That September Amanda began her third year of teaching at Crow Hill.
“I declare,” Millie said, “how quick the time goes! Here’s your third year o’ teachin’ started a’ready. A body gets old fast.”
“Yes, I’ll soon be an old maid school teacher.”
“Now, mebbe not!” The hired girl had lost none of her frankness. “I notice that Mart Landis sneaks round here a good bit this while past.”
“Ach, Millie, he’s not here often.”
“No, o’ course not! He just stops in in the afternoon about every other day with a book or something of excuse like that, and about every other day in the morning he’s likely to happen to drop in to get the book back, and then in between that he comes and you go out for a walk after flowers or birds or something, and then between times there he comes with something his mom told him to ask or bring or something like that --no, o’ course not, he don’t come often! Not at all! I guess he’s just neighborly, ain’t, Amanda?” Millie chuckled at her own wit and Amanda could not long keep a frown upon her face.
“Of course, Millie,” she said with an assumed air of indifference, “the Landis people have always been neighborly. Pennsylvania Dutch are great for that.”
It was not from Millie alone that Amanda had to take teasing. Philip, always ready for amusement, was at times almost insufferable in the opinion of his sister.
“What’s the matter with Mart Landis’s home?” the boy asked innocently one day at the supper table.
“Why?” asked Uncle Amos. “I’ll bite.”
“Well, he seems to be out of it a great deal; he spends half of his time in our house. I think, Uncle Amos, as head of the house here, you should ask him what his intentions are.”
“Phil!” Amanda’s protest was vehement. “You make me as tired as some other people round here do. As soon as a man walks down the road with a girl the whole matter is settled--they’ll surely marry soon! It would be nice if people would attend to their own affairs.”
“Makes me tired too,” said Philip fervently. “Last week I met that Sarah from up the road and naturally walked to the car with her. You all know what a fright she is--cross-eyed, pigeon-toed, and as brilliant mentally as a dark night in the forest. When I got into the car I heard some one say, ’Did you see Philip Reist with that girl? I wonder if he keeps company with her.’ Imagine!”
“Serves you right,” Amanda told him with impish delight. “I hope every cross-eyed, pigeon-toed girl in the county meets you and walks with you!”
“Feel better now, Sis?” His grin brought laughter to the crowd and Amanda’s peeved feeling was soon gone.
It was true, Martin Landis spent many hours at the Reist farmhouse. He seemed filled with an insatiable desire for the companionship of Amanda. Scarcely a day passed without some glimpse of him at the Reist home.
Just what that companionship meant to the young man he did not stop to analyze at first. He knew he was happy with Amanda, enjoyed her conversation, felt a bond between them in their love for the vast outdoors, but he never went beyond that. Until one day in early November when he was walking down the lonely road after a pleasant evening with Amanda. He paused once to look up at the stars, remembering what the girl had said concerning them, how they comforted and inspired her. A sudden rush of feeling came to him as he leaned on the rail fence and looked up.... “Look here,” he told himself, “it’s time you take account of yourself. What’s all this friendship with your old companion leading to? Do you love Amanda?” The “stars in their courses” seemed to twinkle her name, every leafless tree along the road she loved seemed to murmur it to him--Amanda! It was suddenly the sweetest name in the whole world to him!
“Oh, I know it now!” he said softly to himself under the quiet sky. “I love her! What a woman she is! What a heart she has, what a heart! I want her for my wife; she’s the only one I want to have with me ’Till death us do part’--that’s a fair test. Why, I’ve been wondering why I enjoyed each minute with her and just longed to get to see her as often as possible--fool, not to recognize love when it came to me! But I know it now! I’m as sure of it as I am sure those stars, her stars, are shining up there in the sky.”
As he stood a moment silently looking into the starry heavens some portion of an old story came to him. “My love is as fair as the stars and well-nigh as remote and inaccessible.” Could he win the love of a girl like Amanda Reist? She gave him her friendship freely, would she give her love also? A woman like Amanda could never be satisfied with half-gods, she would love as she did everything else--intensely, entirely! He remembered reading that propinquity often led people into mistakes, that constant companionship was liable to awaken a feeling that might masquerade as love. Well, he’d be fair to her, he’d let separation prove his love.
