," the mother said soothingly, "you mustn't mind them. They get so
full of laughin' even when we don't see what's to laugh at."

"Yes," put in Amanda, "the Bible says it's good to have a merry heart
and me and Phil's got one. You like us that way, don't you, Mom?"

 "Yes," the mother agreed. "Now you go put on dry things, then I want
to fit your dresses. And, Philip, are you wet through?"

"Naw. These thick pants don't get wet through if I rutch in water an
hour. Jiminy pats, Mom, girls are delicate, can't stand a little
wettin'."

"You just wait, Phil," Amanda called to him as she ran up-stairs,
"you're gettin' some good wettin' yet. I ain't done with you."

"Cracky, who's afraid?" he called.

A little later the girl appeared in dry clothes.

"Ach," she said, "I forgot to wash my hands. I better go out to the
pump and clean 'em so I don't get my new dresses dirty right aways."

She ran to the pump on the side porch and jerked the handle up and
down, while her brother followed and watched her, defiance in his eyes.

"Well," she said suddenly, "if you want it I'll give it to you now."
With that she caught him and soused his head in the tin basin that
stood in the trough. "One for duckin' me in the crick, and another for
stealin' that bird's egg, and a third to learn you some sense." Before
he could get his breath she had run into the house and stood before her
mother ready for the fitting. "I like this goods, Mom," she told the
mother as the new dress was slipped over her head. "I think the brown
goes good with my red hair, and the blue gingham is pretty, too. Only
don't never buy me no pink nor red."

"I won't. Not unless your hair turns brown."

"My goodness, but you spoil her," came the unsolicited opinion of Aunt
Rebecca. "When I was little I wore what my mom bought me, and so did
you. We would never thought of sayin', 'Don't get me this or that.'"

"But with red hair it's different. And as long as blue and brown and
colors Amanda likes don't cost more than those she don't want I can't
see why she shouldn't have what she wants."

"Well, abody wonders what kind o' children plain people expect to raise
nowadays with such caterin' to their vanity."

Mrs. Reist bit her lips and refrained from answering. The expression of
joy on the face of Amanda as she looked down at her new dress took away
the sting of the older woman's words. "I want," the mother said softly,
"I want my children to have a happy childhood. It belongs to them. And
I want them to remember me for a kind mom."

"Ach, Mom, you _are_ a good mom." Amanda leaned over the mother,
who was pinning the hem in the new dress, and pressed a kiss on the top
of the white-capped head. "When I grow up I want to be like you. And
when I'm big and you're old, won't you be the nicest granny!"

Aunt Rebecca suddenly looked sad and meek. Perhaps a partial
appreciation of what she missed by being childless came to her. What
thrills she might have known if happy children ran to her with shouts
of "Granny!" But she did not carry the thread of thought far enough to
analyze her own actions and discover that, though childless, she could
attract the love of other people's children if she chose. The tender
moment was fleet. She looked at Amanda and Philip and saw in them only
two children prone to evil, requiring stern disciplining.

"Now don't go far from the house," said Mrs. Reist later, "for your
other dress is soon ready to fit. As soon as Aunt Rebecca gets the
pleats basted in the skirt."

"I'll soon get them in. But it's foolishness to go to all that bother
when gathers would do just as good and go faster."

Amanda turned away and a moment later she and Phil were seated on the
long wooden settee in the kitchen. The boy had silently agreed to a
temporary truce so that the game of counting might be played. He would
pay back his sister some other time. Gee, it was easy to get her goat--
just a little thing like a caterpillar dropped down her neck would make
her holler!

"Gee, Manda, I thought of a bully thing!" the boy whispered. "If that
old crosspatch Rebecca says 'My goodness' thirty times till four
o'clock I'll fetch a tobacco worm and put it in her bonnet. If she
don't say it that often you got to put one in. Huh? Manda, ain't that a
peachy game to play?"

"All right," agreed the girl. "I'll get paper and pencil to keep
count." She slipped into the other room and in a few minutes the two
settled themselves on the settee, their ears straining to hear every
word spoken by the women in the next room.

"My goodness, this thread breaks easy! They don't make nothin' no more
like they used to," came through the open door.

"That's one," said Phil; "make a stroke on the paper. Jiminy Christmas,
that's easy! Bet you we get that paper full of strokes!"

"My goodness, that girl's shootin' up! It wouldn't wonder me if you got
to leave these dresses down till time for school. Now if I was you I'd
make them plenty big and let her grow into 'em. Our mom always done
that."

And so the conversation went on until there were twenty lines on the
paper. The game was growing exciting and, under the stress of it, the
counting on the old settee rose above the discreet whisper it was
originally meant to be. "Twenty-one!" cried Amanda. Aunt Rebecca walked
to the door.

"What's you two up to?" she asked. "Oh, you got the hymn-book. My
goodness, what for you writin' on the hymn-book?" She turned to her
sister. "Ain't you goin' to make 'em stop that? A hymn-book ain't to be
wrote on!"

"Twenty-two," cried Phil, secure in the knowledge that his mother would
not object to their use of the book and safely confident that the aunt
could not dream what they were doing.

"What is twenty-two? Look once, Amanda," said the woman, taking the
mention of the number to refer to a hymn.

The girl opened the book. "Beulah Land," she read, a sudden compunction
seizing her.

"Ach, yes, Beulah Land--I sang that when I was a girl still. My
goodness, abody gets old quick." She sighed and returned to her sewing.

"Twenty-three, countin' the last one," prompted Phil. "Mark it down.
Gee, it's a cinch."

But Amanda looked sober. "Phil, mebbe it ain't right to make fun of her
so and count after how often she says the same thing. She looked kinda
teary when she said that about gettin' old quick."

"Ach, go on," said Philip, too young to appreciate the subtle shades of
feelings or looks. "You can't back out of it now. Gee, what's bitin'
you? It ain't four o'clock yet, and it ain't right, neither, to go back
on a promise. Anyhow, if we don't go on and count up to thirty you got
to put the worm in her bonnet--you said you would--girls are no good,
they get cold feet."

Thus spurred, Amanda resumed the game until the coveted thirty lines
were marked on the paper. Then, the goal reached, it was Phil's duty to
find a tobacco worm.

Supper at the Reist farmhouse was an ample meal. By that time the
hardest portion of the day's labor was completed and the relaxation
from physical toil made the meal doubly enjoyable. Millie saw to it
that there was always appetizing food set upon the big square table in
the kitchen. Two open doors and three screened windows looking out upon
green fields and orchards made the kitchen a cool refuge that hot
August day.

Uncle Amos, a fat, flushed little man, upon whose shoulders rested the
responsibilities of that big farm, sat at the head of the table. His
tired figure sagged somewhat, but his tanned face shone from a vigorous
scrubbing. Millie sat beside Mrs. Reist, for she was, as she expressed
it, "Nobody's dog, to eat alone." She expected to eat with the folks
where she hired. However, her presence at the table did not prevent her
from waiting on the others. She made frequent trips to the other side
of the big kitchen to replenish any of the depleted dishes.

That evening Amanda and Philip were restless.

"What ails you two?" demanded Millie. "Bet you're up to some tricks
again, by the gigglin' of you and the rutchin' around you're doin'! I
just bet you're up to something," she grumbled, but her eyes twinkled.

"Nothin' ails us," declared Phil. "We just feel like laughin'."

"Ach," said Aunt Rebecca, "this dumb laughin' is all for nothin'.
Anyhow, you better not laugh too much, for you got to cry as much as
you laugh before you die."

"Then I'll have to cry oceans!" Amanda admitted. "There'll be another
Niagara Falls, right here in Lancaster County, I'm thinkin'."

"Ach," said Millie, "that's just another of them old superstitions."

"Yes," Aunt Rebecca said solemnly, "nobody believes them no more. But
it's a lot of truth in 'em just the same. I often took notice that as
high as the spiders build their webs in August so high will the snow be
that winter. Nowadays people don't study the almanac or look for signs.
Young ones is by far too smart. The farmers plant their seeds any time
now, beans and peas in the Posey Woman sign and then they wonder why
they get only flowers 'stead of peas and beans. They take up red beets
in the wrong sign and wonder why the beets cook up stringy. The women
make sauerkraut in Gallas week and wonder why it's bitter. I could tell
them what's the matter! There's more to them old women's signs than
most people know. I never yet heard a dog cry at night that I didn't
hear of some one I know dyin' soon after. I wouldn't open an umbrella
in the house for ten dollars--it's bad luck--yes, you laugh," she said
accusingly to Philip. "But you got lots to learn yet. My goodness, when
I think of all I learned since I was as old as you! Of all the new
things in the world! I guess till you're as old as I am there'll be
lots more."

"Sure Mike," said the boy, rather flippantly. "What's all new since you
was little?" he asked his aunt.

"Telephone, them talkin' machines, sewin' machines--anyhow, they were
mighty scarce then--trolleys----"

"Automobiles?"

"My goodness, yes! Them awful things! They scare the life out abody. I
don't go in none and I don't want no automobile hearse to haul me,
neither. I'd be afraid it'd run off."

"Great horn spoon, Aunt Rebecca, but that would be a gay ride," the boy
said, while Amanda giggled and Uncle Amos winked to Millie, who made a
hurried trip to the stove for coffee.

"Ach," came the aunt's rebuke. "You talk too much of that slang stuff.
I guess I'll take the next trolley home," she said, unconscious of the
merriment she had caused. "I'd like to help with the dishes, but I want
to get home before it gets so late for me. Anyhow, Amanda is big enough
to help. When I was big as her I cooked and baked and worked like a
woman. Why, when I was just a little thing, Mom'd tell me to go in the
front room and pick the snipples off the floor and I'd get down and do
it. Nobody does that now, neither. They run a sweeper over the carpets
and wear 'em out."

"But the floors are full of germs," said Amanda.

"Cherms--what are them?"

"Why, dreadful things! I learned about them at school. They are little,
crawly bugs with a lot of legs, and if you eat them or breathe them in
you'll get scarlet fever or diphtheria."

"Ach, that's too dumb!" Aunt Rebecca was unimpressed. "I don't believe
in no such things." With that emphatic remark she stalked to the
sitting-room for her bonnet. She met Phil coming out, his hands in his
pockets. He paused in the doorway as Amanda and her mother joined the
guest.

Aunt Rebecca lifted the black silk bonnet carefully from the little
table and Amanda shifted nervously from one foot to the other. If only
Aunt Rebecca wouldn't hold the bonnet so the worm would fall to the
floor! Then the woman gave the stiff headgear a dexterous turn and the
squirming thing landed on her head.

"My goodness! My goodness!" she cried as something soft brushed her
cheek. Intently inquisitive, she stooped and picked from the floor a
fat, green, wriggling tobacco worm.

"One of them cherms, I guess, Amanda, ain't?" she said as she looked
keenly at the child.

Amanda blushed and was silent. Philip was unable to hide his guilt.
"Now, when did tobacco worms learn to live in bonnets?" she asked the
boy as she eyed him reproachfully.

Mrs. Reist looked hurt. Her gentle reproof, "Children, I'm ashamed of
you!" cut deeper with Amanda than the scolding of Aunt Rebecca--"You're
a bad pair! Almost you spoiled me my good bonnet. If I'd squeezed that
worm on my cap it would have ruined it! My goodness, you both need a
good spankin', that's what. Too bad you ain't got a pop to learn you!"

"It was only for fun, Aunt Rebecca," said Amanda, truly ashamed. But
Phil put his hand over his mouth to hide a grin.

"Fun--what for fun is that--to be so disrespectful to an old aunt? And
you, Philip, ain't one bit ashamed. Your mom just ought to make you
hunt all the worms in the whole tobacco patch. My goodness, look at
that clock! Next with this dumb foolin' I'll miss that trolley yet. I
must hurry myself now."

"I'm sorry, Aunt Rebecca," Amanda said softly, eager to make peace with
the woman, whom she knew to be kind, though a bit severe.

"Ach, I don't hold no spite. But I think it's high time you learn to
behave. Such a big girl like you ought to help her brother be good, not
learn him tricks. Boys go to the bad soon enough. I'm goin' now," she
addressed Mrs. Reist, "and you let me know when you boil apple butter
and I'll come and help stir."

"All right, Rebecca. I hope the children will behave and not cut up
like to-day. You are always so ready to help us--I can't understand why
they did such a thing. I'm ashamed."

"Ach, it's all right, long as my bonnet ain't spoiled. If that had
happened then there'd be a different kind o' bird pipin'."

After she left Philip proceeded to do a Comanche Indian dance--in which
Amanda joined by being pulled around the room by her dress skirt--in
undisguised hilarity over the departure of their grim relative. Boys
have little understanding of the older person who suppresses their
animal energy and skylarking happiness.

"I ain't had so much fun since Adam was a boy," Philip admitted with
pretended seriousness, while the family smiled at his drollness.



CHAPTER II

THE SNITZING PARTY


Apple-butter boiling on the Reist farm occurred frequently during
August and September. The choice fruit of the orchard was sold at
Lancaster market, but bushels of smaller, imperfect apples lay
scattered about the ground, and these were salvaged for the fragrant
and luscious apple butter. To Phil and Amanda fell the task of
gathering the fruit from the grass, washing them in big wooden tubs
near the pump and placing them in bags. Then Uncle Amos hauled the
apples to the cider press, where they came forth like liquid amber that
dripped into fat brown barrels.

Many pecks of pared fruit were required for the apple-butter boiling.
These were pared--the Pennsylvania Dutch say snitzed--the night before
the day of boiling.

"Mom," Amanda told her mother as they ate supper one night when many
apples were to be pared for the next day's use, "Lyman Mertzheimer seen
us pick apples to-day and he said he's comin' over to-night to the
snitzin' party--d'you care?"

"No. Let him come."

"So," teased Uncle Amos. "Guess in a few years, Manda, you'll be havin'
beaus. This Lyman Mertzheimer, now,--his pop's the richest farmer round
here and Lyman's the only child. He'd be a good catch, mebbe."

"Ach," Amanda said in her quick way, "I ain't thinkin' of such things.
Anyhow, I don't like Lyman so good. He's all the time braggin' about
his pop's money and how much his mom pays for things, and at school he
don't play fair at recess. Sometimes, too, he cheats in school when we
have a spellin' match Friday afternoons. Then he traps head and thinks
he's smart."

Uncle Amos nodded his head. "Chip o' the old block."

"Now, look here," chided Millie, "ain't you ashamed, Amos, to put such
notions in a little girl's head, about beaus and such things?"

The man chuckled. "What's born in heads don't need to be put in."

Amanda wondered what he meant, but her mother and Millie laughed.

"Women's women," he added knowingly. "Some wakes up sooner than others,
that's all! Millie, when you goin' to get you a man? You're gettin'
along now--just about my age, so I know--abody that cooks like you do--
"

"Amos, you just keep quiet! I ain't lookin' for a man. I got a home,
and if I want something to growl at me I'll go pull the dog's tail."

That evening the kitchen of the Reist farmhouse was a busy place.
Baskets of apples stood on the floor. On the table were huge earthen
dishes ready for the pared fruit. Equipped with a paring knife and a
tin pie-plate for parings every member of the household drew near the
table and began snitzing. There was much merry conversation, some in
quaint Pennsylvania Dutch, then again in English tinged with the
distinctive accent. There was also much laughter as Uncle Amos vied
with Millie for the honor of making the thinnest parings.

"Here comes Lyman. Make place for him," cried Amanda as a boy of
fifteen came to the kitchen door.

"You can't come in here unless you work," challenged Uncle Amos.

"I can do that," said the boy, though he seemed none too eager to take
the knife and plate Mrs. Reist offered him.

"You dare sit beside me," Amanda offered.

Lyman smiled his appreciation of the honor, but the girl's eyes
twinkled as she added, "so I can watch that you make thin peelin's."

"That's it," said Uncle Amos. "Boys, listen! Mostly always when a
woman's kind to you there's something back of it."

"Ach, Amos, you're soured," said Millie.

"No, not me," he declared. "I know there's still a few good women in
the world. Ach, yea," he sighed deeply and looked the incarnation of
misery, "soon I'll have three to boss me, with Amanda here growin' like
a weed!"

"Don't you know," Mrs. Reist reminded him, "how Granny used to say that
one good boss is better than six poor workers? You don't appreciate us,
Amos."

"I give up." Uncle Amos spread his hands in surrender. "I give up. When
women start arguin' where's a man comin' in at?"

"I wouldn't give up," spoke out Lyman. "A man ought to have the last
word every time."

"Ach, you don't know women," said Uncle Amos, chuckling.

"A man was made to be master," the youth went on, evidently quoting
some recent reading. "Woman is the weaker vessel."

"Wait till you try to break one," came Uncle Amos's wise comment.

"I," said Lyman proudly, "I could be master of any woman I marry! And I
bet, I dare to bet my pop's farm, that any girl I set out to get I can
get, too. I'd just carry her off or something. 'All's fair in love and
war.'"

"Them two's the same thing, sonny, but you don't know it yet," laughed
Uncle Amos. "It sounds mighty strong and brave to talk like you were a
giant or king, or something, and I only hope I'm livin' and here in
Crow Hill so I can see how you work that game of carryin' off the girl
you like. I'd like to see it, I'd sure like to see it!"

"Oh, Uncle Amos, tell us, did you ever go to see the girls?" asked
Amanda eagerly.

"Did I ever go to see the girls? Um-uh, I did!" The man laughed
suddenly. "I'll tell you about the first time. But now you just go on
with your snitzin'. I can't be breakin' up the party with my yarns. I
was just a young fellow workin' at home on the farm. Theje was a nice
girl over near Manheim I thought I'd like to know better, and so one
night I fixed up to try my luck and go see her. It was in fall and got
dark pretty early, and by the time I was done with the farm work and
dressed in my best suit and half-way over to her house, it was gettin'
dusk. Now I never knew what it was to be afraid till that year my old
Aunty Betz came to spend a month with us and began to tell her spook
stories. She had a long list of them. One was about a big black dog
that used to come in her room every night durin' full moon and put its
paws on her bed. But when she tried to touch it there was nothing
there, and if she'd get up and light the light it would vanish. She
said she always thought he wanted to show her something, take her to
where there was some gold buried, but she never could get the dog to do
it, for she always lighted the light and that scared him away. Then she
said one time they moved into a little house, and once when they had a
lot of company she slept on a bed in the garret. She got awake at night
and found the covers off the bed. She pulled 'em up and something
pulled them off. Then she lighted a candle, but there wasn't a thing
there. So she went back to bed and the same thing happened again; down
went the covers. She got frightened and ran down the stairs and slept
on the floor. But that spook was always a mystery. I used to have
shivers chasin' each other up and down my back so fast I didn't know
how to sit up hardly when she was tellin' them spook stories. But she
had one champion one about a man she knew who was walkin' along the
country road at night and something black shot up in front of him, and
when he tried to catch it and ran after it, he rolled into a fence, and
when he sat up, the spook was gone, but there was a great big hole by
the fence-post near him, and in the hole was a box of money. She could
explain that ghost; it was the spirit of the person who had buried the
money, and he had to help some person find it so that he could have
peace in the other world. Well, as I said, I was goin' along the road
on the way to see that girl, and it was about dark when I got to the
lane of her house. I was a little excited, for it was my first trial at
the courtin' business. Aunty Betz's spook stories made me kinda shaky
in the dark, so it's no wonder I jumped when something black ran across
the road and stood by the fence as I came along. I remembered her story
of the man who found the gold, and I thought I'd see whether I could
have such luck, so I ran to the black thing and made a grab--and--it
was a skunk! Well,"--after the laughter died down--"I didn't get any
gold, but I got something! I yelled, and the girl I started to call on
heard me and come to the door. I hadn't any better sense than to go up
to her. But before I could explain, the skunk's weapon told the tale.
'You clear out of here,' she hollered; 'who wants such a smell in the
house!' I cleared out, and when I got home Mom was in bed, but Pop was
readin' the paper in the kitchen. I opened the door. 'Clear out of
here,' he ordered;' who wants such a smell in the house! Go to the
wood-shed and I'll get you soap and water and other clothes.' So I went
to the wood-shed, and he came out with a lantern and water and clothes
and I began to scrub. After I was dressed we went to the barn-yard and
he held the lantern while I dug a deep hole, and the clothes, my best
Sunday clothes, went down into the ground and dirt on top. And that
settled courtin' for a while with me."

Uncle Amos's story _had_ interfered with the snitzing.

