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!
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.”
The rhubarb leaf parasolThe 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, “menarefunny 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!”
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!”