“That’s just what I’ll do,” he decided. “Next week I’m to go on my vacation and I’ll be gone two weeks. I’ll not write to her and of course I won’t see her. Perhaps ’Absence will make the heart grow fonder’ with her. I hope so! It will be a long two weeks for me, but when I come back--” He flung out his arms to the night as though they could bring to him at once the form of the one he loved.
So it happened that after a very commonplace goodbye given to Amanda in the presence of the entire Reist household Martin Landis left Lancaster County a few weeks before Thanksgiving and journeyed to South Carolina to spend a quiet vacation at a mountain resort.
To Amanda Reist, pegging away in the schoolroom during the gray November days, his absence caused depression. He had said nothing about letters but she naturally expected them, friendly little notes to tell her what he was doing and how he was enjoying the glories of the famous mountains of the south. But no letters came from Martin.
“Oh,” she bit her lip after a week had gone and he was still silent. “I won’t care! He writes home; the children tell me he says the scenery is so wonderful where he is--why can’t he send me just one little note? But I’m not going to care. I’ve been a fool long enough. I should know by this time that it’s a case of ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’ I’m about done with castles in Spain! All my sentimental dreams about my knight, all my rosy visions are, after all, of that substance of which all dreams are made. I suppose if I had been practical and sensible like other girls I could have made myself like Lyman Mertzheimer or some other ordinary country boy and settled down into a contented woman on a farm. Why couldn’t I long ago have put away my girlish illusions about knights and castles in Spain? I wonder if, after all, gold eagles are better and more to be desired than the golden roofs of our dream castles? If an automobile like Lyman Mertzheimer drives is not to be preferred to Sir Galahad’s pure white steed! I’ve clung to my romanticism and what has it brought me? It might have been wiser to let go my dreams, sweep the illusions from my eyes and settle down to a sordid, everyday existence as the wife of some man, like Lyman Mertzheimer, who has no eye for the beauties of nature but who has two eyes for me.”
Poor Amanda, destruction of her dream castles was perilously imminent! The golden turrets were tottering and the substance of which her dreams were made was becoming less ethereal. If Lyman Mertzheimer came to her then and renewed his suit would she give him a more encouraging answer than those she had given in former times? Amanda’s hour of weakness and despair was upon her. It was a propitious moment for the awakening of the forces of her lower nature which lay quiescent in her, as it dwells in us all--very few escape the Jekyll-Hyde combination.
When Martin Landis returned to Lancaster County he had a vagrant idea of what the South Carolina mountains are like. He would have told you that the trees there all murmur the name of Amanda, that the birds sing her name, the waterfalls cry it aloud! During his two weeks of absence from her his conviction was affirmed--he knew without a shadow of doubt that he loved her madly. All of Mrs. Browning’s tests he had applied--
“Unless you can muse in a crowd all day,On the absent face that fixed you;Unless you can love, as the angels may,With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,Through behoving and unbehoving;Unless you can die when the dream is past--Oh, never call it loving!”
Amanda was enthroned in his heart, he knew it at last! How blind he had been! He knew now what his mother had meant one day when she told him, “Some of you men are blinder’n bats! Bats do see at night!”
As he rode from Lancaster on the little crowded trolley his thoughts were all of Amanda--would she give him the answer he desired? Could he waken in her heart something stronger than the old feeling of friendship, which was not now enough?
He stepped from the car--now he would be with her soon. He meant to stop in at the Reist farmhouse and ask her the great question. He could wait no longer.
“Hello, Landis,” a voice greeted him as he alighted from the car. He turned and faced Lyman Mertzheimer, a smiling, visibly happy Lyman.
“Oh, hello,” Martin said, not cordially, for he had no love for the trouble-maker. “I see you’re in Lancaster County for your vacation again.”
“Yes, home from college for Thanksgiving. I hear you’ve been away for several weeks.”
The college boy fell into step beside Martin, who would have turned and gone in another direction if he had not been so eager to see Amanda.