"Say," said Millie, "how can abody snitz apples when you make 'em laugh
till the tears run down over the face?"

"Oh, come on," cried Amanda, "I just thought of it--let's tell fortunes
with the peelin's! Everybody peel an apple with the peelin' all in one
piece and then throw it over the right shoulder, and whatever letter it
makes on the floor is the initial of the person you're goin' to marry."

"All right. Now, Millie, no cheatin'," teased Uncle Amos. "Don't you go
peel yours so it'll fall into a Z, for I know that Zach Miller's been
after you this long while already."

"Ach, him? He's as ugly as seven days' rainy weather."

"Ach, shoot it," said Phil, disgust written on his face as he threw a
paring over his shoulder; "mine always come out an S. Guess that's the
only letter you can make. S for Sadie, Susie--who wants them? That's a
rotten way to tell fortunes!"

"Now look at mine, everybody!" cried Amanda as she flung her long apple
paring over her shoulder.

"It's an M," shouted Phil. "Mebbe for Martin Landis. Jiminy Christmas,
he's a pretty nice fellow. If you can hook him----"

"M stands for Mertzheimer," said Lyman proudly. "I guess it means me,
Amanda, so you better begin to mind me now when we play at recess at
school and spell on my side in the spelling matches."

"Huh," she retorted ungraciously, "Lyman Mertzheimer, you ain't the
only M in Lancaster County!"

"No," he replied arrogantly, "but I guess that poor Mart Landis don't
count. He's always tending one of his mom's babies--some nice beau he'd
make! If he ever goes courting he'll have to take along one of the
little Landis kids, I bet."

Phil laughed, but Amanda flushed in anger. "I think that's just grand
of Martin to help his mom like that," she defended. "Anyhow, since she
has no big girls to help her."

"He washes dishes. I saw him last week with an apron on," said Lyman,
contempt in his voice.

"Wouldn't you do that for your mom if she was poor and had a lot of
children and no one to help her?" asked the girl.

"Not me! I wouldn't wash dishes for no one! Men aren't made for that."

"Then _I_ don't think much of _you_, Lyman Mertzheimer!"
declared Amanda with a vigorous toss of her red head.

"Come, come," Mrs. Reist interrupted, "you mustn't quarrel. Of course
Lyman would help his mother if she needed him."

Amanda laughed and friendliness was once more restored.

When the last apple was snitzed Uncle Amos brought some cold cider from
the spring-house, Millie fetched a dish of cookies from the cellar, and
the snitzing party ended in a feast.

That night Mrs. Reist followed Amanda up the stairs to the child's
bedroom. They made a pretty picture as they stood there, the mother
with her plain Mennonite garb, her sweet face encircled by a white cap,
and the little red-haired child, eager, active, her dark eyes glimpsing
dreams as they focused on the distant castles in Spain which were a
part of her legitimate heritage of childhood. The room was like a
Nutting picture, with its rag carpet, old-fashioned, low cherry bed,
covered with a pink and white calico patchwork quilt, its low cherry
bureau, its rush-bottom chairs, its big walnut chest covered with a
hand-woven coverlet gay with red roses and blue tulips. An old-
fashioned room and an old-fashioned mother and daughter--the elder had
seen life, knew its glories and its dangers, had tasted its sweetness
and drained its cups of sorrow, but the child--in her eyes was still
the star-dust of the "trailing clouds of glory."

"Mom," she asked suddenly as her mother unbraided the red hair and
brushed it, "do you like Lyman Mertzheimer?"

"Why--yes---" Mrs. Reist hesitated.

"Ach, I don't mean that way, Mom," the child said wisely. "You always
say abody must like everybody, but I mean like him for real, like him
so you want to be near him. He's good lookin'. At school he's about the
best lookin' boy there. The big girls say he's a regular Dunnis,
whatever that is. But I think sometimes he ain't so pretty under the
looks, the way he acts and all, Mom."

"I know what you mean, Amanda. Your pop used to say still that people
are like apples, some can fool you good. Remember some we peeled
to-night were specked and showed it on the outside, but some were
red and pretty and when you cut in them--"

"They were full of worms or rotten!"

"Yes. It's the hearts of people that makes them beautiful."

"I see, Mom, and I'll mind to remember that. I'm gettin' to know a lot
o' things now, Mom, ain't? I like when you tell me things my pop said.
I'm glad I was big enough to remember him. I know yet what nice eyes he
had, like they was always smilin' at you. I wish he wouldn't died, but
I'm glad he's not dead for always. People don't stay dead like peepies
or birds, do they?"

"No, they'll live again some day." The mother's voice was low, but a
divine trust shone in her eyes. "Life would be nothing if it could end
for us like it does for the birds."

"Millie says the souls of people can't die. That it's with people just
like it's with the apple trees. In winter they look dead and like all
they're good for was to chop down and burn, then in spring they get
green and the flowers come on them and they're alive, and we know
they're alive. I'm glad people are like that, ain't you?"

"Yes." She gathered the child to her arms and kissed the sensitive,
eager little face. Neither Mrs. Reist nor Amanda, as yet, had read
Locksley Hall, but the truth expressed there was echoing in their
souls:

  "Gone forever! Ever? no--for since our dying race began,
  Ever, ever, and forever was the leading light of man.
  Indian warriors dream of ampler hunting grounds beyond the night;
  Even the black Australian dying hopes he shall return, a white.
  Truth for truth, and good for good! The good, the true, the pure, the
    just--
  Take the charm 'Forever' from them, and they crumble into dust."

"Ach, Mom," the child asked a few moments later, "do you mind that
Christmas and the big doll?" An eager light dwelt in the little girl's
eyes as she thought back to the happy time when her big, laughing
father had made one in the family circle.

"Yes." The mother smiled a bit sadly. But Amanda prattled on gaily.

"That was the best Christmas ever I had! You mind how we went to market
in Lancaster, Pop and you and I, near Christmas, and in a window of a
store we saw a great, grand, big doll. She was bigger'n me and had
light hair and blue eyes. I wanted her, and I told you and Pop and
coaxed for you to buy her. Next week when we went to market and passed
the store she was still in the window. Then one day Pop went to
Lancaster alone and when he came home I asked if the doll was still
there, and he said she wasn't in the window. I cried, and was so
disappointed and you said to Pop, 'That's a shame, Philip.' And I
thought, too, it was a shame he let somebody else buy that doll when I
wanted it so. Then on Christmas morning--what do you think--I came
down-stairs and ran for my presents, and there was that same big doll
settin' on the table in the room! Millie and you had dressed her in a
blue dress. Course she wasn't in the window when I asked Pop, for he
had bought her! He laughed, and we all laughed, and we had the best
Christmas. I sat on my little rocking-chair and rocked her, and then
I'd sit her on the sofa and look at her--I was that proud of her."

"That's five, six years ago, Amanda."

"Yes, I was _little_ then. I mind a story about that little
rockin'-chair, too, Mom. It's up in the garret now; I'm too big for it.
But when I first got it I thought it was wonderful fine. Once Katie
Hiestand came here with her mom, and we were playin' with our dolls and
not thinkin' of the chair, and then Katie saw it and sat in it. And
right aways I wanted to set in it, too, and I made her get off. But you
saw it and you told me I must not be selfish, but must be polite and
let her set in it. My, I remember lots of things."

"I'm glad, Amanda, if you remember such things, for I want you to grow
up into a nice, good woman."

"Like you and Millie, ain't? I'm goin' to. I ain't forgot, neither,
that once when I laughed at Katie for saying the Dutch word for
calendar and gettin' all her English mixed with Dutch, you told me it's
not nice to laugh at people. But I forgot it the other day, Mom, when
we laughed at Aunt Rebecca and treated her mean. But she's so cranky
and--and---"

"And she helped sew on your dresses," added the mother.

"Now that was ugly for us to act so! Why, ain't it funny, Mom, it
sounds so easy to say abody should be kind and yet sometimes it's so
hard to do it. When Aunt Rebecca comes next time I'm just goin' to see
once if I can't be nice to her."

"Of course you are. She's comin' to-morrow to help with the apple
butter. But now you must go to sleep or you can't get up early to see
Millie put the cider on. Philip, he's asleep this long while already."

A few minutes later the child was in bed and called a last good-night
to the mother, who stood in the hall, a little lighted lamp in her
hand. Amanda had an eye for beauty and the picture of her mother
pleased her.

"Ach, Mom," she called, "just stand that way a little once, right
there."

"Why?"

"Ach, you look wonderful like a picture I saw once, in that gray dress
and the lamp in your hand. It's pretty."

"Now, now," chided the mother gently, "you go to sleep now.
Good-night."

"Good-night," Amanda called after the retreating figure.



CHAPTER III

BOILING APPLE BUTTER


Amanda rose early the next morning. Apple-butter boiling day was
always a happy one for her. She liked to watch the fire under the big
copper kettle, to help with the ceaseless stirring with a long-handled
stirrer. She thrilled at the breathless moment when her mother tested
the thick, dark contents of the kettle and announced, "It's done."

At dawn she went up the stairs with Uncle Amos to the big attic and
opened and closed doors for him as he carried the heavy copper kettle
down to the yard. Then she made the same trip with Millie and helped to
carry from the attic heavy stone crocks in which to store the apple
butter.

After breakfast she went out to the grassy spot in the rear of the
garden where an iron tripod stood and began to gather shavings and
paper in readiness for the fire. She watched Millie scour the great
copper kettle until its interior shone, then it was lifted on the
tripod, the cider poured into it, and the fire started. Logs were fed
to the flames until a roaring fire was in blast. Several times Millie
skimmed the foam from the cider.

"This is one time when signs don't work," the hired girl confided to
the child. "Your Aunt Rebecca says that if you cook apple butter in the
up-sign of the almanac it boils over easy, but it's the down-sign
to-day, and yet this cider boils up all the time."

"I guess it'll all burn in the bottom," said Amanda, "if it's the
down-sign."

"Not if you stir it good when the snitz are in. That's the time the
work begins. Here's your mom and Philip."

"Ach, Mom,"--Amanda ran to meet her mother--"this here's awful much
fun! I wish we'd boil apple butter every few days."

"Just wait once," said Millie, "till you're a little bigger and want to
go off to picnics or somewhere and got to stay home and help to stir
apple butter. Then you'll not like it so well. Why, Mrs. Hershey was
tellin' me last week how mad her girls get still if the apple butter's
got to be boiled in the hind part of the week when they want to be done
and dressed and off to visit or to Lancaster instead of gettin' their
eyes full of smoke stirrin' apple butter."

Mrs. Reist laughed.

"But," Amanda said with a tender glance at the hired girl, "I guess
Hershey's ain't got no Millie like we to help."

"Ach, pack off now with you," Millie said, trying to frown. "I got to
stop this spoilin' you. You don't think I'd stand in the hot sun and
stir apple butter while you go off on a picnic or so when you're big
enough to help good?"

"But that's just what you would do! I know you! Didn't you spend almost
your whole Christmas savin' fund on me and Phil last year?"

"Ach, you talk too much! Let me be, now, I got to boil apple butter."

Philip ran for several boxes and old chairs and put them under a
spreading cherry tree. "We take turns stirrin'," he explained, "so
those that don't stir can take it easy while they wait their turn.
Jiminy Christmas, guess we'll have a regular party to-day. All of us
are in it, and Aunt Rebecca's comin', and Lyman Mertzheimer, and I
guess Martin Landis, and mebbe some of the little Landis ones and the
whole Crow Hill will be here. Here comes Millie with the snitz!"

The pared apples were put into the kettle, then the stirring commenced.
A long wooden stirrer, with a handle ten feet long, was used, the big
handle permitting the stirrer to stand a comfortable distance from the
smoke and fire.

The boiling was well under way when Aunt Rebecca arrived.

"My goodness, Philip," she began as soon as she neared the fire, "you
just stir half! You must do it all around the bottom of the kettle or
the butter'll burn fast till it's done. Here, let me do it once." She
took the handle from his hands and began to stir vigorously.

"Good!" cried the boy. "Now we can roast apples. Here, comes Lyman up
the road, and Martin Landis and the baby. Now we'll have some fun!" He
pointed to the toad, where Martin Landis, a neighbor boy, drew near
with his two-year-old brother on his arm.

"But you keep away from the fire," ordered Aunt Rebecca.

The children ran off to the yard to greet the newcomers and soon came
back joined by Lyman and Martin and the ubiquitous baby.

"I told you," Lyman said with mocking smiles, "that Martin would have
to bring the baby along."

Martin Landis was fifteen, but hard work and much responsibility had
added to him wisdom and understanding beyond his years. His frank,
serious face could at times assume the look of a man of ripened
experience. At Lyman's words it burned scarlet. "Ach, go on," he said
quietly; "it'd do you good if you had a few to carry around; mebbe then
you wouldn't be such a dude."

That brought the laugh at the expense of the other boy, who turned
disdainfully away and walked to Aunt Rebecca with an offer to stir the
apple butter.

"No, I'll do it," she said in a determined voice.

"Give me the baby," said Mrs. Reist, "then you children can go play."
The little tot ran to her outstretched arms and was soon laughing at
her soft whispers about young chickens to feed and ducks to see.

"Now," Amanda cried happily, "since Mom keeps the baby we'll roast corn
and apples under the kettle."

In spite of Aunt Rebecca's protest, green corn and ripe apples were
soon encased in thick layers of mud and poked upon the glowing bed
under the kettle.

"Abody'd think none o' you had breakfast," she said sternly.

"Ach," said Mrs. Reist, "these just taste better because they're
wrapped in mud. I used to do that at home when I was little."

"Well, I never did. They'll get burned yet with their foolin' round the
fire."

Her prophecy came perilously close to fulfilment later in the day.
Amanda, bending near the fire to turn a mud-coated apple, drew too
close to the lurking flames. Her gingham dress was ready fuel for the
fire. Suddenly a streak of flame leaped up the hem of it. Aunt Rebecca
screamed. Lyman cried wildly, "Where's some water?" But before Mrs.
Reist could come to the rescue Martin Landis had caught the frightened
child and thrown her flat into a dense bed of bean vines near by,
smothering the flames.

Then he raised her gently. Much handling of his younger sisters and
brothers had made him adept with frightened children.

"Come, Manda," he said soothingly, "you're not hurt. Just your dress is
burned a little."

"My hand--it's burned, I guess," she faltered.

Again force of habit swayed Martin. He bent over and kissed the few red
marks on her fingers as he often kissed the bumped heads and scratched
fingers of the little Landis children.

"Ach--" Amanda's hand fluttered under the kiss.

Then a realization of what he had done came to the boy. "Why," he
stammered, "I didn't mean--I guess I oughtn't done that--I wasn't
thinking, Manda."

"Ach, Martin, it's all right. You didn't hurt it none." She
misunderstood him. "See, it ain't hurt bad at all. But, Martin, you
scared me when you threw me in that bean patch! But it put the fire
out. You're smart to think of that so quick."

"Oh, yes," Mrs. Reist found her voice, and the color crept back to her
cheeks again. "Martin, I can't thank you enough."

"Um," Lyman said sneeringly, "now I suppose Martin's a hero."

"So he is!" said the little girl with decision. "He saved my life, and
I ain't forgettin' it neither." Then she sat down by her mother's side
and began to play with the baby.

"Well, guess the fun's over," said Lyman. "You went and spoiled it by
catching fire." He went off in sulky mood.

"My goodness," exclaimed Aunt Rebecca, "mebbe now you'll keep away from
this fire once."

Amanda kept away. The fun of the apple-butter boiling was ended for
her. She sat quietly under the tree while Millie and Aunt Rebecca and
Phil took turns at stirring. She watched passively while Millie poured
pounds of sugar into the boiling mass. She even missed the customary
thrill as some of the odorous contents of the kettle were tested and
the verdict came, "It's done!" The thrills of apple-butter boiling were
as nothing to her now. She still felt the wonder of being rescued from
the fire, rescued by a nice boy with a strong arm and a gentle voice--
what if it was only a boy she had known all her life!--her heart
enshrined its first hero that day.

She forgot the terror that had seized her as the flames licked up her
dress, the scorching touch on her hand was obliterated from her memory
and only the healing gentleness of the kiss remained.

"He kissed my hand," she thought that night as she lay under her
patchwork quilt. "It was just like the stories we read about in school
about the 'knights of old that were brave and bold.'"

She thought of the picture on the schoolhouse wall. Sir Galahad, the
teacher had called it, and read those lovely lines that Amanda
remembered and liked--"My strength is as the strength of ten because my
heart is pure."

Martin was like that!



CHAPTER IV

A VISIT TO MARTIN'S MOTHER


When Amanda awoke the next morning her first thought was of the burnt
hand and its healing kiss. "Why, Martin--ach, Martin--he kissed my
hand," she said softly to herself. "Just like they do in the stories
about knights--knights always kiss their ladies' hands. Ach, I know
what I'll do! I'll play Martin Landis is my knight and I'm his lady
grand. Wish Mom was here, then I'd ask her if she knows anything about
what knights do and how the ladies ought to act to them. But she's in
Lancaster. Mebbe Millie would know. I'll go ask her once."

Millie was baking pies when the girl sought her for the information.

"Say, Millie!"

"Ach, what?" The hired girl brushed the flour from her bare arms and
turned to look at Amanda. "Now I know what you want--you smell the pies
and you want a half-moon sample to eat before it's right cold and get
your stomach upset and your face all pimply. Ain't?"

"No," began the child, then added diplomatically, "why, yes, I do want
that, but that ain't what I come for."

Millie laughed. "Then what? But don't bother me for long. I got lots to
do yet. I want to get the pies all done till your mom gets back."

"Why, Millie, I wondered, do you know anything about knights?"

"Not me. I sleep nights."

"Ach, Millie--knights--the kind you read about, the men that wear
plumes in their hats."

"Feathers, you mean? Why, the only man I ever heard of wearin' a
feather in his hat was Yankee Doodle."

"Ach, Millie, you make me mad! But I guess you don't know. Well, tell
me this--if somebody did something for you and you wanted to show you
'preciated it, what would you do?"

"That's an easy one! I'd be nice to them and do things for them or for
their people. Now you run and let me be. 'Bout half an hour from now
you dare come in for your half-moon pie. Ach, I most forgot! Your mom
said you shall take a little crock of the new apple butter down to Mrs.
Landis."

"A little crock won't go far with all them children."

"Ach, yes. It'll smear a lot o' bread. I'll pack it in a basket so you
can carry it easy. Better put on your sunbonnet so your hair won't burn
red."

[Illustration: The rhubarb leaf parasol]

"Redder, you mean, ain't? But I won't need a bonnet. I'll take my new
parasol."

"Parasol," echoed Millie. "Now what---"

But Amanda ran away, laughing, and returned in a few minutes holding a
giant rhubarb leaf over her head. "Does the green silk of my parasol
look good with my hair?" she asked with an exaggerated air of grandeur.

"Go on, now," Millie said, laughing, "and don't spill that apple butter
or you'll get parasol."

With a merry good-bye Amanda set off, the basket upon her arm, one hand
grasping the red stem of the rhubarb parasol while the great green leaf
flopped up and down upon her head in cool ministration.

Down the sunny road she trudged, spasmodically singing bits of gay
songs, then again talking to herself. "This here is a dandy parasol.
Cooler'n a real one and lots nicer'n a bonnet or a hat. Only I wish it
was bigger, so my arms would be covered, for it's hot out to-day."

When she reached the little red brick country schoolhouse, half-way
between her home and the Landis farm, she paused in the shade of a
great oak that grew in the school-yard.

"Guess I'll rest the apple butter a while in this shade," she said to
herself, "and pick a bouquet for my knight's mom."  From the grassy
roadside she gathered yellow and gold butter-and-eggs, blue spikes of
false dragon's head, and edged them with a lacy ruffle of wild carrot
flowers.

"There, that's grand!" she said as she held the bouquet at arm's length
and surveyed it carefully. "I'll hold it out, just so, and I'll say to
Mrs. Landis, 'Mother of my knight, I salute you!' I know she'll be
surprised. Mebbe I might tell her just how brave her Martin is and how
I made him a knight. She'll be glad. It must be a satisfaction to have
a boy a knight." She smiled in happy anticipation of the wonderful
message she was going to bring Mrs. Landis. Then she replaced the
rhubarb parasol over her head, picked up the basket, and went down the
country road to the Landis farm.

"It's good Landis's don't live far from our place," she thought. "My
parasol's wiltin'."

Like the majority of houses in the Crow Hill section of country, the
Landis house was set in a frame of green trees and old-fashioned flower
gardens. It flaunted in the face of the passer-by an old-time front
yard. The wide brick walk that led straight from the gate to the big
front porch was edged on both sides with a row of bricks placed corners
up. On either side of the walk were bushes, long since placed without
the discriminating eye of a landscape gardener but holding in their
very randomness a charm unrivaled by any precise planting. Mock-orange
bushes and lilacs towered above the low deutzias, while masses of
zinnias, petunias, four-o'clocks, and a score of other old-fashioned
posies crowded against each other in the long beds that edged the walks
and in the smaller round beds that were dotted here and there in the
grass. Jaded motorists from the city drove their cars slowly past the
glory of the Landis riot of blossoms.

As Amanda neared the place she looked ruefully at her knot of wild
flowers. "She's got so many pretty ones," she thought. "But, ach, I
guess she'll like these here, too, long as they're a present."

Two of the Landis children ran to greet Amanda as she opened the gate
and entered the yard.

"I'll lay my parasol by the gate," she said. "Where's your mom?"

"In the kitchen, cannin' blackberries," said little Henry.

As Amanda rounded the corner of the house, the two children clinging to
her arm, Mrs. Landis came to the kitchen door.

"Mother of my knight, I salute you," said Amanda, making as low a bow
as the two barnacle children, the bouquet and the basket with its crock
of apple butter, would allow.

"What," laughed Mrs. Landis. "Now what was that you said? The children
make so much noise I can't hear sometimes. Henry, don't hang so on
Amanda's arm, it's too hot."

"I said--why, I said--I have some apple butter for you that Mom sent
and I picked a bouquet for you," the child replied, her courage
suddenly gone from her.

"Now, ain't that nice! Come right in." The woman held the screen door
open for the visitor.

Mrs. Landis, mother of the imaginary knight and of six other children,
was a sturdy, well-built woman, genial and good-natured, as stout
people are reputed to be. In spite of hard work she retained a look of
youthfulness about her which her plain Mennonite dress and white cap
accentuated. An artist with an appreciative eye might have said that
the face of that mother was like a composite picture of all the
Madonnas of the old masters--tender, love-lighted yet far-seeing and
reverent.

Amanda had always loved Mrs. Landis and spent many hours in her home,
attracted by the baby--there always was one, either in arms or just
wobbling about on chubby little legs.

"Now ain't it nice of your mom to send us that new apple butter! And
for you to pick the flowers for me! Sattie for both. I say still that
the wild flowers beat the ones on the garden beds. And how pretty you
fixed them!"

"Mom, Mom," whispered little Henry, "dare I smear me a piece of bread?"

"Yes, if you don't make crumbs."

"Oh, Mom," cried Mary Landis, who came running in from the yard. "What
d'you think? Manda left her green parasol out by the front gate and
Henry's chewed the handle off of it!"

"Chewed the handle off a parasol--what--how?" said the surprised
mother.

Amanda laughed. "But don't you worry about it, Mrs. Landis," she said,
"for it was a rhubarb parasol."

"Oh!" A merry laugh followed the announcement about the edible parasol
handle and Mrs. Landis went back to spreading thick slices of bread
with apple butter while three pairs of eager hands were reaching out to
her.

A tiny wail which soon grew in volume sounded from a room in the front
of the house.

"The baby's awake," said Amanda. "Dare I fetch him?"

"Yes. Go right in."

Amanda went through two rooms and came to a semi-darkened side room
where the smallest Landis was putting forth a loud protest at his
fancied neglect.

"Come on, Johnny, don't cry no more. Manda's goin' to take you--see!"
She raised the baby, who changed from crying to laughter.

"Ain't he dear!" Amanda said as she brought the baby into the kitchen.
"And so bright he is for not quite six months old. I remember how old
he is because it was on my mom's last birthday in March that Millie
said you had another baby and I remember, too, that Aunt Rebecca was
there and she said, 'What, them Landis's got another baby! Poor thing!'
I asked Mom why she said that and she thought Aunt Rebecca meant that
babies make so much work for you."

"Ach, abody works anyhow, might as well work tendin' babies. Put your
cheek against Johnny's face once, Amanda."

Amanda bent her head and touched the soft cheek of the child. "Why,"
she said, "ain't it soft, now! Ain't babies just too dear and sweet! I
guess Aunt Rebecca don't know how nice they are."

"Poor thing," said Mrs. Landis.

"Poor--she ain't poor!" Amanda corrected her. "She owns two farms and
got lots of money besides."

"But no children--poor thing," repeated Mrs. Landis.

Amanda looked at her, wondering.

"Amanda," said the white-capped mother as she wiped some blackberry
juice from little Henry's fingers, "abody can have lots of money and
yet be poor, and others can have hardly any money and yet be rich. It's
all in what abody means by rich and what kind of treasures you set
store by. I wouldn't change places with your rich Aunt Rebecca for all
the farms in Lancaster County."

"Well, I guess not!" Amanda could understand her attitude. "And Mom and
Millie say still you got such nice children. But Martin now," she said
with assumed seriousness as she saw him step on the porch to enter the
kitchen--"your Martin pushed me in a bean patch yesterday and I fell
down flat on my face."

"Martin!" his mother began sternly. "What for did you act so?"

"Amanda, don't you tell!" the boy commanded, his face flushing. "Don't
you dare tell!"

"I got to now, I started it. Ach, Mrs. Landis, you dare be proud of
him! My dress caught fire and none of us had sense but him. He
smothered it by throwin' me in the bean patch and he--he's a hero!"

"A hero!" cried little Henry. "Mart's a hero!" while the mother smiled
proudly.

"Manda Reist," Martin spoke quickly as he edged to the door. "Amanda
Reist, next time--next time I'll--darn it, I'll just let you burn up!"
He ran from the room and disappeared round the corner of the house.

"Why"--Amanda's lips trembled--"ain't he mean! I just wanted to be nice
to him and he got mad."

"Don't mind him," soothed the mother. "Boys are funny. He's not mad at
you, he just don't like too much fuss made over what he done. But all
the time he's tickled all over to have you call him a hero."

"Oh--are boys like that? Phil's not. But he ain't a knight. I guess
knights like to pretend they're very modest even if they're full of
pride." Mrs. Landis was too busy putting blackberries into the jars to
catch the import of the child's words. The word knight escaped her
hearing.

"Well, I must go now," said the small visitor. "I'll come again."

"All right, do, Amanda."

She put the baby in its coach, took up the empty basket, and after
numerous good-byes to the children went down the road to her home. The
rhubarb parasol gone, the sun beat upon her uncovered head but she was
unmindful of the intense heat. Her brain was wholly occupied with
thoughts of Martin Landis and his strange behavior.

"Umph," she decided finally, "men _are_ funny things! I'm just
findin' it out. And I guess knights are queerer'n others yet! Wonder if
Millie kept my half-moon pie or if Phil sneaked it. Abody's just got to
watch out for these men folks!"



CHAPTER V

AT AUNT REBECCA'S HOUSE


Several weeks after the eventful apple-butter boiling at the Reist
farm, Aunt Rebecca invited the Reist family to spend a Sunday at her
home.

"I ain't goin', Mom," Philip announced. "I don't like it there. Dare I
stay home with Millie?"

"Mebbe Millie wants to come along," suggested his mother.

"Ach, I guess not this time. Just you go and Phil and I'll stay and
tend the house and feed the chickens and look after things."

"Well, I'm goin'!" spoke up Amanda. "Aunt Rebecca's funny and bossy but
I like to go to her house, it's so little and cute, everything."

"Cute," scoffed the boy. "Everything's cute to a girl. You dare go, I
won't! Last time I was there I picked a few of her honeysuckle flowers
and pulled that stem out o' them to get the drop of honey that's in
each one, and she caught me and slapped my hand--mind you! Guess next
she'll be puttin' up some scare-bees to keep the bees off her flowers.
But say, Manda, if she gives you any of them little red and white
striped peppermint candies like she does still, sneak me a few."

"Humph! You don't go to see her but you want her candy! I'd be ashamed,
Philip Reist!"

"Hush, hush," warned Mrs. Reist. "Next you two'll be fightin', and on a
Sunday, too."

The girl laughed. "Ach, Mom, guess we both got the tempers that goes
with red hair. But it's Sunday, so I'll be good. I'm glad we're goin'
to Aunt Rebecca. That's a nice drive."

Aunt Rebecca lived alone in a cottage at the edge of Landisville, a
beautiful little town several miles from the Reist farm at Crow Hill.
During her husband's life they lived on one of the big farms of
Lancaster County, where she slaved in the manual labor of the great
fields. Many were the hours she spent in the hot sun of the tobacco
fields, riding the planter in the early spring, later hoeing the rich
black soil close to the little young plants, in midsummer finding and
killing the big green tobacco worms and topping and suckering the
plants so that added value might be given the broad, strong leaves.
Then later in the summer she helped the men to thread the harvested
stalks on laths and hang them in the long open shed to dry.

Aunt Rebecca had married Jonas Miller, a rich man. All the years of
their life together on the farm seemed a visible verification of the
old saying, "To him that hath shall be given." A special Providence
seemed to hover over their acres of tobacco. Storms and destructive
hail appeared to roam in a swath just outside their farm. The Jonas
Miller tobacco fields were reputed to be the finest in the whole Garden
Spot county, and the Jonas Miller bank account grew correspondingly
fast. But the bank account, however quickly it increased, failed to
give Jonas Miller and his wife full pleasure, unless, as some say, the
mere knowledge of possession of wealth can bring pleasure to miserly
hearts. For Jonas Miller was, in the vernacular of the Pennsylvania
Dutch, "almighty close." Millie, Reists' hired girl, said," That there
Jonas is too stingy to buy long enough pants for himself. I bet he gets
boys' size because they're cheaper, for the legs o' them always just
come to the top o' his shoes. Whoever lays him out when he's dead once
will have to put pockets in his shroud for sure! And he's made poor
Becky just like him. It ain't in her family to be so near; why, Mrs.
Reist is always givin' somebody something! But mebbe when he dies once
and his wife gets the money in her hand she'll let it fly."

However, when Jonas Miller died and left the hoarded money to his wife
she did not let it fly. She rented the big farm and moved to the little
old-fashioned house in Landisville--a little house whose outward
appearance might have easily proclaimed its tenant poor. There she
lived alone, with occasional visits and visitors to break the monotony
of her existence.

That Sunday morning of the Reist visit, Uncle Amos hitched the horse to
the carriage, tied it by the front fence of the farm, then he went
up-stairs and donned his Sunday suit of gray cloth. Later he brought
out his broad-brimmed Mennonite hat and called to Amanda and her mother,
"I'm ready. Come along!"

Mrs. Reist wore a black cashmere shawl pinned over her plain gray lawn
dress and a stiff black silk bonnet was tied under her chin. Amanda
skipped out to the yard, wearing a white dress with a wide buff sash. A
matching ribbon was tied on her red hair.

"Jiminy," whistled Uncle Amos as she ran to him and swung her leghorn
hat on its elastic. "Jiminy, you're pretty---"

"Oh, am I, Uncle Amos?" She smiled radiantly. "Am I really pretty?"

"Hold on, here!" He tried to look very sober. "If you ain't growin' up
for sure! Lookin' for compliments a'ready, same as all the rest. I was
goin' to say that you're pretty fancy dressed for havin' a Mennonite
mom."

"Oh, Uncle Amos!" Amanda laughed and tossed her head so the yellow bow
danced like a butterfly. "I don't believe you at all! You're too good
to be findin' fault like that! Millie says so, too."

"She does, eh? She does? Just what does Millie say about me now?"

"Why, she said yesterday that you're the nicest man and have the
biggest heart of any person she knows."

"Um--so! And Millie says that, does she? Um--so! well, well"--a glow of
joy spread in his face and stained his neck and ears. Fortunately, for
his future peace of mind, the child did not notice the flush. A
swallowtail butterfly had flitted among the zinnias and attracted the
attention of Amanda so it was diverted from her uncle. But he still
smiled as Millie opened the front door and she and Mrs. Reist stepped
on the porch.

Millie, in her blue gingham dress and her checked apron, her straight
hair drawn back from her plain face, was certainly no vision to cause
the heart of the average man to pump faster. But as Amos looked at her
he saw suddenly something lovelier than her face. She walked to the
gate, smoothing the shawl of Mrs. Reist, patting the buff sash of the
little girl.

"Big heart," thought Amos, "it's her got the big heart!"

"Good-bye, safe journey," the hired girl called after them as they
started down the road. "Don't worry about us. Me and Phil can manage
alone. Good-bye."

The road to Landisville led past green fields of tobacco and corn,
large farmhouses where old-fashioned flowers made a vivid picture in
the gardens, orchards and woodland tracts, their green shade calling
invitingly. Once they crossed a wandering little creek whose shallow
waters flowed through lovely meadows where boneset plants were white
with bloom and giant eupatorium lifted its rosy heads. A red-headed
flicker flew screaming from a field as they passed, and a fussy wren
scolded at them from a fence corner.

"She'll have a big job," said Uncle Amos, "if she's goin' to scold
every team and automobile that passes here this mornin'. Such a little
thing to be so sassy!"

As they came to Landisville and drove into the big churchyard there
were already many carriages standing in the shade of the long open shed
and numerous automobiles parked in the sunny yard.

A few minutes later they entered the big brick meeting-house and sat
down in the calm of the sanctuary. The whispers of newcomers drifted
through the open windows, steps sounded on the bare floor of the
church, but finally all had entered and quiet fell upon the place.

The simple service of the Mennonite Church is always appealing and
helpful. The music of voices, without any accompaniment of musical
instrument, the simple prayers and sermons, are all devoid of
ostentation or ornamentation. Amanda liked to join in the singing and
did so lustily that morning. But during the sermon she often fell to
dreaming. The quiet meeting-house where only the calm voice of the
preacher was heard invited the building of wonderful castles in Spain.
Their golden spires reared high in the blue of heaven... she would be a
lady in a trailing, silken gown, Martin would come, a plumed and belted
knight, riding on a pure white steed like that in the Sir Galahad
picture at school, and he'd repeat to her those beautiful words, "My
strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure." Was there
really any truth in that poem? Could one be strong as ten because the
heart was pure? Of course! It had to be true! Martin could be like
that. He'd lift her to the saddle on the pure white horse and they'd
ride away together to one of those beautiful castles in Spain, high up
on the mountains, so high they seemed above the clouds...

Then she came back to earth suddenly. The meeting was over and Aunt
Rebecca stood ready to take them to her home.

The country roads were filled with carriages and automobiles; the
occupants of the former nodded a cordial how-de-do, though most of them
were strangers, but the riders in the motors sped past without a sign
of friendliness.

"My goodness," said Aunt Rebecca, "since them automobiles is so common
abody don't get many how-de-dos no more as you travel along the country
roads. Used to be everybody'd speak to everybody else they'd meet on
the road--here, Amos," she laid a restraining hand upon the reins.
"Stop once! I see a horseshoe layin' in the road and it's got two nails
in it, too. That's powerful good luck! Stop once and let me get it."

Amos chuckled and with a loud "Whoa" brought the horse to a standstill.
Aunt Rebecca climbed from the carriage, picked up the trophy of good
luck and then took her seat beside her brother again, a smile upon her
lined old face.

"That's three horseshoes I have now. I never let one lay. I pick up all
I find and take them home and hang them on the old peach tree in the
back yard. I know they bring good luck. Mebbe if I hadn't picked up all
them three a lot o' trouble would come to me."

"Have it your way," conceded Uncle Amos. "They don't do you no hurt,
anyhow. But, Rebecca," he said as they came within sight of her little
house, "you ought to get your place painted once."

"Ach, my goodness, what for? When it's me here alone. I think the house
looks nice. My flowers are real pretty this year, once. Course, I don't
fool with them like you do. I have the kind that don't take much
tendin' and come up every year without bein' planted. Calico flowers
and larkspur and lady-slippers are my kind. This plantin' and hoein' at
flowers is all for nothin'. It's all right to work so at beans and
potatoes and things you can eat when they grow, but what good are
flowers but to look at! I done my share of hoein' and diggin' and
workin' in the ground. I near killed myself when Jonas lived yet, in
them tobacco patches. I used to say to him still, we needn't work so
hard and slave like that after we had so much money put away, but he
was for workin' as long as we could, and so we kept on till he went. He
used to say money gets all if you begin to spend it and don't earn
more. Jonas was savin'."

"He sure was, that he was," seconded Uncle Amos with a twinkle in his
eyes. "Savin' for you and now you're savin' for somebody that'll make
it fly when you go, I bet. Some day you'll lay down and die and your
money'll be scattered. If you leave me any, Becky," he teased her,
"I'll put it all in an automobile."

"What, them wild things! Road-hogs, I heard somebody call 'em, and I
think it's a good name. My goodness, abody ain't safe no more since
they come on the streets. They go toot, toot, and you got to hop off to
one side in the mud or the ditch, it don't matter to them. I hate them
things! Only don't never take me to the graveyard in one of them."

"By that time," said Uncle Amos, "they'll have flyin' machine hearses;
they'll go faster."

"My goodness, Amos, how you talk! Ain't you ashamed to make fun at your
old sister that way! But Mom always said when you was little that you
seemed a little simple, so I guess you can't help it."

"Na-ha," exulted Amanda, with impish delight. "That's one on you. Aunt
Rebecca ain't so dumb like she lets on sometimes."

"Ach, no," Aunt Rebecca said, laughing. "'A blind pig sometimes finds
an acorn, too.'"

Aunt Rebecca's table, though not lavishly laden as are those of most of
the Pennsylvania Dutch, was amply filled with good, substantial food.
The fried sausage was browned just right, the potatoes and lima beans
well-cooked, the cold slaw, with its dash of red peppers, was tasty and
the snitz pie--Uncle Amos's favorite--was thick with cinnamon, its
crust flaky and brown.

After the dishes were washed Aunt Rebecca said, "Now then, we'll go in
the parlor."

"Oh, in the parlor!" exclaimed Amanda. "Why, abody'd think we was
company. You don't often take us in the parlor."

"Ach, well, you won't make no dirt and I just thought to-day, once, I'd
take you in the parlor to sit a while. It don't get used hardly. Wait
till I open the shutters."

She led the way through a little hall to the front room. As she opened
the door a musty odor came to the hall.

"It smells close," said Aunt Rebecca, sniffing. "But it'll be all right
till I get some screens in." She pulled the tasseled cords of the green
shades, opened the slatted shutters, and a flood of summer light
entered the room. "Ach," she said impatiently as she hammered at one
window, "I can hardly get this one open still, it sticks itself so."
But after repeated thumps on the frame she succeeded in raising it and
placing an old-fashioned sliding screen.

"Now sit down and take it good," she invited.

Uncle Amos sank into an old-fashioned rocker with high back and curved
arms, built throughout for the solid comfort of its occupants. Mrs.
Reist chose an old hickory Windsor chair, Aunt Rebecca selected, with a
sigh of relief, a fancy reed rocker, given in exchange for a book of
trading stamps.

"This here's the best chair in the house and it didn't cost a cent,"
she announced as she rocked in it.

Amanda roamed around the room. "I ain't been in here for long. I want
to look around a little. I like these dishes. I wish we had some like
them." She tiptoed before a corner cupboard filled with antiques.

"Ach, yes," her aunt answered, "mebbe it looks funny, ain't, to have a
glass cupboard in the parlor, but I had no other room for it, the house
is so little. If I didn't think so much of them dishes I'd sold them
a'ready. That little glass with the rim round the bottom of it I used
to drink out of it at my granny's house when I was little. Them dark
shiny dishes like copper were Jonas's mom's. And I like to keep the
pewter, too, for abody can't buy it these days."

Amanda looked up. On the top shelf of the cupboard was a silver lustre
pitcher, a teapot of rose lustre, a huge willow platter with its quaint
blue design, several pewter bowls, a plate with a crude peacock in
bright colors--an array of antiques that would have awakened
covetousness in the heart of a connoisseur.