“Yes, Landis,” continued the unwelcome companion. “I’m home for Thanksgiving. It’ll be a great day for me this year. By the way, I saw Amanda Reist a number of times since I’m here. Perhaps you’ll be interested to know that Amanda’s promised to marry me--congratulate me!”
“To marry you! Amanda?” Martin’s face blanched and his heart seemed turned to lead.
“Why not?” The other laughed softly. “I’m not as black as I’m painted, you know.”
“I--I hope not,” Martin managed to say, his body suddenly seeming to be rooted in the ground. His feet dragged as he walked along. Amanda to marry Lvman Mertzheimer! What a crazv world it was all of a sudden. What a slow, poky idiot he had been not to try for the prize before it was snatched from him!
Lyman, rejoicing over the misery so plainly written in the face of Martin, walked boldly down the middle of the road, while Martin’s feet lagged so he could not keep pace with the man who had imparted the bewildering news. Martin kept along the side of the road, scuffing along in the grass, thinking bitter thoughts about the arrogant youth who walked in the middle of the road. The honk, honk of a speeding automobile fell heedlessly upon the ears of both, till Martin looked back in sudden alarm. His startled eyes saw a car tearing down the road like a huge demon on wheels, its driver evidently trusting to the common sense of the man in the way to get out of the path of danger in time. But Lyman walked on in serene preoccupation, gloating over the unlucky, unhappy man who was following. With a cry of warning Martin rushed to the side of the other man and pushed him from the path of the car, but when the big machine came to a standstill Martin Landis lay in the dusty road, his eyes closed, a thin red stream of blood trickling down his face.
The driver was concerned. “He’s knocked out,” he said as he bent over the still form. “I’m a doctor and I’ll take him home and fix him up. He’s a plucky chap, all right! He kept you from cashing in, probably. Say, young fellow, are you deaf? I honked loud enough to be heard a mile. Only for him you’d be in the dust there and you’d have caught it full. The car just grazed him. It’s merely a scalp wound,” he said in relief as he examined the prostrate figure. “Know where he lives?”
“Yes, just a little distance beyond the schoolhouse down this road.”
“Good. I’ll take him home. I can’t say how sorry I am it happened. Give me a lift, will you? You sit in the back seat and hold him while I drive.”
Lyman did not relish the task assigned to him but the doctor’s tones admitted of no refusal. Martin Landis was taken to his home and in his semiconscious condition he did not know that his head with its handkerchief binding leaned against the rascally breast of Lyman Mertzheimer.
The news of the accident soon reached the Reist farmhouse. Amanda telephoned her sympathy to Mrs. Landis and asked if there was anything she could do.
“Oh, Amanda,” came the reply, “I do wish you’d come over! You’re such a comforting person to have around. Did you hear that it was Lyman Mertzheimer helped to bring him home? Lyman said he and Martin were walkin’ along the road and were so busy talkin’ that neither heard the car and it knocked Martin down. It beats me what them two could have to talk about so much in earnest that they wouldn’t hear the automobile. But perhaps Lyman wanted to make up with Martin for all the mean tricks he done to him a’ready. Anyhow, we’re glad it ain’t worse. He’s got a cut on the head and is pretty much bruised. He’ll be stiff for a while but there ain’t no bones broke.”
“I’m so glad it isn’t worse.”
“Yes, ain’t, abody still has something to be thankful for? Then you’ll come on over, Amanda?”
“Yes, I’ll be over.”
As the girl walked down the road she felt a strange mingling of emotions. She couldn’t refuse the plea of Mrs. Landis, but one thing was certain--she wouldn’t see Martin! He’d be up-stairs and she could stay down. Perhaps she could help with the work in the kitchen-- anything but see Martin!
Mrs. Landis was excited as she drew her visitor into the warm kitchen, but the excitement was mingled with wrath. “What d’you think, Amanda,” she exclaimed, “our Mart---”
“Yes, our Mart---” piped out one of the smaller children, but an older one chided him, “Now you hush, and let Mom tell about it.”