A walnut pie-crust tilt top table stood in one corner of the room, a
mahogany gateleg occupied the centre, its beauty largely concealed by a
cover of yellow and white checked homespun linen, upon which rested a
glass oil lamp with a green paper shade, a wide glass dish filled with
pictures, an old leather-bound album with heavy brass clasps and
hinges. A rag carpet, covered in places with hooked rugs, added a
proper note of harmony, while the old walnut chairs melted into the
whole like trees in a woodland scene. The whitewashed walls were bare
save for a large square mirror with a wide mahogany frame, a picture
holder made from a palm leaf fan and a piece of blue velvet briar
stitched in yellow, and a cross-stitch canvas sampler framed with a
narrow braid of horsehair from the tail of a dead favorite of long ago.

"What's pewter made of, Aunt Rebecca?" asked the child.

"Why, of tin and lead. And it's a pity they don't make it and use lots
of it like they used to long ago. For you can use pewter spoons in
vinegar and they don't turn black like some of these things that look
like silver but ain't. Pewter is good ware and I think sometimes that
the people that lived when it was used so much were way ahead of the
people to-day. Pewter's the same all through, no thin coatin' of
something shiny that can wear off and spoil the spoons or dishes. It's
old style now but it's good and pretty."

"Yes, that's so," agreed Amanda. It was surprising to the little girl
that the acidulous old aunt could, so unexpectedly, utter beautiful,
suggestive thoughts. Oh, Aunt Rebecca's house was a wonderful place.
She must see more of the treasures in the parlor.

Finally her activity annoyed Aunt Rebecca. "My goodness," came the
command, "you sit down once! Here, look at the album. Mebbe that will
keep you quiet for a while."

Amanda sat on a low footstool and took the old album on her knees. She
uttered many delighted squeals of surprise and merriment as she turned
the thick pages and looked at the pictures of several generations ago.
A little girl with ruffled pantalets showing below her full skirt and a
fat little boy with full trousers reaching half-way between his knees
and his shoetops sent Amanda into a gale of laughter. "Oh, I wish Phil
was here. What funny people!"

"Let me see once," asked Aunt Rebecca. "Why, that's Amos and your mom."

Mrs. Reist smiled and Uncle Amos chuckled. "We're peaches there, ain't?
I guess if abody thinks back right you see there were as many crazy
styles in olden times as there is now."

Tintypes of men and women in peculiar dress of Aunt Rebecca's youth
called forth much comment and many questions from the interested
Amanda. "Are there no pictures in here of you?" she asked her aunt.

"Yes, I guess so. On the last page or near there. That one," she said
as the child found it, a tintype of a young man seated on a vine-
covered seat and a comely young woman standing beside him, one hand
laid upon his shoulder.

"And is that Uncle Jonas?"

"No--my goodness, no! That's Martin Landis."

"Martin Landis? Not my--not the Martin Landis's pop that lives near
us?"

"Yes, that one."

"Why"--Amanda was wide-eyed and curious--"what were you doin' with your
hand on his shoulder so and your picture taken with him?"

Aunt Rebecca laughed. "Ach, I had dare to do that for we was promised
then, engaged they say now."

"You were goin' to marry Martin Landis's pop once?" The girl could not
quite believe it.

"Yes. But he was poor and along came Jonas Miller and he was rich and I
took him. But the money never done me no good. Mebbe abody shouldn't
say it, since he's dead, but Jonas was stingy. He'd squeeze a dollar
till the eagle'd holler. He made me pinch and save till I got so I
didn't feel right when I spent money. Now, since he's gone, I don't
know how. I act so dumb it makes me mad at myself sometimes. If I go to
Lancaster and buy me a whole plate of ice-cream it kinda bothers me. I
keep wonderin' what Jonas'd think, for he used to say that half a plate
of cream's enough for any woman. But mebbe it was to be that I married
Jonas instead of Martin Landis. Martin is a good man but all them
children--my goodness! I guess I got it good alone in my little house
long side of Mrs. Landis with all her children to take care of."

Amanda remembered the glory on the face of Mrs. Landis as she had said,
"Abody can have lots of money and yet be poor and others can have
hardly any money and yet be rich. It's all in what abody means by rich
and what kind of treasures you set store by. I wouldn't change places
with your rich Aunt Rebecca for all the farms in Lancaster County."
Poor Aunt Rebecca, she pitied her! Then she remembered the words of the
memory gem they had analyzed in school last year, "Where ignorance is
bliss 'tis folly to be wise." She could understand it now! So long as
Aunt Rebecca didn't see what she missed it was all right. But if she
ever woke up and really felt what her life might have been if she had
married the poor man she loved--poor Aunt Rebecca! A halo of purest
romance hung about the old woman as the child looked up at her.

"My goodness," the woman broke the spell, "it's funny how old pictures
make abody think back. That old polonaise dress, now," she went on in
reminiscent strain, "had the nicest buttons on. I got some of 'em yet
on my charm string."

"Charm string--what's a charm string?"

"Wait once. I'll show you."

The woman left the room. They heard her tramp about up-stairs and soon
she returned with a long string of buttons threaded closely together
and forming a heavy cable.

"Oh, let me see! Ain't that nice!" exclaimed Amanda. "Where did you
ever get so many buttons and all different?"

"We used to beg them. When I was a girl everybody mostly had a charm
string. I kept puttin' buttons on mine till I was well up in my
twenties, then the string was full and big so I stopped. I used to hang
it over the looking glass in the parlor and everybody that came looked
at it."

Amanda fingered the charm string interestedly. Antique buttons,
iridescent, golden, glimmering, some with carved flowers, others
globules of colored glass, many of them with quaint filigree brass
mounting over colored background, a few G. A. R. buttons from old
uniforms, speckled china ones like portions of bird eggs--all strung
together and each one having a history to the little old eccentric
woman who had cherished them through many years.

"This one Martin Landis give me for the string and this one is from
Jonas' wedding jacket and this pretty blue glass one a girl gave me
that's dead this long a'ready."

"Oh"--Amanda's eyes shone. She turned to her mother, "Did you ever have
a charm string, Mom?"

"Yes. A pretty one. But I let you play with it when you were a baby and
the string got broke and the buttons put in the box or lost."

"Ach, but that spites me. I'd like to see it and have you tell where
the buttons come from. I like old things like that, I do."

"Then mebbe you'd like to see my friendship cane," said Aunt Rebecca.

"Oh, yes! What's that?" Amanda rose from her chair, eager to see what a
friendship cane could be.

"My goodness, sit down! You get me all hoodled up when you act so
jumpy," said the aunt. Then she walked to a corner of the parlor,
reached behind the big cupboard and drew out a cane upon which were
tied some thirty ribbon bows of various colors.

"And is that a friendship cane?" asked Amanda. "What's it for?"

"Ach, it was just such a style, good for nothin' but for the girls of
my day to have a little pleasure with. We got boys and girls to give us
pretty ribbons and we exchanged with some and then we tied 'em on the
cane. See, they're all old kinds o' ribbons yet. Some are double-faced
satin and some with them little scallops at the edge, and they're
pretty colors, too. I could tell the name of every person who give me a
ribbon for that cane. My goodness, lots o' them boys and girls been
dead long a'ready. I guess abody shouldn't hold up such old things so
long, it just makes you feel bad still when you rake 'em out and look
at 'em. Here now, let me put it away, that's enough lookin' for one
day." She spoke brusquely and put the cane into its hiding-place behind
the glass cupboard.

As Amanda watched the stern, unlovely face during the critical,
faultfinding conversation which followed, she thought to herself, "I
just believe that Uncle Amos told the truth when he said that Aunt
Rebecca's like a chestnut burr. She's all prickly on the outside but
she's got a nice, smooth side to her that abody don't often get the
chance to see. Mebbe now, if she'd married Martin Landis's pop she'd be
by now just as nice as Mrs. Landis. It wonders me now if she would!"



CHAPTER VI

SCHOOL DAYS


Mrs. Reist's desire for a happy childhood for her children was easily
realized, especially in the case of Amanda. She had the happy faculty
of finding joy in little things, things commonly called insignificant.
She had a way of taking to herself each beauty of nature, each joy note
of the birds, the airy loveliness of the clouds, and being thrilled by
them.

With Phil and Martin Landis--and the ubiquitous Landis baby--she
explored every field, woods and roadside in the Crow Hill section of
the county. From association with her Phil and Martin had developed an
equal interest in outdoors. The Landis boy often came running into the
Reist yard calling for Amanda and exclaiming excitedly, "I found a
bird's nest! It's an oriole this time, the dandiest thing way out on
the end of a tiny twig. Come on see it!"

Amanda was the moving spirit of that little group of nature students.
Phil and Martin might have never known an oriole from a thrush if she
had not led them along the path of knowledge. Sometimes some of the
intermediate Landis children joined the group. At times Lyman
Mertzheimer sauntered along and invited himself, but his interest was
feigned and his welcome was not always cordial.

"You Lyman Mertzheimer," Amanda said to him one day, "if you want to go
along to see birds' nests you got to keep quiet! You think it's smart
to scare them off the nests. That poor thrasher, now, that you scared
last week! You had her heart thumpin' so her throat most burst. And her
with her nest right down on the ground where we could watch the babies
if we kept quiet. You're awful mean!"

"Huh," he answered, "what's a bird! All this fuss about a dinky brown
bird that can't do anything but flop its wings and squeal when you go
near it. It was fun to see her flop all around the ground."

"Oh, you nasty mean thing, Lyman Mertzheimer"--for a moment Amanda
found no words to express her contempt of him--"sometimes I just hate
you!"

He went off laughing, flinging back the prediction, "But some day
you'll do the reverse, Amanda Reist." He felt secure in the belief that
he could win the love of any girl he chose if he exerted himself to do
so.

The little country school of Crow Hill was necessarily limited in its
curriculum, hence when Amanda expressed a desire to become a teacher it
was decided to send her to the Normal School at Millersville. At that
time she was sixteen and was grown into an attractive girl.

"I know I'm not beautiful," she told her mother one day after a long,
searching survey in the mirror. "My hair is too screaming red, but then
it's fluffy and I got a lot of it. Add to red hair a nose that's a
little pug and a mouth that's a little too big and I guess the
combination won't produce any Cleopatra or any Titian beauty."

"But you forgot the eyes," her mother said tenderly. "They are pretty
brown and look--ach, I can't put it in fine words like you could, but I
mean this: Your eyes are such honest eyes and always look so happy,
like you could see through dark places and find the light and could
look on wicked people and see the good in them and be glad about it.
You keep that look in your eyes and no pretty girl will be lovelier
that you are, Amanda."

"Mother," the girl cried after she had kissed the white-capped woman,
"if my eyes shine it's the faith and love you taught me that's shining
in them."

During the summer preceding Amanda's departure for school there was
pleasant excitement at the Reist farm. Millie was proud of the fact
that Amanda was "goin' to Millersville till fall" and lost no
opportunity to mention it whenever a friend or neighbor dropped in
for a chat.

Aunt Rebecca did not approve of too much education. "Of course," she
put it, "you're spendin' your own money for this Millersville goin',
but I think you'd do better if you put it to bank and give it to Amanda
when she gets married, once. This here rutchin' round to school so long
is all for nothin'. I guess she's smart enough to teach country school
without goin' to Millersville yet."

However, her protests fell heedlessly on the ears of those most
concerned and when the preparation of new clothes began Aunt Rebecca
was the first to offer her help. "It's all for nothin', this school
learnin', but if she's goin' anyhow I can just as well as not help with
the sewin'," she announced and spent a few weeks at the Reist farm,
giving valuable aid in the making of Amanda's school outfit.

Those two weeks were long ones to Philip, who had scant patience with
the querulous old aunt. But Amanda, since she had glimpsed the girlhood
romance of the woman, had a kindlier feeling for her and could smile at
the faultfinding or at least run away from it without retort if it
became too vexatious.

Crow Hill was only an hour's ride from the school at Millersville, so
Amanda spent most of her weekends at home. Each time she had
wonderful tales to tell, at least they seemed wonderful to the little
group at the Reist farmhouse. Mrs. Reist and Uncle Amos, denied in
their youth of more than a very meagre education, took just pride in
the girl who was pursuing the road to knowledge. Philip, boylike,
expressed no pride in his sister, but he listened attentively to her
stories of how the older students played pranks on the newcomers.
Millie was proud of having _our Amanda_ away at school and did not
hesitate to express her pride. She felt sure that before the girl's
three years' course was completed the name of Amanda Reist would shine
above all others on the pages of the Millersville Normal School
records.

"Oh, I've learned a few things about human nature," said Amanda on her
second visit home. "You know I told you last week how nice the older
girls are to the new ones. A crowd of Seniors came into our room the
other day and they were lovely! One of them told me she adored red hair
and she just knew all the girls were going to love me because I have
such a sweet face and I'm so dear--she emphasized every other word! I
wondered what ailed her. She didn't know me well enough to talk like
that. Before they left she began to talk about the Page Literary
Society--'Dear, we're all Pageites, and it's the best, finest society
in the school. We do have such good times. You ought to join. All the
very nicest girls of the school are in it.' I promised to think it
over. Well, soon after they left another bunch of girls came into our
room and they were just as sweet to us. By and by one of them said,
'Dear, we're all in the Normal Literary Society. It's the best society
in the school; all the very nicest girls belong to it. You should join
it.'"

"Ha, electioneering, was they!" said Uncle Amos, laughing. "Well, leave
it to the women. When they get the vote once we men got to pony up. But
which society did you join?"

"Neither. I'm going to wait a while and while I'm waiting I'm having a
glorious time. The Pageites invited me to a fudge party one night, the
Normalites took me for a long walk, a Pageite treated me to icecream
soda one day and a Normalite gave me some real home-made cake the same
afternoon. It's great to be on the fence when both sides are coaxing
you to jump their way."

"Well," said Millie, her face glowing with interest and pride in the
girl, "if you ain't the funniest! I just bet them girls all want you to
come their way. But what kind o' meals do you get?"

"Good, Millie. Of course, though, I haven't any cellar to go to for pie
or any cooky crock filled with sand-tarts with shellbarks on the top."

"Don't you worry, Manda. I'll make you sand-tarts and lemon pie and
everything you like every time you come home still."

"Millie, you good soul! With that promise to help me I'll work like a
Trojan and win some honors at old M.S.N.S. Just watch me!"

Amanda did work. She brought to her studies the same whole-hearted
interest and enthusiasm she evinced in her hunts for wild flowers, she
applied to them the same dogged determination and untiring efforts she
showed in her long search for hidden bird nests, with the inevitable
result that her brain, naturally alert and brilliant, grasped with
amazing celerity both the easy and the hard lessons of the Normal
Training course.

Millie's prediction proved well founded--Amanda Reist stood well in her
classes. In botany she was the preeminent figure of the entire school.
"Ask Amanda Reist, she'll tell you," became the slogan among the
students. "Yellow violets, lady-slippers, wild ginger--she'll tell you
where they grow or get a specimen for you."

When the time for graduation drew near Amanda was able to carry home
the glad news that she ranked third in her class and was chosen to
deliver an oration at the Commencement exercises.

"That I want to hear," declared Millie, "and I'll get a new dress to
wear to it, too."

On the June morning when the Commencement exercises of the First
Pennsylvania State Normal School took place there were hundreds of
happy, eager visitors on the campus at Millersville, and later in the
great auditorium, but none was happier than Millie Hess, Reists' hired
girl. The new dress, bought in Lancaster and made by Mrs. Reist and
Aunt Rebecca, was a white lawn flecked with black. Millie had decided
on a plain waist with high neck, the inch wide band at the throat edged
with torchon lace, after the style she usually wore, the skirt made
full and having above the hem, as Millie put it, "Just a few tucks,
then wait a while, then tucks again." But Amanda, happening on the
scene as the dress was tried on, protested at the high neck.

"Please, Millie," she coaxed, "do have the neck turned down, oh, just a
little! I'd have a nice pleated ruffle of white net around it and a
little V in front. You'd look fine that way."

"Me-fine! Go long with you, Amanda Reist! Ain't I got two good eyes and
a lookin'-glass? But I guess I would look more like other folks if I
had it made like you say. But now I don't want it too low. You dare fix
it so it looks right." Displaying the same meek acquiescence in the
desire of Amanda she bought a stylish hat instead of the big flat
sailor with its taffeta bow she generally chose. The hat was Amanda's
selection, a small, modest little thing with pale pink and gray roses
misty with a covering of black tulle.

"Me with pink roses on my hat and over forty years old," said Millie
wonderingly, but when she tried it on and saw the improvement in her
appearance she smiled happily. "It's the prettiest hat I ever had and
I'll hold it up and take good care of it so it'll last me years. I'm
gettin' fixed up for sure once, only my new shoes don't have no squeak
in 'em at all."

"That's out of style," Amanda informed her kindly.

"It is? Why, when I was little I remember hearin' folks tell how when
they bought new shoes they always asked for a 'fib's worth of squeak'
in 'em."

"And now they pay the shoemaker more than a 'fib' to put a few pegs in
the shoes and take the squeak out."

"Well, well, how things get different! But then I'm glad mine don't
make no noise if that's the way now."

Commencement day Millie could have held her own with any well-dressed
city woman. Her plain face was almost beautiful as she stood ready for
the great event of Amanda's life. At the last moment she thought of the
big bush of shrubs in the yard--"I must get me a shrub to smell in the
Commencement," she decided. So she gathered one of the queer-looking,
fragrant brown blossoms, tied it in the corner of her handkerchief and
bruised it gently so that the sweet perfume might be exuded. "Um-ah,"
she breathed in the odor, "now I'm ready for Millersville."

As she stood with Mrs. Reist and Philip on the front porch waiting for
Uncle Amos she said to Mrs. Reist, "Ain't Amanda fixed me up fine?
Abody'd hardly know me."

Mrs. Reist in her plain gray Mennonite dress and stiff black silk
bonnet was, as usual, an attractive figure. Philip, grown to the
dignity of long trousers, carried himself with all the poise of
seventeen. He was now a student in the Lancaster High School and had he
not learned to dress and act like city boys do! Uncle Amos, in his best
Sunday suit of gray, his Mennonite hat in his hand, ambled along last
as the little group went down the aisle of the Millersville chapel to
see Amanda's graduation.

As Amanda marched in, her red hair parted on the side and coiled into a
womanly coiffure, wearing a simple white organdie, she was just one of
the hundred graduates who marched into the chapel. But later, as she
stood alone on the platform and delivered her oration, "The Flowers of
the Garden Spot," she held the interested attention of all in that vast
audience. She knew her subject and succeeded in waking in the hearts of
her hearers a desire to go out in the green fields and quiet woods and
find the lovely habitants of the flower world.

After it was all over and she stood, shining-eyed and happy, among her
own people in the chapel, Martin Landis joined them. He, too, had left
childhood behind. The serious gravity of his new estate was deepened in
his face, but the same tenderness that had soothed the numerous Landis
babies also still dwelt there. One of the regrets of his heart was the
fact that nature had denied him great stature. He had always dreamed of
growing into a tall man, powerful in physique, like Lyman Mertzheimer.
But nature was obstinate and Martin Landis reached manhood, a strong,
sturdy being, but of medium height. His mother tried to assuage his
disappointment by asserting that even if his stature was not great as
he wished his heart was big enough to make up for it. He tried to live
up to her valuation of him, but it was scant comfort as he stood in the
presence of physically big men. Life had not dealt generously with him
as with Amanda in the matter of education. He wanted a chance to study
at some institution higher than the little school at Crow Hill but his
father needed him on the farm. The elder man was subject to attacks of
rheumatism and at such times the brunt of farm labor fell upon the
shoulders of Martin.

Money was scarce in the Landis household, there were so many mouths to
feed and it seemed to Martin that he would never have the opportunity
to do anything but work in the fields from early spring to late autumn,
snatch a few months for study in a business college in Lancaster, then
go back again to the ploughing and arduous duties of his father's farm.
He thought enviously of Lyman Mertzheimer, whose father had sent him to
a well-known preparatory school and then started him in a full course
in one of the leading universities of the country. If he had a chance
like that! If he could only get away from the farm long enough to earn
some money he knew he could work his way through school and fit himself
for some position he would like better than farming. Some such thoughts
ran through his brain as he went to congratulate Amanda on her
graduation day.

"Oh, Martin!" she greeted him cordially. "So you got here, after all.
I'm so glad!"

"So am I. I wouldn't have missed that oration for a great deal. I could
smell the arbutus--say, it was great, Amanda!"

At that moment Lyman Mertzheimer joined them.