“That Lyman Mertzheimer,” said Mrs. Landis indignantly, “abody can’t trust at all! He let me believe that he and Martin was walkin’ along friendly like and that’s how Mart got hurt. But here after Lyman left and the doctor had Mart all fixed up and was goin’ he told me that Martin was in the side of the road and wouldn’t got hurt at all if he hadn’t run to the middle to pull Lyman back. He saved that mean fellow’s life and gets no thanks for it from him! After all Lyman’s dirty tricks this takes the cake!”
Amanda’s eyes sparkled. “He--I think Martin’s wonderful!” she said, her lips trembling.
“Yes,” the mother agreed as she wiped her eyes with one corner of her gingham apron. “I’d rather my boy laid up in bed hurt like he is than have him like Lyman.”
“Oh, Mom,” little Emma came running into the room, “I looked in at Mart and he’s awake. Mebbe he wants somebody to talk to him like I did when I had the measles. Dare I go set with him a little if I keep quiet?”
“Why,” said Mrs. Landis, “that would be a nice job for Amanda. You go up,” she addressed the girl, “and stay a little with him. He’ll appreciate your comin’ to see him.”
Amanda’s heart galloped. Her whole being was a mass of contradictions. One second she longed to fly up the steps to where the plumed knight of her girlish dreams lay, the next she wanted to flee down the country road away from him.
She stood a moment, undecided, but Mrs. Landis had taken her compliance for granted and was already busy with some of her work in the kitchen. At length Amanda turned to the stairs, followed by several eager, excited children.
“Here,” called the mother, “Charlie, Emma, you just leave Amanda go up alone. It ain’t good for Mart to have so much company at once. I’ll leave you go up to-night.” They turned reluctantly and the girl started up the stairs alone, some power seeming to urge her on against her will.
Martin Landis returned to consciousness through a shroud of enveloping shadows. What had happened? Why was a strange man winding bandages round his head? He raised an arm--it felt heavy. Then his mother’s voice fell soothingly upon his ears, “You’re all right, Martin.”
“Yes, you’re all right,” repeated the doctor, “but that other fellow should have the bumps you got.”
“That other fellow"--Martin thought hazily, then he remembered. The whole incident came back to him, etched upon his memory. How he had started from the car, eager to get to Amanda, then Lyman had come with his news of her engagement and the hope in his heart became stark. Where was her blue bunting with its eternal song? Ah, he had killed it with his indifference and caution and foolish blindness! He knew he stumbled along the road, grief and misery playing upon his heart strings. Then came the frantic honk of the car and Lyman in its path. Good enough for him, was the first thought of the Adam in Martin. The next second he had obeyed some powerful impulse and rushed to the help of the heedless Lyman. Then blackness and oblivion had come upon him. Blessed oblivion, he thought, as the details of the occurrence returned to him. He groaned.
“Hurt you?” asked the doctor kindly.
“No. I’m all right.” He smiled between his bandages. “I think I can rest comfortably now, thank you.”
He was grateful they left him alone then, he wanted to think. Countless thoughts were racing through his tortured brain. How could Amanda marry Lyman Mertzheimer? Did she love him? Would he make her happy? Why had he, Martin, been so blind? What did life hold for him if Amanda went out of it? The thoughts were maddening and after a while a merciful Providence turned them away from him and he fell to dreaming tenderly of the girl, the Amanda of his boyhood, the gay, laughing comrade of his walks in the woods. Tender, understanding Amanda of his hours of unhappiness--Amanda--the vision of her danced before his eyes and lingered by his side--Amanda---
“Martin"--the voice of her broke in upon his dreaming! She stood in the doorway and he wondered if that, too, was a part of his dream.
“Martin,” she said again, a little timidly. Then she came into the room, a familiar little figure in her brown suit and little brown hat pulled over her red hair.
“Oh, hello,” he answered, “come in if you care to.”
“Iamin.” She laughed nervously, a strange way for her to be laughing, but the man did not take heed of it. Had she come to laugh at him for being a fool? he thought.
“Sit down,” he invited coolly. She sat on the chair by his bed, her coat buttoned and unbuttoned by her restless fingers as she stole glances at the bandaged head of the man.
“It’s good of you to come,” he began. At that she turned and began to speak rapidly.
“Martin, I must tell you! You must let me tell you! I know what you did, how you saved Lyman. I think it was wonderful of you, just wonderful!”
“Ach.” He turned his flushed face toward her then. “There’s noticing wonderful about that.”
“I think there is,” she insisted, scarcely knowing what to say. She remembered his old aversion to being lionized.
“Tell me why you did it,” she asked suddenly. She had to say something!
The man lay silent for a moment, then a rush of emotion, struggling for expression, swayed him and he spoke, while his eyes were turned resolutely from her.
“I’ll tell you, Amanda! I’ve been a fool not to recognize the fact long ago that I love you.”
“Oh!” There was a quick cry from the girl. But the man went on, impelled by the pain of losing her.
“I see now that I have always loved you, even while I was infatuated by the other girl. You were still you, right there when I needed you, ready to give your comfort and help. I must have loved you in the days we ran barefooted down the hills and looked for flowers or birds. I’ve been asleep, blind--call it what you will! Perhaps I could have taught you to love me if I had read my own heart in time. I took so much for granted, that you’d always be right there for me--now I’ve found out the truth too late. Lyman told me--I hope he’ll make you happy. Perhaps you better go now. I’m tired.”
“What did Lyman tell you? I must know”“What did Lyman tell you? I must know”
But the request fell on deaf ears.
“Lyman told you--just what did he tell you?” she asked.
“Oh,” the man groaned. “There’s a limit to human endurance. I wish you’d go, dear, and leave me alone for a while.”
“What did Lyman tell you?” she asked again. “I must know.”
“What’s the use of threshing it over? It brings neither of us happiness. Of course he told me about the engagement, that you are going to marry him.”
“Oh!” Another little cry, not of joy this time, of anger, rather. There was silence then for a space, while the man turned his face to the wall and the girl tried to still the beating of her heart and control herself sufficiently to be able to speak.
“Then, Martin,” she whispered, “you saved Lyman for me, because you thought I loved him?”
He lifted a protesting hand as if pleading for silence.
She went on haltingly, “Why, Martin, you saved the wrong one!”
He raised his head from the pillow then; a strangling sound came from his lips.
The girl’s face burned with blushes but her eyes looked fearlessly into his as she said again, “You saved the wrong one. Why, Martin--Martin-- if you wanted to save the man I love--you--you should have saved yourself!”
He read the truth in her eyes; his arms reached out for her then and her lips moved to his as steel to a magnet.
When he spoke she marveled at the tenderness in his voice; she never dreamed, even in her brightest romantic dreams, that a man’s voice could hold so much tenderness. “Amanda, I began to read my own heart that day you found me in the woods and helped and comforted me.”
“Oh, Martin,” she pressed her lips upon his bandaged head, her eyes were glowing with that “light that never was on land or sea"--"Oh, Martin, I’ve lovedyouever since that day you saved my life by throwing me into the bean-patch and then kissed my burnt hand.”
“Not your hand this time, sweetheart,” he whispered, “your lips!”
“I’m glad,” Amanda said after they had told each other the old, old story, “I’m so glad I kept my castles in Spain. When you went away and didn’t write I almost wrecked them purposely. I thought they’d go tumbling into ashes but somehow I braced them up again. Now they’re more beautiful than ever. I pity the people who own no castles in Spain, who have no dreams that won’t come true exactly as they dreamed. I’ll hold on to my dreams even if I know they can never come true exactly as I dream them. I wouldn’t give up my castles in Spain. I’ll have them till I die. But, Martin, that automobile might have killed you!”
“Nonsense. I’m just scratched a bit. I’ll be out of this in no time.”
“That rascal of a Lyman--you thought I could marry him?”
“I couldn’t believe it, yet he said so. Some liar, isn’t he?”
“Yes, but not quite so black as you thought. He is going to marry a girl named Amanda, one from his college town, and they are going to live in California.”
“Good riddance!”
“Yes. The engagement was announced last week while you were away. He knew you had probably not heard of it and saw a chance to make you jealous.”
“I’d like to wring his neck,” said Martin, grinning. “But since it turned out like this for me I’ll forgive him. I don’t care how many Amandas he marries if he leaves me mine.”