"Congratulations, Amanda," he said in his affected manner. As the good-
looking son of a wealthy man he credited himself with the possession of
permissible pride. "Congratulations," he repeated, ignoring the smaller
man who stood by the side of the girl. "Your oration was beautifully
rendered. You were very eloquent, but if you will pardon me, I'd like
to remind you of one flower you forgot to mention--a very important
flower of the Garden Spot."

"I did?" she said as though it were a negligible matter. "What was the
flower I forgot?"

"Amanda Reist," he said, and laughed at his supposed cleverness.

"Oh," she replied, vexed at his words and his bold attitude, "I left
that out purposely along with some of the weeds of the Garden Spot I
might have mentioned."

"Meaning me?" He lifted his eyebrows in question. "You don't really
mean that, Amanda." He spoke in winning voice. "I know you don't mean
that so I won't quarrel with you."

"Well, I guess you better not!" spoke up Millie who had listened to all
that was said. "You don't have to get our Amanda cross on this here
day. She done fine in that speech and we're proud of her and don't want
you nor no one else to go spoil it by any fuss."

"I see you have more than one champion, Amanda. I'll have to be very
careful how I speak to you." He laughed but a glare of anger shone in
his eyes.

A few moments later the little party broke up and Lyman went off alone.
A storm raged within him--"A hired girl to speak to me like that--a
common hired girl! I'll teach her her place when I marry Amanda. And
Amanda was high and mighty to-day. Thought she owned the world because
she graduated from Millersville! As though that's anything! She's the
kind needs a strong hand, a master hand. And I'll be the master! I like
her kind, the women who have spirit and fire. But she needs to be held
under, subjected by a stronger spirit. That little runt of a Martin
Landis was hanging round her, too. He has no show when I'm in the
running. He's poor and has no education. He's just a clodhopper."

Meanwhile the clodhopper had also said good-bye to Amanda. For some
reason he did not stop to analyze, the heart of Martin Landis was light
as he went home from the Commencement at Millersville. He had always
detested Lyman Mertzheimer, for he had felt too often the snubs and
taunts of the rich boy. Amanda's rebuff of the arrogant youth pleased
Martin.

"I like Amanda," he thought frankly, but he never went beyond that in
the analysis of his feelings for the comrade of his childhood and young
boyhood. "I like her and I'd hate to see her waste her time on a fellow
like Lyman Mertzheimer. I'm glad she squelched him. Perhaps some day
he'll find there are still some desirable things that money can't buy."



CHAPTER VII

AMANDA REIST, TEACHER


Amanda had no desire to teach far from her home. "I want to see the
whole United States if I live long enough," she declared, "but I want
to travel through the distant parts of it, not settle there to live.
While I have a home I want to stay near it. So I wish I could get a
school in Lancaster County."

Her wish was granted. There was an opening in Crow Hill, in the little
rural school in which she had received the rudiments of her education.
Amanda applied for the position and was elected.

She brought to that little school several innovations. Her love and
knowledge of nature helped her to make the common studies less
monotonous and more interesting. A Saturday afternoon nutting party
with her pupils afforded a more promising subject for Monday's original
composition than the hackneyed suggestions of the grammar book's "Tell
all you know about the cultivation of coffee." Later, snow forts in the
school-yard impressed the children with the story of Ticonderoga more
indelibly than mere reading about it could have done. During her last
year at Normal, Amanda had read about a school where geography was
taught by the construction of miniature islands, capes, straits,
peninsulas, and so forth, in the school-yard. She directed the older
children in the formation of such a landscape picture. When a
blundering boy slipped and with one bare foot demolished at one stroke
the cape, island and bay, there was much merriment and rivalry for the
honor of rebuilding. The children were almost unanimous in their
affection for the new teacher and approval of her methods of teaching.
Most of them ran home with eager tales concerning the wonderful, funny,
"nice" ways Miss Reist had of teaching school.

However, Crow Hill is no Eden. Some of the older boys laughed at the
"silly ideas" of "that Manda Reist" and disliked the way she taught
geography and made the pupils "play in the dirt and build capes and
islands and the whole blamed geography business right in the school-
yard."

It naturally followed that adverse criticism grew and grew, like
Longfellow's pumpkin, and many curious visitors came to Crow Hill
school. The patrons, taxpayers, directors were concerned and considered
it their duty to drop in and observe how things were being run in that
school. They found that the three R's were still taught efficiently,
even if they were taught with the aid of chestnuts, autumn leaves and
flowers; they were glad to discover that an island, though formed in
the school-yard from dirt and water, was still being defined with the
old standard definition, "An island is a body of land entirely
surrounded by water."

If any other school had graduated Amanda, her position might have been
a trifle precarious, but Millersville Normal School was too well known
and universally approved in Lancaster County to admit of any
questionable suggestions about its recent graduate. Most of the people
who came to inspect came without any antagonistic feeling and they left
convinced that, although some of Amanda Reist's ways were a little
different, the scholars seemed to know their lessons and to progress
satisfactorily.

Later in the school year she urged the children to bring dried corn
husk to school, she brought brightly colored raffia, and taught them
how to make baskets. The children were clamorous for more knowledge of
basket making. The fascinating task of forming objects of beauty and
usefulness from homely corn husk and a few gay threads of raffia was
novel to them. Amanda was willing to help the children along the path
of manual dexterity and eager to have them see and love the beautiful.
Under her guidance they gathered and pressed weeds and grasses and the
airy, elusive milkweed down, caught butterflies, and assembled the
whole under glass, thus making beautiful trays and pictures.

On the whole it was a wonderful, happy year for the new teacher of the
Crow Hill school. When spring came with all the alluring witchery of
the Garden Spot it seemed to her she must make every one of her pupils
feel the thrill of the song-sparrow's first note and the matchless
loveliness of the anemone.

One day in early April, the last week of school, as she locked the door
of the schoolhouse and started down the road to her home an unusual
glow of satisfaction beamed on her face.

"Only two more days of school, then the big Spelling Bee to wind it up
and then my first year's teaching will be over! I have enjoyed it but
I'm like the children--eager for vacation."

She hummed gaily as she went along, this nineteen-year-old school
teacher so near the end of her first year's work in the schoolroom. Her
eyes roved over the fair panorama of Lancaster County in early spring
dress. As she neared the house she saw her Uncle Amos resting under a
giant sycamore tree that stood in the front yard.

"Good times," she called to him.

"Hello, Manda," he answered. "You're home early."

"Early--it's half-past four. Have you been asleep and lost track of the
time?"

He took a big silver watch from a pocket and whistled as he looked at
it. "Whew! It is that late! Time for me to get to work again. Your Aunt
Rebecca's here."

"Dear me! And I felt so happy! Now I'll get a call-down about something
or other. I'm ashamed of myself, Uncle Amos, but I think Aunt Rebecca
gets worse as she grows older."

"'Fraid so," the man agreed soberly. "Well, we can't all be alike. Too
bad, now, she don't take after me, eh, Amanda?"

"It surely is! You're the nicest man I know!"

"Hold on now," he said; "next you make me blush. I ain't used to
gettin' compliments."

"But I mean it. I don't see how she can be your sister and Mother's! I
think the fairies must have mixed babies when she was little. I can see
many good qualities in her, but there's no need of her being so
contrary and critical. I remember how I used to be half afraid of her
when I was little. She tried to make Mother dress me in a plain dress
and a Mennonite bonnet, but Mother said she'd dress me like a little
girl and if I chose I could wear the plain dress and bonnet when I was
old enough to know what it means. Oh, Mother's wonderful! If I had Aunt
Rebecca for a mother--but perhaps she'd be different then. Oh, Uncle
Amos, do you remember the howl she raised when we had our house wired
for electricity?"

"Glory, yes! She was scared to death to come here for a while."

"And Phil wickedly suggested we scare her again! But she was afraid of
it. She was sure the house would be struck by lightning the first
thunder-storm we'd have. And when we put the bath tub into the house--
whew! Didn't she give us lectures then! She has no use for 'swimmin'
tubs' to this day. If folks can't wash clean out of a basin they must
be powerful dirty! That's her opinion."

Both laughed at the remembrance of the old woman's words. Then the girl
asked, "What did she have to say to you to-day? Did she iron any
wrinkles out of you?"

"Oh, I got it a'ready." The man chuckled. "I was plantin' potatoes till
my back was near broke and I came in to rest a little and get a drink.
She told me it's funny people got to rest so often in these days when
they do a little work. She worked in the fields often and she could
stand more yet than a lot o' lazy men. I didn't answer her but I came
out here and got my rest just the same. She ain't bossin' her brother
Amos yet! But now I got to work faster for this doin' nothin' under the
tree."

When Amanda entered the kitchen she found her mother and the visitor
cutting carpet rags. Old clothes were falling under the snip of the
shears into a peach basket, ready to be sewn together, wound into balls
and woven into rag carpet by the local carpet weaver on his hand loom.

"Hello," said the girl as she laid a few books on the kitchen table.

"Books again," sniffed Aunt Rebecca. "I wonder now how much money gets
spent for books that ain't necessary."

"Oh, lots of it," answered the girl cheerfully.

"Umph, did you buy those?"

"Yes, when I went to Millersville."

"My goodness, what a lot o' money goes for such things these days!
There's books about everything, somebody told me. There's even some
wrote about the Pennsylvania Dutch and about that there Stiegel glass
some folks make such a fuss about. I don't see nothin' in that Stiegel
glass to make it so dear. Why, I had a little white glass pitcher,
crooked it was, too, and nothin' extra to look at. But along come one
of them anteak men, so they call themselves, the men that buy up old
things. Anyhow, he offered to give me a dollar for that little pitcher.
Ach, I didn't care much for it, though it was Jonas's granny's still. I
sold it to that man quick before he'd change his mind and mebbe only
give me fifty cents."

"You sold it?" asked Amanda. "And was it this shape?"

She made a swift, crude sketch of the well-known Stiegel pitcher shape.

"My goodness, you drawed one just like it! It looked like that."

"Then, Aunt Rebecca, you gave that man a bargain. That was a real
Stiegel pitcher and worth much more than a dollar!"

"My goodness, what did I do now! You mean it was worth _more_ than
that?" The woman was incredulous.

"You might have gotten five, perhaps ten, dollars for it in the city.
You know Stiegel glass was some of the first to be made in this
country, made in Manheim, Pennsylvania, way back in 1760, or some such
early date as that. It was crude as to shape, almost all the pieces are
a little crooked, but it was wonderfully made in some ways, for it has
a ring like a bell, and the loveliest fluting, and some of it is in
beautiful blue, green and amethyst. Stiegel glass is rare and valuable
so if you have any more hold on to it and I'll buy it from you."

"Well, I guess! I wouldn't leave you pay five dollars for a glass
pitcher! But I wish I had that one back. It spites me now I sold it. My
goodness, abody can't watch out enough so you won't get cheated. Where
did you learn so much about that old glass?"

"Oh, I read about it in a _book_ last year," came the ready
answer.

Aunt Rebecca looked at the girl, but Amanda's face bore so innocent an
expression that the woman could not think her guilty of emphasizing the
word purposely.

"So," the visitor said, "they did put something worth in a book once!
Well, I guess it's time you learn something that'll help you save
money. All the books you got to read! And Philip's still goin' to
school, too. Why don't he help Amos on the farm instead of runnin' to
Lancaster to school?"

"He wants to be a lawyer," said Mrs. Reist. "I think still that as long
as he has a good head for learnin' and wants to go to school I should
leave him go till he's satisfied. I think his pop would say so if he
was livin'. Not everybody takes to farmin' and it is awful hard work.
Amos works that hard."

"Poof," said Aunt Rebecca, "I ain't heard tell yet of any man workin'
himself to death! It wouldn't hurt Philip to be a farmer. The trouble
is it don't sound tony enough for the young ones these days. Lawyer--
what does he want to be a lawyer for? I heard a'ready that they are all
liars. You're by far too easy!"

"Oh, Aunt Rebecca," said Amanda, "not all lawyers are liars. Abraham
Lincoln was a lawyer."

"Ach, I guess he was no different from others, only he's dead so abody
shouldn't talk about him."

Amanda sighed and turned to her mother. "Mother, I'm going up to put on
an old dress and when Phil comes we're going over to the woods for
arbutus."

"All right."

But the aunt did not consider it all right. "Why don't you help cut
carpet rags?" she asked. "That would be more sense than runnin' out
after flowers that wither right aways."

"If we find any, Millie is going to take them to market to-morrow and
sell them. Some people asked for them last week. It's rather early but
we may find some on the sunny side of the woods."

"Oh," the woman was mollified, "if you're goin' to sell 'em that's
different. Ain't it funny anybody _buys_ flowers? But then some
people don't know how to spend their money and will buy anything, just
so it's buyin'!"

But Amanda was off to the wide stairs, beyond the sound of the
haranguing voice.

"Glory!" she said to herself when she reached her room. "If my red hair
didn't bristle! What a life we'd have if Mother were like that! If I
ever think I have nothing to be thankful for I'm going to remember
that!"

A little while later she went down the stairs, out through the yard and
down the country road to meet her brother. She listened for his
whistle. In childhood he had begun the habit of whistling a strain from
the old song, "Soldier's Farewell" and, like many habits of early
years, it had clung to him. So when Amanda heard the plaintive melody,
"How can I leave thee, how can I from thee part," she knew that her
brother was either arriving or leaving.

As she walked down the road in the April sunshine the old whistle
floated to her. She hastened her steps and in a bend in the road came
face to face with the boy.

At sight of her he stopped whistling, whipped off his cap and greeted
her, "Hello, Sis. I thought that would bring you if you were about. Oh,
don't look so tickled over my politeness--I just took off my hat
because I'm hot. This walk from the trolley on a day like this warms
you up."

His words brought a light push from the girl as she took her place
beside him and they walked on.

"That's a mournful whistle for a home-coming," Amanda told him. "Can't
you find a more appropriate one?"

"My repertoire is limited, sister--I learned that big word in English
class to-day and had to try it out on some one."

"Phil, you're crazy!" was the uncomplimentary answer, but her eyes
smiled with pride upon the tall, red-haired boy beside her. "I see it's
one of your giddy days so I'll sober you up a bit--Aunt Rebecca's at
the house."

"Oh, yea!" He held his side in mock agony.

"Again? What's the row now? Any curtain lectures?"

"Be comforted, Phil. She's going home to-night if you'll drive her to
Landisville."

"Won't I though!" he said, with the average High School boy's disregard
of pure English. "Surest thing you know, Sis, I'll drive her home or
anywhere else. What's she doing?"

"Helping Mother cut carpet rags."

"Well, that's the only redeeming feature about her. She does help
Mother. Aunt Rebecca isn't lazy. I'm glad to be able to say one nice
thing about her. Apart from that she's generally as Millie says,
'actin' like she ate wasps.' But she can't scare me. All her ranting
goes in one ear and out the other."

"Nothing there to stop it, eh, Phil?"

"Amanda! That from you! Now I know how Caesar felt when he saw Brutus
with the mob."

"It's a case of 'Cheer up, the worst is yet to come,' I suppose, so you
might as well smile."

In this manner they bantered until they reached the Reist farmhouse.
There the boy greeted the visitor politely, as his sister had done.

"My goodness," was the aunt's greeting to him, "you got an armful of
books, too!"

"Yes. I'm going to be a lawyer, but I have to do a lot of hard studying
before I get that far."

"Umph, that's nothin' to brag about. I'd think more of you if you
stayed home and helped Amos plant corn and potatoes or tobacco."

"I'd never plant tobacco. Chewing and smoking are filthy habits and I'd
never have the stuff grow on any farm I owned."

"But the money, Philip, just think once of the money tobacco brings!
But, ach, it's for no use talkin' farm to you. You got nothin' but
books in your head. How do you suppose this place is goin' to be run
about ten years from now if Amanda teaches and you turn lawyer? Amos is
soon too old to work it and you can't depend on hired help. Then what?"

"Search me," said the boy inelegantly. "But I'm not worrying about it.
We may not want to live here ten years from now. But, Mother," he
veered suddenly, "got any pie left from dinner? I'm hungry. May I
forage?"

"Help yourself, Philip. There's a piece of cherry pie and a slice of
chocolate cake in the cellar."

"Hurray, Mother! I'm going to see that you get an extra star in your
crown some day for feeding the hungry."

"But you spoil him," said Aunt Rebecca as Phil went off to the cellar.
"And if that boy ain't always after pie! I mind how he used to eat pie
when he was little and you brought him to see us. Not that I grudged
him the pie, but I remember how he always took two pieces if he got it.
And pie ain't good for him, neither, between meals."

"I guess it won't hurt him," said Mrs. Reist; "the boy's growin' and he
has just a lunch at noon, so he gets hungry till he walks in from the
trolley. Boys like pie. His father was a great hand for pie."

"Well," said the aunt decisively, "I would never spoiled children if I
had any. But I had none."

"Thank goodness!" Amanda breathed to herself as she went out to the
porch to wait for her brother.

"Um, that pie was good," was his verdict as he joined her. "But say,
Sis, didn't you hear the squirrels chatter in there?"

"Come on." Amanda laughed as she swung the basket to her arm and pulled
eagerly at the sleeve of the boy's coat. "Let's go after the flowers
and forget all about her."

Along the Crow Hill schoolhouse runs a long spur of wooded hills
skirting the country road for a quarter of a mile and stretching away
into denser timberland. In those woods were the familiar paths Amanda
and Phil loved to traverse in search of flowers. In April, when the
first warm, sunshiny days came, the ground under the dead leaves of the
overshadowing oaks was carpeted with arbutus. Eager children soon found
those near the crude rail fence, but Amanda and Phil followed the
narrow trails to the secluded sheltered spots where the May flowers had
not been touched that spring.

"No roots, Phil!" warned the girl as they knelt in the brown leaves and
pushed away the covering from the fragrant blossoms.

"Sure thing not, Sis! We don't want to exterminate the trailing arbutus
in Crow Hill. Say, I passed two kids this morning as I was going to the
trolley. They had a bunch of arbutus, roots and all. Believe me, I
acted up like Aunt Rebecca for about two minutes. But it's a shame to
take the roots. I almost hate to pick the flowers--seems as if they're
at home here in the woods--belong here, in a way."

"I know what you're thinking about, Phil; that little verse:

  'Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
  Loved the wood-rose and left it on its stalk?
  Oh, be my friend, and teach me to be thine.'

I agree with the first half of the requirement, but the latter half
can't always be followed. At any rate, the wild rose is better left on
the stem, for it withers when plucked. But with arbutus it's different.
Why, Phil, some of the people who come to market and buy our wild
flowers would never see any if they could not buy them in the city.
Imagine, if you can, yourself living in a big city, far away from Crow
Hill, where the Mayflowers grow--Philadelphia or New York, or some such
formidable-sounding place. The city might engross your attention so
you'd be happy for months. But along comes spring with its call to the
woods and meadows. Still the city and its demands grip you like a vise,
and you can't run away to where the wild green things are pushing to
the light. Suppose you saw a flower-stand and a tiny bunch of arbutus--"

"I'd pay my last dollar for them!" declared Philip. "Guess you're
right. According to your reasoning, we're as good as missionaries when
we find wild flowers and take or send them to the city market to sell.
Aunt Rebecca wouldn't see that. She'd see the money end of it. Poor
soul! I'm glad I'm not like her."

"Pharisee," chided his sister.

"Well, do you know, Manda, sometimes I think there's something to be
said in favor of the Pharisee."

The girl gave him a quizzical look.

The serious and the light were so strangely mingled in the boy's
nature. Amanda caught many glimpses into the recesses of his heart,
recesses he knew she would not try to explore deeper than he wished.
For the natures of brother and sister were strongly similar--light-
hearted and happy, laughing and gay, keen to enjoy life, but reading
some part of its mysteries, understanding some of its sorrows and
showing at times evidences of searching thought and grave retrospect.

"How many dollars' worth do we have?" the boy asked in imitation of
Aunt Rebecca's mercenary way.

"Oh, Phil! You're dreadful! But I bet the flowers will be gone in no
time when Millie puts them out."

"I'd wager they'd go faster if you sold them," he replied, looking
admiringly at the girl. "You'd be a pretty fair peddler of flowers,
Sis."

"Oh, Phil, be sensible."

"I mean it, Amanda. You're not so bad looking. Your hair isn't common
red, it's Titian. And it's fluffy. Then your eyes are good and your
complexion lacks the freckles you ought to have. Your nose isn't
Grecian, but it'll do--we'll call it retroussť, for that sounds nicer
than pug. And your mouth--well, it's not exactly a rosebud one, but it
doesn't mar the general landscape like some mouths do. Altogether,
you're real good-looking, even if you are my sister."