At that point little Charlie, tiptoeing to the open door of Martin’s room, saw something which caused him to widen his eyes, clap a hand over his mouth to smother an exclamation, and turn quickly down the stairs.
“Jiminy pats, Mom!” he cried excitedly as he entered the kitchen, “our Mart’s holdin’ Amanda’s hand and she’s kissin’ him on the face! I seen it and heard it! Jiminy pats!”
The small boy wondered what ailed his mother, why she was not properly shocked. Why did she gather him into her arms and whisper something that sounded exactly like, “Thank God!”
“It’s all right,” she told him. “You mustn’t tell; that’s their secret.”
“Oh, is it all right? Then I won’t tell. Mart says I can keep a secret good.”
But Martin and Amanda decided to take the mother into the happy secret. “Look at my face,” the girl said. “I can’t hide my happiness. We might as well tell it.”
“Mother!” Martin’s voice rang through the house. At the sound a happy, white-capped woman wiped her eyes again on the corner of her gingham apron and mounted the stairs to give her blessing to her boy and the girl who had crowned him with her woman’s love.
The announcement of the troth was received with gladness at the Reist farmhouse. Mrs. Reist was happy in her daughter’s joy and lived again in memory that hour when the same miracle had been wrought for her.
“Say,” asked Philip, “I hope you two don’t think you’re springing a surprise? A person blind in one eye and not seeing out of the other could see which way the wind was blowing.”
“Oh, Phil!” Amanda replied, but there was only love in her voice.
“It must be nice to be so happy like you are,” said Millie.
“Yes, it must be,” Uncle Amos nodded his head in affirmation. He looked at the hired girl, who did not appear to notice him. “I just wish I was twenty years younger,” he added.
A week later Amanda and Martin were sitting in one of the big rooms of the Reist farmhouse. Through the open door came the sound of Millie and Mrs. Reist in conversation, with an occasional deeper note in Uncle Amos’s slow, contented voice.
“Do you know,” said Martin, “I was never much of a hand to remember poetry, but there’s one verse I read at school that keeps coming to me since I know you are going to marry me. That verse about
’A perfect woman, nobly plannedTo warn, to comfort, and command.’”
“Oh, no, Martin! You put me on a pedestal, and that’s a tottering bit of architecture.”
“Not on a pedestal,” he contradicted, “but right by my side, walking together, that’s the way we want to go.”
“That’s the only way. It’s the way my parents went and the way yours are still going.” She rose and brought to him a little book. “Read Riley’s ‘Song of the Road,’” she told him.
He opened the book and read the musical verses:
“’O I will walk with you, my lad, whichever way you fare,You’ll have me, too, the side o’ you, with heart as light as air.No care for where the road you take’s a-leadin’--anywhere,--It can but be a joyful ja’nt the whilstyoujourney there.The road you take’s the path o’ love, an’ that’s the bridth o’ two--An’ I will walk with you, my lad--O I will walk with you.’
“Why,” he exclaimed, “that’s beautiful! Riley knew how to put into words the things we all feel but can’t express. Let’s read the rest.”
Her voice blended with his and out in the adjoining room Millie heard and listened. Silently the hired girl walked to the open door. She watched the two heads bending over the little book. Her heart ached for the happy childhood and the romance she had missed. The closing words of the poem came distinctly to her;
“’Sure, I will walk with you, my lad,As love ordains me to,--To Heaven’s door, and through, my lad,O I will walk with you.’”
“Say,” she startled the lovers by her remark, “if that ain’t the prettiest piece I ever heard!”
“Think so?” said Martin kindly. “I agree with you.”
“Yes, it sounds nice but the meanin’ is what abody likes.”
The hired girl went back to her place in the other room. But Amanda turned to the man beside her and said, “Romance in the heart of Millie! Who would guess it?”
“There’s romance everywhere,” Martin told her. “Millie’s heart wouldn’t be the fine big thing it is if she didn’t keep a space there for love and romance.”