"Philip Reist, you're impertinent! But I suppose you are truthful.
That's a doubtful compliment you're giving me, but I'm glad to say your
veracity augurs well for your success as a lawyer. If you are always as
honest as in that little speech you just delivered, you'll do."

"Oh, I'll make grand old Abe Lincoln look to his laurels."

And so, with comradely teasing, threaded with a more serious vein, an
hour passed and the two returned home with their baskets filled with
the lovely pink and white, delicately fragrant, trailing arbutus.

They found the supper ready, Uncle Amos washed and combed, and waiting
on the back porch for the summons to the meal.

Mrs. Reist peeped into the basket and exclaimed in joy as she breathed
in the sweet perfume of the fresh flowers. Millie paused in the act of
pouring coffee into big blue cups to "get a sniff of the smell," but
Aunt Rebecca was impatient at the momentary delay. "My goodness, but
you poke around. I like to get the supper out before it gets cold."

There was no perceptible hurry at her words, but a few minutes later
all were seated about the big table in the kitchen with a hearty supper
spread before them.

Uncle Amos was of a jovial, teasing disposition, prone to occasional
shrewd thrusts at the idiosyncrasies of his acquaintances, but he held
sacred things sacred and rendered to reverent things their due
reverence. It was his acknowledged privilege to say grace, at the meals
served in the Reist home.

That April evening, after he said, "Amen," Philip turned to Amanda and
said, "Polly wants some too."

The girl burst into gay laughter. Everybody at the table looked at her
in surprise.

"What's funny?" asked Aunt Rebecca.

"I'll tell you," Phil offered. "Last Saturday we were back at Harnly's.
They have two parrots on the porch, and all morning we tried to get
those birds to talk. They just sat and blinked at us, looked wise, but
said not a word. I forgot all about them when we went in to dinner, but
we had just sat down and bowed our heads for grace when those birds
began to talk. They went at it as though some person had wound them up.
'Polly wants some dinner; Polly wants some, too. Give Polly some too.'
Well, it struck me funny. Their voices were so shrill and it was such a
surprise after they refused to say a word, that I got to laughing. I
gave Amanda a nudge, and she got the giggles."

"It was awful," said Amanda. "If Phil hadn't nudged me I could have
weathered through by biting my lips."

"I don't see anything to laugh about when two parrots talk," was Aunt
Rebecca's remark. "Anyhow, that was no time to laugh. I guess you'll
remember what I tell you, some day when you got to cry for all this
laughin' you do now."

"Ach," said the mother, "let 'em laugh. I guess we were that way too
once."

"Bully for you, Mother," cried the boy; "you're as young as any of us."

"That's what," chimed in Millie.

"Oh, say, Millie," asked Philip, "did you make that cherry pie I
finished up after school to-day?"

"Yes. Was it good?"

"Good? It melted in my mouth. When I marry, Millie, I'm going to borrow
you for a while to come teach my wife how to make such pies."

"Listen at him now! Ain't it a wonder he wouldn't think to get a wife
that knows how to cook and bake? But, Philip Reist, you needn't think
I'll ever leave your mom unless she sends me off."

"Wouldn't you, now, Millie?" asked Uncle Amos.

"Why, be sure, not! I ain't forgettin' how nice she was to me a'ready.
I had hard enough to make through before I came here to work. I had a
place to live out in Readin' where I was to get big money, but when I
got there I found I was to go in the back way always, even on Sunday,
and was to eat alone in the kitchen after they eat, and I was to go to
my room and not set with the folks at all. I just wouldn't live like
that, so I come back to Lancaster County and heard about you people
wantin' a girl, and here I am."

Amanda looked at the hired girl. In her calico dress and gingham apron,
her hair combed back plain from her homely face, she was certainly not
beautiful, and yet the girl who looked at her thought she appeared
really attractive as the gratitude of her loyal heart shone on her
countenance.

"Millie's a jewel," thought Amanda. "And Mother's another. I hope I
shall be like them as I grow older."

After the supper dishes were washed, Aunt Rebecca decided it was time
for her to go home.

"Wouldn't you like to go in the automobile this time?" suggested
Philip. "It would go so much faster and is easier riding than the
carriage."

"Faster! Well, I guess that horse of yourn can get me anywhere I want
to go fast enough to suit me. I got no time for all these new-fangled
things, like wagons that run without horses, and lights you put on and
off with a button. It goes good if you don't get killed yet with that
automobile."

"Then I'll hitch up Bill," said the boy as he went out, an amused smile
on his face.

Amanda was thoughtful as she bunched the arbutus for the market next
day. "I wonder how Uncle Jonas could live with Aunt Rebecca," she
questioned. Ah, that was an enlightening test. "Am I an easy, pleasant
person to live with?" Making full allowance for differences in
temperament and dispositions, there was still, the girl thought, a
possible compatibility that could be cultivated so that family life
might be harmonious and happy.

"It's that I am going to consider when I get married, if I ever do,"
she decided that day. "I won't marry a man who would 'jaw' like Aunt
Rebecca. I'm fiery-tempered myself, and I'll have to learn to control
my anger better. Goodness knows I've had enough striking examples of
how scolding sounds! But I won't want to squabble with the man I really
care for--Martin Landis, for instance--" Her thoughts went off to her
castles in Spain as she gathered the arbutus into little bunches and
tied them. "He offered to help me fix my schoolroom for the Spelling
Bee on Saturday. He's got a big heart, my Sir Galahad of childhood."
She smiled as she thought of her burned hand and his innocent kiss.
"Poor Martin--he's working like a man these ten years. I'd like to see
him have a chance at education like Lyman Mertzheimer has. I know he'd
accomplish something in the world then! At any rate, Martin's a
gentleman and Lyman's a--ugh, I hate the very thought of him. I'm glad
he's not at home to come to my Spelling Bee."



CHAPTER VIII

THE SPELLING BEE


The old-fashioned Spelling Bee has never wholly died out in Lancaster
County, Pennsylvania. Each year readers of certain small-town papers
will find numerous news-titles headed something like this: "The Bees
Will Buzz," and under them an urgent invitation to attend a Spelling
Bee at a certain rural schoolhouse. "A Good Time Promised"--"Classes
for All"--"Come One, Come All"--the advertisements never fail. Many
persons walk or ride to the little schoolhouse. The narrow seats, the
benches along the wall, and all extra chairs that can be brought to the
place are taken long before the hour set for the bees to buzz. The
munificent charge is generally fifteen cents, and where in this whole
United States of America can so much real enjoyment be secured for
fifteen cents as is given at an old-fashioned Spelling Bee?

That April evening of Amanda's Bee the Crow Hill schoolhouse was filled
at an early hour. The scholars, splendid in their Sunday clothes,
occupied front seats. Parents, friends and interested visitors from
near-by towns crowded into the room.

Amanda, dressed in white, came upon the platform and announced that the
scholars had prepared a simple program which would be interspersed
through the spelling classes.

Vehement clapping of hands greeted her words and then the audience
became silent as the littlest scholar of the school rose and delivered
the address of welcome. There followed music and more recitations, all
amateurish, but they brought feelings of pride to many mothers and
fathers who listened, smiling, to "Our John" or "Our Mary" do his or
her best.

But the real excitement began with the spelling classes. The first was
open to all children under fourteen. At the invitation, boys and girls
walked bravely to the front and joined the line till it reached from
one side of the room to the opposite. A teacher from a neighboring town
gave out the words. The weeding-out process soon began. Some fell down
on simple words, others handled difficult ones with ease and spelled
glibly through some which many of the older people present had
forgotten existed. Soon the class narrowed down to two. Back and forth,
back and forth the words rolled until the teacher pronounced one of the
old standby catch-words. One of the contestants shook his head,
puzzled, and surrendered.

There was more music, several recitations by the children, a spelling
class for older people, more music, then a General Information class,
whose participants were asked such questions as, "Who is State
Superintendent of Schools?" "How many legs has a fly?" "How many teeth
has a cow?" "Which color is at the top of the rainbow arch?" The amazed,
puzzled expressions on the faces of the questioned afforded much
merriment for the others. It was frequently necessary to wait a moment
until the laughter was suppressed before other questions could be asked.

A geographical class was equally interesting. "How many counties has
Pennsylvania?" sent five persons to their seats before it was answered
correctly. Others succeeded in locating such queer names as
Popocatepetl, Martinique, Ashtabula, Rhodesia, Orkney, Comanche.

A little later the last spelling class was held. It was open to
everybody. The line was already stretched across the schoolroom when
Lyman Mertzheimer, home for a few days of vacation, entered the
schoolhouse.

"Oh, dear," thought Amanda, "what does he want here? I'd rather do
without his fifteen cents! He expects to make a show and win the prize
from every one else."

Lyman, indeed, swaggered down the room and entered the line, bearing
the old air of superiority. "I'll show them how to spell," he thought
as he took his place. Spelling had been his strong forte in the old
days of school, and it was soon evident that he retained his former
ability. The letters of the most confusing words fell from his lips as
though the very pages of the spelling-book were engraved upon his
brain. He held his place until the contest had ruled out all but two
beside himself. Then he looked smilingly at Amanda and reared his head
in new dignity and determination.

"Stelliform, the shape of a star," submitted the teacher. The word fell
to Lyman. He was visibly hesitant. Was it stelli or stella?

Bringing his knowledge of Latin into service, he was inclined to think
it was stella. He began, "S-t-e-l-l--"

He looked uncertainly at one of his friends who was seated in the front
seat. He, also, was a champion speller.

"Oh, if Joe would only help me!" thought the speller.

As if telepathy were possible, Joe raised the forefinger of his left
hand to his eye, looked at Lyman with a meaning glance that told him
what he craved to know.

"Iform," finished Lyman in sure tones.

"Correct."

"That was clever of Joe," thought the cheat as the teacher gave out a
word to one of the three contestants. "I just caught his sign in time.
Nobody noticed it."

But he reckoned without the observant teacher of Crow Hill school.
Amanda, seated in the front of the room and placed so she half faced
the audience and with one little turn of her head could view the
spellers, had seen the cheating process and understood its
significance. The same trick had been attempted by some of her pupils
several times during the monthly spelling tests she held for the
training of her classes.

"The cheat! The big cheat!" she thought, her face flushing with anger.
"How I hope he falls down on the next word he gets!"

However, the punishment he deserved was not meted out to him. Lyman
Mertzheimer outspelled his opponents and stood alone on the platform, a
smiling victor.

"The cheat! The contemptible cheat!" hammered in Amanda's brain.

After the distribution of prizes, cheap reprint editions of well-known
books, an auctioneer stepped on the platform and drew from a corner a
bushel basket of packages of various sizes and shapes.

"Oyez, Oyez," he called in true auctioneer style, "we have here a
bushel of good things, all to be sold, sight unseen, to the highest
bidder. I understand each package contains something good to eat,
packed and contributed by the pupils of this school. The proceeds of
the sale are to be used to purchase good books for the school library
for the pupils to read. So, folks, bid lively and don't be afraid to
run a little risk. You'll get more fun from the package you buy than
you've had for a long time, I'll warrant."

With much talk and gesticulation the spirited bidding was kept up until
every package was sold. Shouts of joy came from the. country boys when
one opened a box filled with ten candy suckers and distributed them
among the crowd. Other bidders won candy, cake, sandwiches, and loud
was the laughter when a shoe-box was sold for a dollar, opened and
found to contain a dozen raw sweet potatoes.

After the fun of the auction had died down all rose and sang "The Star-
Spangled Banner," and the Spelling Bee was over.

The audience soon began to leave. Laughing girls and boys started down
the dark country roads. Carriages and automobiles carried many away
until a mere handful of people were left in the little schoolhouse.

Lyman Mertzheimer lingered. He approached Amanda, exchanged greetings
with her and asked, "May I walk home with you? I have something to tell
you."

"Oh, I suppose so," she replied, not very graciously. The dishonest
method of gaining a prize still rankled in her. Lyman walked about the
room impatiently, looking idly at the drawings and other work of the
children displayed above the blackboards.

A moment later Martin Landis came up to Amanda. He had been setting
chairs in their places, gathering singing-books and putting the room in
order.

"Well, Manda," he said, "it was a grand success! Everything went off
fine, lots of fun for all. And I heard Hershey, the director, tell his
wife that you certainly know how to conduct a Spelling Bee."

"Oh, did he say that?" The news pleased her. "But I'm glad it's over."

"I guess you are. There, we're all fixed up now. I'll send one of the
boys over next week with the team to take back the borrowed chairs.
I'll walk home with you, Manda. What's Lyman Mertzheimer hanging around
for? Soon as those people by the door leave, we can lock up and go."

"Why--Martin--thank you--but Lyman asked to walk home with me."

"Oh! All right," came the calm reply. "I'll see you again. Good-night,
Amanda."

"Good-night, Martin."

She looked after him as he walked away, the plumed knight of her
castles in Spain. She had knighted him that day long ago when he had
put out the fire and kissed her hand, and during the interval of years
that childish affection had grown in her heart. In her thoughts he was
still "My Martin." But the object of that long-abiding affection showed
all too plainly that he was not cognizant of what was in the heart of
his childhood's friend. To him she was still "Just Amanda," good
comrade, sincere friend.

Fortunately love and hope are inseparable. Amanda thought frequently of
the verse, "God above is great to grant as mighty to make, and creates
the love to reward the love." It was not always so, she knew, but she
hoped it would be so for her. Martin Landis, unselfish, devoted to his
people, honest as a dollar, true as steel--dear Martin, how she wanted
to walk home with him that night of the Spelling Bee instead of going
with Lyman Mertzheimer!

The voice of the latter roused her from her revery. "I say, Amanda, are
we going to stay here all night? Why in thunder can't those fools go
home so you can lock the door and go! And I say, Amanda, don't you
think Martin Landis is letting himself grow shabby and seedy? He's
certainly settling into a regular clodhopper. He shuffled along like a
hecker to-night. I don't believe he ever has his clothes pressed."

"Martin's tired to-night," she defended, her eyes flashing fire. "He
worked in the fields all day, helping his father. Then he and one of
his brothers took their team and went after some chairs I wanted to
borrow for the Spelling Bee. They arranged the room for me, too."

"Oh, I see. Poor fellow! It must be the very devil to be poor!"

The words angered the girl. "Well," she flared out, "if you want to
talk about Martin Landis, you go home. I'll get home without you."

"Now, Amanda," he pleaded sweetly, "don't get huffy, please! I want you
in a good humor. I have something great to tell you. Can't you take a
bit of joshing? Of course, it's fine in you to defend your old friends.
But I didn't really mean to say anything mean about Martin. You do get
hot so easily."

"It must be my red-hair-temper," she said, laughing. "I do fly off the
handle, as Phil says, far too soon."

"Shall we go now?" Lyman asked as the last lingering visitors left the
room.

The lights were put out, the schoolhouse door locked, and Amanda and
Lyman started off on the dark country road. Peals of merry laughter
floated back to them occasionally from a gay crowd of young people who
were also going home from the Spelling Bee. But there were none near
enough to hear what most wonderful thing Lyman had to say to Amanda.

"Amanda," he lost no time in broaching the subject, "I said I have
something to tell you. I meant, to ask you."

"Yes? What is it?"

"Will you marry me?"

Before the astonished girl could answer, he put his arms about her and
drew her near, as though there could be no possibility of an
unfavorable reply.

She flung away from him, indignant. "Lyman," she said, with hot anger
in her voice, "you better wait once till I say yes before you try
that!"

"Why, Amanda! Now, sweetheart, none of that temper! You can't get cross
when I ask you anything like that! I want to marry you. I've always
wanted it. I picked you for my sweetheart when we were both children.
I've always thought you're the dandiest girl I could find. Ever since
we were kids I've planned of the time when we were old enough to marry.
I just thought to-night, when I saw several fellows looking at you as
though they'd like to have you, I better get busy and ask you before
some other chap turns your head. I'll be good to you and treat you
right, Amanda. Of course, I'm in college yet, but I'll soon be through,
and then I expect to get a good position, probably in some big city.
We'll get out of this slow country section and live where there's some
life and excitement. You know I'll be rich some day, and then you'll
have everything you want. Come on, honey, tell me, are we engaged?"

"Well, I should say not!" the girl returned with cruel frankness. "You
talk as though I were a piece of furniture you could just walk into a
store and select and buy and then own! You've been taking immeasurably
much for granted if you have been thinking all those things you just
spoke about."

"But what don't you like about me?" The young man was unable to grasp
the fact that his loyal love could be unrequited. "I'm decent."

"Well, that's very important, but there's more than that necessary when
two persons think of marrying. You asked me,--I'll tell you--I never
cared for you. I don't like your principles, your way of sneering at
poor people, your laxity in many things--"

"For instance?" he asked.

"For instance: the way you spelled stelliform to-night and won a prize
for it."

"Oh, that!" He laughed as though discovered in a huge joke. "Did you
see that? Why, that was nothing. It was only a cheap book I got for the
prize. I'll give the book back to you if that will square me in your
eyes."

"But don't you see, can't you see, it wasn't the cheap book that
mattered? It's the thought that you'd be dishonest, a cheat."

"Well," he snatched at the least straw, "here's your chance to reform
me. If you marry me I'll be a different person. I'd do anything for
you. You know love is a great miracle worker. Won't you give me a
chance to show you how nearly I can live up to your standards and
ideals?"

Amanda, moved by woman's quick compassion, spurred by sympathy, and
feeling the exaltation such an appeal always carries, felt her heart
soften toward the man beside her. But her innate wisdom and her own
strong hold on her emotions prevented her from doing any rash or
foolish thing. Her voice was gentle as she answered, but there was a
finality in it that the man should have noted.

"I'm sorry, Lyman, but I can't do as you say. We can't will whom we
will love. I know you and I would never be happy together."

"But perhaps it will come to you." He was no easy loser. "I'll just
keep on hoping that some day you'll care for me."

"Don't do that. I'm positive, sure, that I'll never love you. You and I
were never made for each other."

But he refused to accept her answer as final. "Who knows, Amanda," he
said lightly, yet with all the feeling he was capable of at that time,
"perhaps you'll love and marry Lyman Mertzheimer yet! Stranger things
than that have happened. I'm sorry about that word. It seemed just like
a good joke to catch on to the right spelling that way and beat the
others in the match. You are too strict, Amanda, too closely bound by
the Lancaster County ideas of right and wrong. They are too narrow for
these days."

"Oh, no!" she said quickly. "Dishonesty is never right!"

"Well," he laughed, "have it your way! See how docile I have become
already! You'll reform me yet, I bet!"

At the door of her home he bade her good-night and went off whistling,
feeling only a slight unhappiness at her refusal to marry him. It was,
he felt, but a temporary rebuff. She would capitulate some day. His
consummate egotism buoyed his spirits and he went down the road
dreaming of the day he'd marry Amanda Reist and of the wonderful gowns
and jewels he would lavish upon her.



CHAPTER IX

AT THE MARKET


The words of Lyman Mertzheimer lingered with Amanda for many days. He
had seemed so confident, so arrogantly sure, of her ultimate surrender
to his desire to marry her. Soon after the Spelling Bee he returned to
his college and the girl sighed in relief that his presence was not
annoying her. But she reckoned without the efficient United States mail
service. The rejected lover wrote lengthy, friendly letters which she
answered at long intervals by short, impersonal little notes.

"Oh, yea," she said to herself one day, "why does it have to be Lyman
Mertzheimer that falls in love with me? But he might as well fall out
as soon as he can. I'll never marry him. I read somewhere that one girl
said, 'I'd rather love what I cannot have, than have what I cannot
love,' and that's just the way I feel about it. I won't marry Lyman
Mertzheimer if I have to die Amanda Reist!"

As soon as her school term was ended Amanda entered into the work of
the farm. She helped Millie as much as possible in a determined effort
to forget all about the man who wanted her and whom she did not want,
and, more than that, to think less about her knight, her Sir Galahad,
who evidently had no time to waste on girls.

Millie appreciated Amanda's help. "There's one thing sure," she said
proudly to Mrs. Reist, "our Amanda ain't lazy. It seems to abody she's
workin' more'n ever this here spring. I guess mebbe she thinks she
better get all the ins and outs o' housework so as she can do it right
till she gets married once."

"Ach, I guess Amanda ain't thinkin' of marryin' yet," said the mother.

"You fool yourself," was Millie's wise answer. "Is there ever a woman
born that don't think 'bout it? Women ain't made that way. There ain't
one so ugly nor poor, nor dumb, that don't hanker about it sometimes,
even if she knows it ain't for her."

Here the entrance of Amanda cut short the discussion.

"Millie," asked the girl, "shall I go to market with you this week?"

"Why, yes. I'd be glad for you. Of course, you always help get things
ready here and your Uncle Amos drives me in and helps to get the
baskets emptied and the things on the counters, but I could use you in
sellin'."

"Then I'll come. This lovely spring weather makes me want to go. I like
to see the people come in to buy flowers and early vegetables. It's
like reading a page out of a romance to see the expressions on the
faces of the city people as they buy the products of the country."

"Ach, I don't know what you mean. I guess you got too much fine
learnin' for me. But all I can see in market is people runnin' up one
aisle and down the other to see where the onions or radishes is the
cheapest."

Amanda laughed. "That's part of the romance. It proves they are human."

The following Saturday Amanda accompanied Millie to the Lancaster
market to help dispose of the assortment of farm products the Reist
stall always carried.

Going to market in Lancaster is an interesting experience. In addition
to the famous street markets, where farmers display their produce along
the busy central streets of the city, there are indoor markets where
crowds move up and down and buy butter, eggs and vegetables, and such
Pennsylvania Dutch specialties as mince meat, cup cheese, sauerkraut,
pannhaus, apple butter, fresh sausage and smear cheese. While lovers of
flowers choose from the many old-fashioned varieties--straw flowers,
zinnias, dahlias.

The Reist stall was one of the prominent stalls of the market. Twice
every week Millie "tended market" there. On the day before market
several members of the Reist household were kept busy preparing all the
produce, and the next day before dawn Uncle Amos hitched the horse to
the big covered wagon and he and Millie, sometimes Amanda and Philip,
drove over the dark country roads to the city.

Amanda enjoyed the work. She arranged the glistening domes of cup
cheese, placed the fresh eggs in small baskets, uncovered one of the
bags of dried corn untied the cloth cover from a gray earthen crock of
apple butter, and then stood and looked about the market house. She
felt the human interest it never failed to waken in her. Behind many
stalls stood women in the quaint garb of the Church of the Brethren or
Mennonite. But quaintest of all were the Amish.

The Amish are the plainest and quaintest of the plain sects that
flourish in Lancaster County. Unlike their kindred sects, who wear
plain garb, they are partial to gay colors in dress. So it is no
unusual sight to see Amish women wearing dresses of such colors as
forest green, royal purple, king's blue or garnet. But the gay dress is
always plainly made, after the model of their sect, generally partially
subdued by a great black apron, a black pointed cape over the shoulders
and a big black bonnet which almost hides the face of its wearer and
necessitates a full-face gaze to disclose the identity of the woman.
The strings of the thick white lawn cap are invariably tied in a flat
bow that lies low on the chest.

The Amish men are equally interesting in appearance. They wear broad-
brimmed hats with low crowns. Their clothes are so extremely plain that
buttons, universally deemed indispensable, are taboo and their place is
filled by the inconspicuous hook-and-eye, which style has brought upon
them the sobriquet, "Hook-and-eye people."

However, interesting as the men and women of the Amish faith are in
their dress, they are eclipsed in that aspect by the Amish children.
These are invariably dressed as exact replicas of their parents. Little
boys, mere children of three and four years, wear long trousers, tight
jackets, blocked hair and broad-brimmed, low-crowned hats. Little girls
of tender years wear brightly colored woolen dresses, one-piece aprons
of black sateen or colored chambray, and the picturesque big stiff
bonnets of the faith.

A stranger in Lancaster County seeing an Amish family group might
easily wonder if he had not been magically transported to some secluded
spot of Europe, far from the beaten paths of modernity. But in the
cosmopolitan population of Lancaster the Amish awakes a mere moment's
interest to the majority of observers. If a bit of envy steals into the
heart of the little Amish girl who stands at the Square and sees a
child in white organdie and pink sash tripping along with her feet in
silk socks and white slippers, of what avail is it? The hold of family
customs is strong among them and the world and its allurements and
vanities are things to be left stringently alone.

To Amanda Reist, the Amish children made strong appeal. Their presence
was one of the reasons she enjoyed tending market. Many stories she
wove in her imagination about the little lads in their long trousers
and the tiny girls in their big bonnets.

But when the marketing was in full swing Amanda had scant time for any
weaving of imaginary stories. Purchasers stopped at the stall and in a
short time the produce was sold, with the exception of cheese and eggs
which had been ordered the previous week.

"Ach," complained Millie, "now if these people would fetch this cheese
and the eggs we'd be done and could go home. Our baskets are all empty
but them. But it seems like some of these here city folks can't get to
market till eight o'clock. They have to sleep till seven."

She was interrupted by the approach of a young girl, fashionably
dressed.

"Why," exclaimed Amanda, "here comes Isabel Souders, one of the
Millersville girls."

Isabel Souders was a girl of the butterfly type, made for sunshine,
beauty, but not intended, apparently, for much practical use. Like the
butterfly, her excuse for being was her beauty. Pretty, with dark hair,
Amanda sometimes had envied her during days at the Normal School. Well
dressed, petted and spoiled by well-to-do parents who catered to her
whims, she seemed, nevertheless, an attractive girl in manner as well
as in appearance. At school something like friendship had sprung up
between Amanda and the city girl, no doubt each attracted to the other
by the very directness of their opposite personalities and tastes.

Isabel Souders was a year younger than Amanda. She lacked all of the
latter's ambition. Music and Art and having a good time were the things
that engrossed her attention. At Millersville she had devoted her time
to the pursuit of the three. Professors and hall teachers knew that the
moving spirit of many harmless pranks was Isabel, but she had a way of
glossing things, shedding blame without causing innocent ones to
suffer, that somehow endeared her to students and teachers alike.

That market day she came laughing down the market aisle to greet
Amanda.

"Hello, Amanda! What do you think of me, here at this early hour of the
day? Pin a medal on me! But it was so glorious a day I felt like doing
something out of the ordinary. I promised one of the Lancaster girls
who is at school now that I'd ask you about the pink moccasins. Are
they out yet?"

"Just out. Why?"

"This girl wants one for her collection. I remembered you had a perfect
one in your lot of flowers at school and I said I'd see you about
them."

"They'll be at their best next Saturday."

"Next Saturday--dear, Helen's going home over the week-end. Oh, could I
come out and get one for her?"

"Yes. I'll be glad to take you where they grow. I have a special haunt.
If no botanizers or flower hunters find my spot, we'll get a beauty for
your friend."

"You're the same old darling, Amanda," said the girl sweetly. "Then
I'll be out to your house Saturday afternoon. How do I get there?"

"Take the car to Oyster Point, then walk till you find a mail-box with
our name on it, and there I'll be found."

"Thank you, Amanda, you are a dear! I'll be there for the pink
moccasin. Won't it be romantic to hunt for such lovely things as they
are? You're perfectly sweet to bother about it and offer to take me."

"Oh, I don't mind doing that. I'll enjoy it. Finding the wild pink
lady-slipper is a real joy."

Unselfish Amanda, she could not dream of what would come out of that
little hunt for the pink moccasin!



CHAPTER X

PINK MOCCASINS


The pink moccasin, the largest of our native orchids, is easily the
queen of the rare woodland spot in which it grows. Its flower of bright
rose pink, veined with red, is held with the stalwart erectness of an
Indian, whose love of solitude and quiet woods it shares.

To Amanda it was one of the loveliest flowers of the woods. She always
counted the days as the time drew near when the moccasins bloomed.

When Isabel Souders arrived at the Reist farmhouse she found Amanda
ready with basket and trowel for the lady-slipper hunt. Amanda had put
on a simple white dress and green-and-white sun hat. She looked with
bewilderment at the city girl's attire, but said nothing just then.
They stopped long enough for Isabel to meet the mistress of the home
and then they went down the road to the Crow Hill schoolhouse.

Suddenly Isabel stood still and panted. "Oh--Manda--you _can_ run!
Have compassion on me. My hair will be all tumbled after such mad
walking, and my organdie torn."

"Hair!" echoed the country girl with a laugh. "Who thinks about hair on
a moccasin hunt? You should not go flower hunting in city clothes. With
your pink and white dress and lovely Dresden sash, silk stockings and
low shoes, you look more fit for a dance than a ramble after deep woods
flowers, such as moccasins. But we might as well go on now."

She led the way across the school-yard, climbed nimbly over the rail
fence and laughed at Isabel's clumsy imitation of her. Pink azaleas
grew in great bushes of bloom throughout the woods. Isabel would have
stopped to pick some but Amanda said, "That withers easily. Better pick
them when we come back."

They followed a narrow path, so narrow that later the summer luxuriant
growth of underbrush would almost obliterate it. But Amanda knew the
way to her spot. Deeper into the woods they delved, past bowers of pink
azalea and closely growing branches of trees whose tender green foliage
was breaking into summer growth. The bright May sunshine dripped
through the green and dappled the ground in little discs of gold.

Suddenly the path led up-hill in a steep grade. Amanda stopped and
leaned against a slender sapling.

"Stand here and look up," she invited.

Isabel obeyed, her gaze traveling searchingly along the steep trail.

"Oh, the beauties!" she cried as she discovered the pink flowers. "The
beauties! Oh, there are more of them! And still more! Oh, Amanda!"

Before them was Amanda's haunt of the pink moccasin. From the low
underbrush of spring growth rose several dozen gorgeously beautiful
pink lady-slippers, each alone on a thick stem with two broad leaves
spreading their green beauty near the base. What miracle had brought
the rare shy plants so near the dusty road where rattling wagons and
gliding automobiles sped on their busy way?

"May I pick them?" asked the city girl.

"Yes, but only one root. I'll dig that up with the trowel. That's for
your friend's botany specimen. The rest we'll pull up gently and we'll
get flower, stem and leaves and leave the roots in the ground for other
years. I never pick all of the flowers. I leave some here in the woods
--it seems they belong here and I can't bring myself to walk off with
every last one of them in my arms and leave the hill desolate."

"You _are_ a queer girl!" was the frank statement of the city
girl. "But you're a dear, just the same."

They picked a number of the largest flowers.

"That's enough," Amanda declared.

Isabel laughed. "I'd take every one if it were my haunt."

"And then other people might come here after some and find the place
robbed of all its blooms."

"Oh," said the other girl easily, "I look out for Isabel. Now, please,
may I pick some of that pretty wild azalea?" she asked teasingly as
they came down the hill.

"Help yourself. That isn't rare. You couldn't take all of that if you
tried."

So Isabel gathered branches of the pink bloom until her arms were
filled with it and the six moccasins in her hand almost overshadowed.

As the two girls reached the edge of the woods and climbed over the
fence into the school-yard Martin Landis came walking down the road.

"Hello," he called gaily. "Been robbing the woods, Amanda?"

"Aren't they lovely?" she asked. Then when he drew near she introduced
him to the girl beside her.

Martin Landis was not a blind man. A pretty girl, dark-eyed and dusky-
haired, her arms full of pink azaleas, her lips parted in a smile above
the flowers, and that smile given to him--it was too pretty a picture
to fail in making an impression upon him.

Amanda saw the look of keen interest in the eyes of the girl and her
heart felt heavy. What fortune had brought the two together? Had the
Fates designed the meeting of Isabel and Martin? "Oh, now I've done
it!" thought Amanda. "Isabel wants what she wants and generally gets
it. Pray heaven, she won't want 'My Martin!'"

Similar thoughts disturbed her as they stepped on the sunny road once
more and stood there talking. With a gay laugh Isabel took the finest
pink moccasin from her bunch and handed it to Martin. "Here, I'll be
generous," she said in friendly tones.

"Thank you, Miss Souders." The reply was accompanied with a smile of
pleasure.

A low laugh rippled from the girl's red lips. Amanda's ears tingled so
she did not understand the exchange of light talk. The fear and
jealousy in her heart dulled her senses to all save them, but she
laughed, said good-bye, and hid her feelings as she and Isabel went
down the road to the Reist farmhouse.

"Amanda," the other girl said effusively, "what a fine young man! Is he
your beau?"

"No. Certainly not! I have no beau. I've known Martin Landis ever since
I was born, almost. He lives down the road a piece. He's a nice chap."

"Splendid! Fine! Such eyes, such wonderfully expressive gray eyes I
have never seen. And he has such a strong face. Of course, his clothes
are a bit shabby. He'd be great if he fixed up."

"Yes," Amanda agreed mechanically. She was ill-pleased with the
dissection of her knight.

Mrs. Reist, with true rural, Pennsylvania Dutch hospitality, invited
Isabel to have supper with them, an invitation readily accepted. At the
close of the meal Isabel said suddenly to Mrs. Reist, "How would you
like to have me board with you for a few weeks--a month, probably?"

"Why, I don't know. All right, I guess, if Millie, here, don't think it
makes too much work. Poor Millie's got the worst of all the work to do.
I ain't so strong, and there's much always to do. Of course, Amanda
helps, but none of us do as much as Millie."

"But me, don't I get paid for it, and paid good?" asked the hired girl,
sending a loving glance at Mrs. Reist. "Far as I go it's all right to
have Isabel come for a while. Mebbe she can help, too, sometimes with
the work."

"I wouldn't be much help, I'm afraid. I never peeled a potato in my
life."

Millie looked at the girl with slightly concealed disfavor. "Why,
that's a funny way, now, to bring up a girl! I guess it's time you
learn such things once! You dare come, and I'll show you how to do a
little work. But why do you want to board when your folks live just in
Lancaster?"

"Father and Mother are going to the Elks' Convention and to California.
They expect to be gone about a month. I was going to stay in Lancaster
with my aunt, but I just thought how much nicer it would be to spend
that time in the country."

"Well, I guess, too!" Millie was quick to understand how one would
naturally prefer the country to the city.

So it was settled that Isabel Souders was to spend June at the Reist
farmhouse. Everybody concerned appeared well pleased with the
arrangement. But Amanda's heart hurt. "Why did I take her for those
moccasins?" she thought drearily after Isabel had gone back to the city
with her precious flowers. "I know Martin will fall in love with her
and she with him. Oh, I'm a mean, detestable thing! But I wish she'd go
to the coast with her parents!"





CHAPTER XI

THE BOARDER


The big automobile that brought Isabel Souders to the Reist farmhouse
one day early in June brought with her a trunk, a suitcase, a bag, an
umbrella and a green parasol.

Aunt Rebecca was visiting there that day and she followed Amanda to the
front door to receive the boarder.

"My goodness," came the exclamation as the luggage was carried in, "is
that girl comin' here for good, with all _that_ baggage? And what
did you let her come here for on a Friday? That's powerful bad luck!"

"For me," thought Amanda as she went to meet Isabel.

"See," the newcomer pointed to her trunk, "I brought some of my
pretties along. I'll have to make hay while the sun shines. I'll have
to make the most of this opportunity to win the heart of some country
youth. Amanda, dear, wouldn't I be a charming farmer's wife? Can you
visualize me milking cows, for instance?"

"No," answered Amanda, "I'd say that you were cut out for a different
role." There was a deeper meaning in the country girl's words than the
flighty city girl could read.

"Just the same," went on the newcomer, "I'm going to have one wonderful
time in the country. You are such a dear to want me here and to take me
into the family. I want to do just all the exciting things one reads
about as belonging to life in the country. I am eager to climb trees
and chase chickens and be a regular country girl for a month."

"Then I hope you brought some old clothes," was the practical reply.

"Not old, but plain little dresses for hard wear. I knew I'd need
them."

Later, as Amanda watched the city girl unpack, she smiled ruefully at
the plain little dresses for hard wear. Her observant eye told her that
the little dresses of gingham and linen must have cost more than her
own "best dresses." It was a very lavish wardrobe Isabel had selected
for her month on the farm. Silk stockings and crepe de chine underwear
were matched in fineness by the crepe blouses, silk dresses, airy
organdies, a suit of exquisite tailoring and three hats for as many
different costumes. The whole outfit would have been adequate and
appropriate for parades on the Atlantic City boardwalk or a saunter
down Peacock Alley of a great hotel, but it was entirely too elaborate
for a Lancaster County farmhouse.

Millie, running in to offer her services in unpacking, stood speechless
at the display of clothes. "Why," she almost stammered, "what in the
world do you want with all them fancy things here? Them's party
clothes, ain't?"

"No." Isabel shook her head. "Some are to wear in the evening and the
plainer ones are afternoon dresses, and the linen and gingham ones are
for morning wear."

"Well, I be! What don't they study for society folks! A different dress
for every time of the day! What would you think if you had to dress
like I do, with my calico dress on all day, only when I wear my lawn
for cool or in winter a woolen one for warm?"

Millie went off, puzzled at the ways of society.

"Is she just a servant?" asked Isabel when they heard her heavy tread
down the stairs.

"She isn't _just_ anything! She's a jewel! Mother couldn't do
without Millie. We've had her almost twenty years. We can leave
everything to her and know it will be taken care of. Why, Millie's as
much a part of the family as though she really belonged to it. When
Phil and I were little she was always baking us cookies in the shape of
men or birds, and they always had big raisin eyes. Millie's a treasure
and we all think of her as being one of the family."

"Mother says that's just the reason she won't hire any Pennsylvania
Dutch girls; they always expect to be treated as one of the family. We
have colored servants. You can teach them their place."

"I see. I suppose so," agreed Amanda, while she mentally appraised the
girl before her and thought, "Isabel Souders, a little more democracy
wouldn't be amiss for you."

Although the boarder who came to the Reist farmhouse was unlike any of
the members of the family, she soon won her way into their affections.
Her sweet tenderness, her apparent childlike innocence, appealed to the
simple, unsuspicious country folk. Shaping her actions in accordance
with the old Irish saying, "It's better to have the dogs of the street
for you than against you," Isabel made friends with Millie and went so
far as to pare potatoes for her at busy times. Philip and Uncle Amos
were non-committal beyond a mere, "Oh, I guess she's all right. Good
company, and nice to have around."

The first Sunday of the boarder's stay in the country she invited
herself to accompany the family to Mennonite church. Amanda appeared in
a simple white linen dress and a semi-tailored black hat, but when
Isabel tripped down the stairs the daughter of the house was quite
eclipsed. Isabel's dark hair was puffed out becomingly about cheeks
that had added pink applied to them. In an airy orchid organdie dress
and hat to match, white silk stockings and white buckskin pumps, she
looked ready for a garden party. According to all the ways of human
nature more than one little Mennonite maid in that meeting-house must
have cast sidelong glances at the beautiful vision, and older members
of the plain sect must have thought the old refrain, "Vanity, vanity,
all is vanity!"

Aunt Rebecca was at church that morning and came to the Reist home for
dinner. She sought out Millie in the kitchen and gave her unsolicited,
frank opinion--"My goodness, I don't think much of that there Isabel
from Lancaster! She's too much stuck up. Such a get-up for a Sunday and
church like she has on to-day! She looks like a regular peacock. It'll
go good if she don't spoil our Amanda yet till she goes home."

"Ach, I guess not. She's a little fancier than I like to see girls, but
then she's a nice girl and can't do Amanda no hurt."

"She means herself too big, that's what! And them folks ain't the right
kind for Amanda to know. It might spite you all yet for takin' her in
to board. Next thing she'll be playin' round with some of the country
boys here, and mebbe take one that Amanda would liked to get. There's
no trustin' such gay dressers. I found that out long a'ready."

"Ach," said Millie, "I guess Amanda don't like none of the boys round
here in Crow Hill."

"How do you know? Guess Amanda ain't no different from the rest of us
in petticoats. You just wait once and see how long it goes till the
boys commence to hang round this fancy Isabel."

Millie hadn't long to wait. Through Mrs. Landis, who had been to
Mennonite church and noticed a stranger with the Reist family, Martin
Landis soon knew of the boarder. That same evening he dressed in his
best clothes. He had not forgotten the dark eyes of Isabel smiling to
him over the pink azaleas.

"Where you goin', Mart?" asked his mother. "Over to Landisville to
church?"

"No--just out for a little while."

"Take me with," coaxed the littlest Landis, now five years old and the
ninth in line.

"Ach, go on!" spoke up an older Landis boy, "what d'you think Mart
wants with you? He's goin' to see his girl. Na, ah!" he cried gleefully
and clapped his hands, "I guessed it! Look at him blushin', Mom!"