The Reist farmhouse, always a busy place, was soon rivaling the proverbial beehive. Mrs. Reist, to whom sentiment was ever a vital, holy thing, to be treasured and clung to throughout the years, had long ago, in Amanda’s childhood, begun the preparation for the time of the girl’s marriage. After the fashion of olden times the mother had begun the filling of a Hope Chest for her girl. Just as she instilled into the youthful mind the homely old-fashioned virtues of honesty, truthfulness and reverence for holy things which made Amanda, as she stood on the threshold of a new life, so richly dowered in spiritual and moral acquisitions, so had the mother laid away in the big wooden chest fine linens, useful and beautiful and symbolic of the worth of the bride whose home they were destined to enrich.
But in addition to the precious contents of the Hope Chest many things were needed for the dowry of the daughter of a prosperous Lancaster County family. So the evenings and Saturdays of that year became busy ones for Amanda. Millie helped with much of the plainer sewing and Mrs. Reist’s exquisite tiny stitches enhanced many of the garments.
“Poor Aunt Rebecca,” Amanda said one day, “how we miss her now!”
“Yes, ain’t?” agreed Millie. “For all her scoldin’ she was a good help still. If she was livin’ yet she’d fuss about all the sewin’ you’re doin’ to get married but she’d pitch right in and help do it.”
Philip offered to pull basting threads, but his generosity was not appreciated. “Go on,” Millie told him, “you’d be more bother than you’re worth! Next you’d be pullin’ out the sewin’!” He was frequently chased from the room because of his inappropriate remarks concerning the trousseau or his declaration that Amanda was spending all the family wealth by her reckless substitution of silk for muslin.
“You keep quiet,” Millie often reproved him. “I guess Amanda dare have what she wants if your mom says so. If she wants them things she calls cammysoles made out of silk let her have ‘em. She’s gettin’ married only once.”
“How do you know?” he asked teasingly. “Say, Millie, I thought a camisole is a dish you make rice pudding in.”
“Ach, that shows you don’t know everything yet, even if you do go to Lancaster to school!” And he was driven from the room in laughing defeat.
It is usually conceded that to the prospective bride belongs the privilege of naming the day of her marriage, but it seemed to Amanda that Millie and Philip had as much to do with it as she. Each one had a favorite month. Phil’s suggestion finally decided the month. “Sis, you’re so keen about flowers, why don’t you make it a spring wedding? About cherry blossom time would be the thing.”
“So it would. We could have it in the orchard.”
“On a nice rainy day in May,” he said.
“Pessimist! It doesn’t rain every day in May!”
There followed happy, excited times when the matter of a house was discussed. Those were wonderful hours in which the two hunted a nest that would be near enough to the city for Martin’s daily commuting and yet have so much of the country about it as to boast of green grass and space for flowers. It was found at length, a little new bungalow outside the city limits in a residential section where gardens and trees beautified the entire street.
“Do you know,” Mrs. Reist said to Uncle Amos one day, “there’s another little house for sale in that street. If it wasn’t for breakin’ up the home for you and Millie I’d buy it and Philip and I could move in there. It would be nice and handy for him. I’m gettin’ tired of such a big house. There I could do the work myself. There’d be room for you to come with us, but I wouldn’t need Millie. I don’t like to send her off to some other people. We had her so long a’ready, and she’s a good, faithful worker. Ach, I guess I’ll have to give up thinkin’ about doin’ anything like that.”
“Well, well, now let me think once.” Uncle Amos scratched his head. Then an inscrutable smile touched his lips. “Well, now,” he said after a moment’s meditation, “now I don’t see why it can’t be arranged some way. There’s more’n one way sometimes to do things. I don’t know--I don’t know--but I think I can see a way we could manage that-- providin’--ach, we’ll just wait once, mebbe it’ll come out right.”
Mrs. Reist looked at her brother. What did he mean? He stammered and smiled like a foolish schoolboy. Poor Amos, she thought, how hard he had worked all his life and how little pleasure he had seemed to get out of his days! He was growing old, too, and would soon be unable to do the work on a big farm.
But Uncle Amos seemed spry enough several days later when he and Millie entered the big market wagon to go to Lancaster with the farm products. They left the Reist farmhouse early in the morning, a cold, gray winter day.