Martin made a grab for the boy and shook him. "You've got too much
romantic nonsense in your head," he told the teasing brother. "Next
thing you know you'll be a poet!" He released the squirming boy and
rubbed a finger round the top of his collar as he turned to his mother.

"I'm just going down to Reists' a while. I met Miss Souders a few weeks
ago and thought it would be all right for me to call. The country must
seem quiet to her after living in the city."

"Of course it's all right, Martin," agreed his mother. "Just you go
ahead."

But after he left, Mrs. Landis sat a long while on the porch, thinking
about her eldest boy, her first-born. "He's goin' to see that doll
right as soon as she comes near, and yet Amanda he don't go to see when
she's alone, not unless he wants her to go for a walk or something like
that. If only he'd take to Amanda! She's the nicest girl in Lancaster
County, I bet! But he looks right by her. This pretty girl, in her
fancy clothes and with her flippy ways--I know she's flippy, I watched
her in church--she takes his eye, and if she matches her dress she'll
go to his head like hard cider. Ach, sometimes abody feels like puttin'
blinders on your boys till you get 'em past some women."

A little later the troubled mother walked back to the side porch, where
her husband was enjoying the June twilight while he kept an eye on four
of the younger members of the family as they were quietly engaged in
their Sabbath recreation of piecing together picture puzzles.

"Martin," she said as she sat beside the man, "I've been thinkin' about
our Mart."

"Yes? What?"

"Why, I feel we ain't doin' just right by him. You know he don't like
farmin' at all. He's anxious to get more schoolin' but he ain't
complainin'. He wants to fit himself so he can get in some office or
bank in the city and yet here he works on the farm helpin' us like he
really liked to do that kind of work. Now he's of age, and since Walter
and Joe are big enough to help you good and we're gettin' on our feet a
little since the nine babies are out of the dirt, as they say still,
why don't we give Martin a chance once?"

"Well, why not? I'm agreed, Ma. He's been workin' double, and when I'm
laid up with that old rheumatism he runs things good as I could. We got
the mortgage paid off now. How'd it be if we let him have the tobacco
money? I was thinkin' of puttin' in the electric lights and fixin'
things up a little with it, but if you'd rather give it to Mart--"

"I would. Much rather! I used oil lamps this long and I guess I can
manage with them a while yet."

"All right, but as soon as we can we'll get others. Mart's young and
ought to have his chance, like you say. I don't know what for he'd
rather sit over a lot o' books in some hot little office or stand in a
stuffy bank and count other people's money when he could work on a farm
and be out in the open air, but then we ain't all alike and I guess
it's a good thing we ain't. We'll tell him he dare have time for goin'
to Lancaster to school if he wants. Mebbe he'll be a lawyer or
president some day, ain't, Ma?"

"Ach, Martin, I don't think that would be so much. I'd rather have my
children just plain, common people like we are. Mart's gone up to
Reists' this evening."

"So? To see Amanda, I guess."

"Her or that boarder from Lancaster."

"That ruffly girl we saw this morning?"

"Yes."

"Ach, don't you worry, Ma. Our Mart won't run after that kind of a
girl! Anyhow, not for long."

At that moment the object of their discussion was approaching the Reist
farmhouse. The entire household, Millie included, sat on the big front
porch as the caller came down the road.

"Look," said Philip, and began to sing softly. "Here comes a beau
a-courting, a-courting---"

"Phil!" chided Millie and Amanda in one breath.

"Don't worry, Sis," said the irrepressible youth, "we'll gradually
efface ourselves, one by one--we're very thoughtful. I'll flip a penny
to see whether Isabel stays or you. Heads you win, tails she does."

"Phil!"

The vehement protest from his sister did not deter the boy from tossing
the coin, which promptly rolled off the porch and fell into a bed of
geraniums.

"See," he continued, "even the Fates are uncertain which one of you
will win. I suppose the battle's to the strongest this time. Oh, hello,
Martin," he said graciously as the caller turned in at the gate, "Nice
day, ain't it?"

"What ails the boy?" asked Martin, laughing as he raised his hat and
joined the group on the porch.

"Martin," said Amanda after he had greeted Isabel and took his place on
a chair near her, "you'd do me an everlasting favor if you'd turn that
brother of mine up on your knees and spank him."

"Now that I'd like to see!" spoke up Millie.

"You would, Millie? You'd like to see me get that? After all the coal
I've carried out of the cellar for you, and the other ways I've helped
make your burden lighter--you'd sit and see me humiliated! Ingratitude!
Even Millie turns against me. I'm going away from this crowd where I'm
not appreciated."

"Oh, you needn't affect such an air of martyrdom," his sister told him.
"I know you have a book half read; you want to get back to that."

"Say," said Uncle Amos, "these women, if they don't beat all! They
ferret all the weak spots out a man. I say it ain't right."

Later in the evening the older members of the household left the porch
and the trio of eternal trouble--two girls and a man--were left alone.
It was then the city girl exerted her most alluring wiles to be
entertaining. The man had eyes and ears for her only. As Mrs. Landis
once said, he looked past Amanda and did not see her. She sat in the
shadow and bit her lip as her plumed knight paid court before the
beauty and charm of another. The heart of the simple country girl
ached. But Isabel smiled, flattered and charmed and did it so adeptly
that instead of being obnoxious to the country boy it thrilled and
held him like the voice of a Circe. They never noticed Amanda's
silence. She could lean back in her chair and dream. She remembered
the story of Ulysses and his wax-filled ears that saved him from the
sirens; the tale of Orpheus, who drowned their alluring voices by
playing on his instrument a music sweeter than theirs--ah, that was
her only hope! That somewhere, deep in the heart of the man she loved
was a music surpassing in sweetness the music of the shallow girl's
voice which now seemed to sway him to her will. "If he is a man worth
loving," she thought, "he'll see through the surface glamour of a girl
like that." It was scant consolation, for she knew that only too
frequently do noble men give their lives into the precarious keeping
of frivolous, butterfly women.

"Why so pensive?" the voice of Isabel pierced her revery.

"Me--oh, I haven't had a chance to get a word in edgewise."

"I was telling Mr. Landis he should go on with his studies. A
correspondence course would be splendid for him if he can't get away
from the farm for regular college work."

"I'm going to write about that course right away," Martin said. "I'm
glad I had this talk with you, Miss Souders. I'll do as you suggest--
study nights for a time and then try to get into a bank in Lancaster.
It is so kind of you to offer to see your father about a position. I'd
feel in my element if I ever held a position in a real bank. I'll be
indebted to you for life."

"Oh," she disclaimed any credit, "your own merits would cause you to
make good in the position. I am sure Father will be glad to help you.
He has helped several young men to find places. All he asks in return
is that they make good. I know you'd do that."

When Martin Landis said good-night his earnest, "May I come again--
soon?" was addressed to Isabel. She magnanimously put an arm about
Amanda before she replied, "Certainly. We'll be glad to have you."

"Oh," thought Amanda, "I'll be hating her pretty soon and then how will
I ever endure having her around for a whole month! I'm a mean, jealous
cat! Let Martin Landis choose whom he wants--I should worry!"

She said good-night with a stoical attempt at indifference, thereby
laying the first block of the hard, high barricade she meant to build
about her heart. She would be no child to cry for the moon, the
unattainable. If her heart bled what need to make a public exhibition
of it! From that hour on the front porch she turned her back on her
gay, merry, laughing girlhood and began the journey in the realm of
womanhood, where smiles hide sorrows and the true feelings of the heart
are often masked.

The determination to meet events with dignity and poise came to her aid
innumerable times during the days that followed. When Martin came to
the Reist farmhouse with the news that his father was going to give him
money for a course in a Business School in Lancaster it was to Isabel
he told the tidings and from her he received the loudest handclaps.

The city girl, rosy and pretty in her morning dresses, ensconced
herself each day on the big couch hammock of the front porch to wave to
Martin Landis as he passed on his way to the trolley that took him to
his studies in the city. Sometimes she ran to the gate and tossed him a
rose for his buttonhole. Later in the day she was at her post again,
ready to ask pleasantly as he passed, "Well, how did school go to-day?"
Such seemingly spontaneous interest spurred the young man to greater
things ahead.

Many evenings Martin sat on the Reist porch and he and Isabel laughed
and chatted and sometimes half-absent-mindedly referred a question to
Amanda. Frequently that young lady felt herself to be a fifth wheel and
sought some diversion. Excuses were easy to find; the most palpable one
was accepted with calm credulity by the infatuated young people.

One day, when three weeks of the boarder's stay were gone, Lyman
Mertzheimer came home from college, bringing with him a green roadster,
the gift of his wealthy, indulgent father.

He drew up to the Reist house and tooted his horn until Amanda ran into
the yard to discover what the noise meant.

"Good-morning, Lady Fair!" he called, laughing at her expression of
surprise. "I thought I could make you come! Bump of curiosity is still
working, I see. Wait, I'm coming in," he called after her as she turned
indignantly and moved toward the house.

"Please!" He called again as she halted, ashamed to be so lacking in
cordiality. "I want to see you. That's a cold, cruel way to greet a
fellow who's just come home from college and rushes over to see you
first thing."

He entered the yard and Amanda bade him, "Come up. Sit down," as she
took a chair on the porch. "So you're back for the summer, Lyman."

"Yes. Aren't you delighted?" He smiled at her teasingly. "I'm back to
the 'sauerkraut patch' again. Glory, I wish Dad would sell out and move
to some decent place."

"Um," she grunted, refraining from speech.

"Yes. I loathe this Dutch, poky old place. The only reason I'm glad to
ever see it again is because you live here. That's the only excuse I
have to be glad to see Lancaster County. And that reminds me, Amanda,
have you forgotten what I told you at the Spelling Bee? Do you still
feel you don't want to tackle the job of reforming me? Come, now," he
pleaded, "give a fellow a bit of hope to go on."

"I told you no, Lyman. I don't change my mind so easily."

"Oh, you naughty girl!" came Isabel's sweet voice as she drifted to the
porch. "I looked all over the house for you, Amanda, and here I find
you entertaining a charming young man."

Isabel was lovely as usual. Amanda introduced Lyman to her and as the
honeyed words fell from the lips of the city girl the country girl
stood contemplating the pair before her. "That's the first time," she
thought, "I was glad to hear that voice. I do wish those two would be
attracted to each other. They match in many ways."

Lyman Mertzheimer was not seriously attracted to Isabel, but he was at
times a keen strategist and the moment he saw the city girl an idea
lodged in his brain. Here was a pretty girl who could, no doubt, easily
be made to accept attentions from him. By Jove, he'd make Amanda
jealous! He'd play with Isabel, shower attentions upon her until Amanda
would see what she missed by snubbing a Mertzheimer!

The following week was a busy one for Isabel. Lyman danced attendance
every day. He developed a sudden affection for Lancaster County and
took Isabel over the lovely roads of that Garden Spot. They visited the
Cloister at Ephrata, the museum of antiques at Manheim, the beautiful
Springs Park at Lititz, the interesting, old-fashioned towns scattered
along the road. Over state highways they sped along in his green
roadster, generally going like Jehu, furiously. The girl enjoyed the
riding more than the society of the man. He was exulting in the thought
that he must be peeving Amanda.

Nevertheless, at the end of Isabel's visit, Lyman was obliged to
acknowledge to himself, "All my fooling round with the other girl never
phased Amanda! Kick me for a fool! I'll have to think up some other way
to make her take notice of me."

Martin Landis came in for the small portion those days. How could he
really enjoy his evenings at the Reist house when Lyman Mertzheimer sat
there like an evil presence with his smirking smile and his watchful
eyes ever open! Some of the zest went out of Martin's actions. His
exuberance decreased. It was a relief to him when the boarder's parents
returned from their trip and the girl went home. He had her invitation
to call at her home in Lancaster. Surely, there Lyman would not sit
like the black raven of Poe's poem! Isabel would not forget him even
when she was once more in the city! Martin Landis was beginning to
think the world a fine old place, after all. He was going to school,
had prospects of securing a position after his own desires, thanks to
Isabel Souders, he had the friendship of a talented, charming city
girl--what added bliss the future held for him he did not often dream
about. The present held enough joy for him.



CHAPTER XII

UNHAPPY DAYS


That September Amanda went back to her second year of teaching at Crow
Hill. She went bearing a heavy heart. It was hard to concentrate her
full attention on reading, spelling and arithmetic. She needed
constantly to summon all her will power to keep from dreaming and
holding together her tottering castles in Spain.

From the little Landis children, pupils in her school, she heard
unsolicited bits of gossip about Martin--"Our Mart, he's got a girl in
Lancaster."

"Oh, you mustn't talk like that!" Amanda interrupted, feeling
conscience stricken.

"Ach, that don't matter," came the frank reply; "it ain't no secret.
Pop and Mom tease him about it lots of times. He gets all dressed up
still evenings and takes the trolley to Lancaster to see his girl."

"Perhaps he goes in on business."

"Business--you bet not! Not every week and sometimes twice a week would
he go on business. He's got a girl and I heard Mom tell Pop in Dutch
that she thinks it's that there Isabel that boarded at your house last
summer once. Mom said she wished she could meet her, then she'd feel
better satisfied. We don't want just anybody to get our Mart. But I
guess anybody he'd pick out would be all right, don't you, Aman--I
mean, Miss Reist?"

"Yes, I guess so--of course she would," Amanda agreed.

One winter day Martin himself mentioned the name of Isabel to Amanda.
He stopped in at the Reist farm, seeming his old friendly self. "I came
in to tell you good news," he told Amanda.

"Now what?" asked Millie, who was in the room with Mrs. Reist and
Amanda.

"I've been appointed to a place in the bank at Lancaster."

"Good! I'm so glad, Martin!" cried the girl with genuine interest and
joy. "It's what you wanted, isn't it?"

"Yes. But I would never have landed it so soon if it hadn't been for
Mr. Souders, Isabel's father. He's influential in the city and he
helped me along. Now it's up to me to make good."

"You'll do that, I'm sure you will!" came the spontaneous reply.

Martin looked at the bright, friendly face of Amanda. "Why," he
thought, "how pleased she is! She's a great little pal." For a moment
the renewed friendliness of childhood days was awakened in him.

"Say, Amanda," he said, "we haven't had a good tramp for ages. I've
been so busy with school"--he flushed, thinking of the city girl to
whom he had been giving so much of his time--"and--well, I've been at
it pretty hard for a while. Now I'll just keep on with my
correspondence work but I'll have a little more time. Shall we take a
tramp Sunday afternoon?"

"If you want to," the girl responded, her heart pounding with pleasure.

Amanda dressed her prettiest for that winter tramp. She remembered
Queen Esther, who had put on royal apparel to win the favor of the
king. The country girl, always making the most of her good features and
coloring, was simply, yet becomingly dressed when she met Martin in the
Reist sitting-room. In her brown suit, little brown hat pulled over her
red hair, a brown woolly scarf thrown over her shoulders, she looked
like a creature of the woodland she loved.

That walk in the afternoon sunshine which warmed slightly the cold,
snowy earth, was a happy one to both. Some of the old comradeship
sprang up, mushroom-like, as they climbed the rail fence and entered
the woods where they had so often sought wild flowers and birds' nests.
Martin spoke frankly of his work and his ambition to advance. Amanda
was a good listener, a quality always appreciated by a man. When he had
told his hopes and aspirations to her he began to take interest in her
affairs. Her school, funny incidents occurring there, her basket work
with the children--all were talked about, until Amanda in dazed fashion
brushed her hand across her eyes and wondered whether Isabel and her
wiles was all an hallucination.

But the subject came round all too soon. They were speaking of the
Victrola recently purchased for the Crow Hill school when Martin asked,
"Have you ever heard Isabel Souders play?"

"Yes, at Millersville. She often played at recitals."

"She's great! Isn't she great at a piano! She's been good enough to
invite me in there. Sometimes she plays for me. The first time she
played ragtime but I told her I hate that stuff. She said she's
versatile, can please any taste. So now she entertains me with those
lovely, dreamy things that almost talk to you. She's taught me to play
cards, too. I haven't said anything about it at home, they wouldn't
understand. Mother and Father still consider cards wicked. I dare say
it wouldn't be just the thing for Mennonites to play cards, but I fail
to see any harm in it."

"No--but your mother would be hurt if she knew it."

"She won't know it. I wouldn't do anything wrong, but Mother doesn't
understand about such things. The only place I play is at Isabel's
home. It's an education to be taken into a fine city home like theirs
and treated as an equal."

"An equal! Why, Martin Landis, you are an equal! If a good, honest
country boy isn't as good as a butterfly city girl I'd like to know who
is! Aren't your people and mine as good as any others in the whole
world? Even if the men do eat in their shirt sleeves and the women
can't tell an oyster fork from a salad one." The fine face of the girl
was flushed and eager as she went on, "Of course, these days young
people should learn all the little niceties of correct table manners so
they can eat anywhere and not be embarrassed. But I'll never despise
any middle-aged or old people just because they eat with a knife or
pour coffee into a saucer or commit any other similar transgression.
It's a matter of man-made style, after all. When our grannies were
young the proper way to do was to pour coffee into the saucers. Why, we
have a number of little glass plates made just for the purpose of
holding the cup after the coffee had been poured into the saucer. The
cup-plates saved the cloth from stains of the drippings on the cup. I
heard a prominent lecturer say we should not be so quick to condemn
people who do not eat as we think they should. He said, apropos of
eating with a knife or, according to present usage, with a fork, that
it's just a little matter of the difference between pitching it in or
shoveling it in."

Martin laughed. "There's nothing of the snob about you, is there? I
believe you see the inside of people without much looking on the
exterior."

"I hope so," she said. "Shall we turn back now? I'm cold."

She was cold, but it was an inward reaction from the joy of being with
Martin again. His words about Isabel and his glad recounting of the
hours he spent with her chilled the girl. She felt that he was becoming
more deeply entangled in the web Isabel spun for him. To the country
girl's observant, analytical mind it seemed almost impossible that a
girl of Isabel's type could truly love a plain man like Martin Landis
or could ever make him happy if she married him.

"It's just one more conquest for her to boast about," Amanda thought.
"Just as the mate of the Jack-in-the-pulpit invites the insects to her
honey and then catches them in a hopeless trap, so women like Isabel
play with men like Martin. No wonder the root of the Jack-in-the-pulpit
is bitter--it's symbolic of the aftermath of the honeyed trap."

Worried, unhappy though she was, Amanda's second year of teaching was,
in the opinion of the pupils, highly successful. Some of the wonder-
thoughts of her heart she succeeded in imparting to them in that little
rural school. As she tugged at the bell rope and sent the ding-dong
pealing over the countryside with its call that brought the children
from many roads and byways she felt an irresistible thrill pulsating
through her. It was as if the big bell called, "Here, come here, come
here! We'll teach you knowledge from books, and that rarer thing,
wisdom. We'll teach you in this little square room the meaning of the
great outside world, how to meet the surging tide of the cities and
battle squarely. We'll show you how to carry to commerce and business
and professional life the honesty and wholesomeness and sincerity of
the country. We'll teach you that sixteen ounces make a pound and show
you why you must never forget that, but must keep exalted and unstained
the high standards of courage and right."

Some world-old philosophical conception of the insignificance of her
own joys and sorrows as compared with the magnitude of the earth and
its vast solar system came to her at times.

"My life," she thought, "seems so important to me and yet it is so
little a thing to weep about if my days are not as full of joy as I
want them to be. I must step out from myself, detach myself and get a
proper perspective. After all, my little selfish wants and yearnings
are so small a portion of the whole scheme of things.

  'For all that laugh, and all that weep
  And all that breathe are one
  Slight ripple on the boundless deep
  That moves, and all is gone.'"

Looking back over the winter months of that second year of teaching
Amanda sometimes wondered how she was able to do her work in the
schoolroom acceptably. But the strain of being a stoic left its marks
upon her.

"My goodness," said Aunt Rebecca one day in February when a blizzard
held her snowbound at the Reist farmhouse, "that girl must be doin' too
much with this teachin' and basket makin' and who knows what not! She
looks pale and sharp-chinned. Ain't you noticed?" she asked Mrs. Reist.

"I thought last week she looked pinched and I asked if she felt bad but
she said she felt all right, she was just a little bit tired sometimes.
I guess teachin' forty boys and girls

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/6330