“Say, Millie,” he said soon after they began the drive, “I want to talk with you.”
“Well,” she answered dryly, “what’s to keep you from doin’ so? Here I am. Go on.”
“Ach, Millie, now don’t get obstreperous! Manda’s mom would like to sell the farm and move to Lancaster to a little house. Then she wouldn’t need me nor you.”
“What? Are you sure, Amos?”
“Sure! She told me herself. That would leave us out a home. For I don’t want to live in no city and set down evenings and look at houses or trolley cars. You can hire out to some other people, of course.”
“Oh, yea! Amos. What in the world--I don’t want to live no place else.”
“Well, now, wait once, Millie. I got a plan all fixed up, something I wished long a’ready I could do, only I hated to bust up the farm for my sister. Millie--ach, don’t you know what I mean? Let’s me and you get married!”
Millie drew her heavy blanket shawl closer around her and pulled her black woolen cap farther over her forehead, then she turned and looked at Amos, but his face was in shadow; the feeble oil lamp of the market wagon sent scant light inside.
“Now, Amos, you say that just because you take pity for me and want to fix a home for me, ain’t?”
“Ach, yammer, no!” came the vehement reply. “I liked you long a’ready, Millie, and used to think still, ‘There’s a girl I’d like to marry!’”
“Why, Amos,” came the happy answer, “and I liked you, too, long a’ready! I used to think still to myself, ’I don’t guess I’ll ever get married but if I do I’d like a man like Amos.’”
Then Uncle Amos suddenly demonstrated his skill at driving one-handed and something more than the blanket-shawl was around Millie’s shoulders.
“Ach, my,” she said after a while, “to think of it--me, a hired girl, to get a nice, good man like you for husband!”
“And me, a fat dopple of a farmer to get a girl like you! I’ll be good to you, Millie, honest! You just see once if I won’t! You needn’t work so hard no more. I’ll buy the farm off my sister and we’ll sell some of the land and stop this goin’ to market. It’s too hard work. We can take it easier; we’re both gettin’ old, ain’t, Millie?” He leaned over and kissed her again.
“You know,” he said blissfully, “I used to think still this here kissin’ business is all soft mush, but--why--I think it’s all right. Don’t you?”
“Ach,” she laughed as she pushed his face away gently. “They say still there ain’t no fools like old ones. I guess we’re some.”
“All right, we don’t care, long as we like it. Here,” he spoke to the horse, “giddap with you! Abody’d think you was restin’ ‘stead of goin’ to market. We’ll be late for sure this morning.” His mittened hands flapped the reins and the horse quickened his steps.
“Ha, ha,” the man laughed, “I know what ails old Bill! The kissin’ scared him. He never heard none before in this market wagon. No wonder he stands still. Here’s another for good measure.”
“Ach, Amos, I think that’s often enough now! Anyhow for this morning once.”
“Ha, ha,” he laughed. “Millie, you’re all right! That’s what you are!”
That evening at supper Philip asked suddenly, “What ails you two, Uncle Amos, you and Millie? I see you grin every time you look at each other.”
“Well, nothin’ ails me except a bad case of love that’s been stickin’ in me this long while and now it’s broke out. Millie’s caught it too.”
“Well, I declare!” Amanda was quick to detect his meaning. “You two darlings! I’m so glad!”
“Ach,” the hired girl said, blushing rosy, “don’t go make so much fuss about it. Ain’t we old enough to get married?”
“I’m glad, Millie,” Mrs. Reist told her. “Amos just needs a wife like you. He worried me long a’ready, goin’ on all alone. Now I know he’ll have some one to look out for him.”
“Finis! You’re done for!” Phil said. “Lay down your arms and surrender. But say, that makes it bully for Mother and me. We can move to Lancaster now. May we run out to the farm and visit you, Millie?”
“Me? Don’t ask me. It’s Amos’s.”
“Millie, you goose,” the man said happily, “when you marry me everything I have will be yours, too.”
“Well, did I ever! I don’t believe I’ll know how to think about it that way. This nice big house won’t seem like part mine.”
“It’ll beours” Uncle Amos said, smiling at the word.
And so it happened that the preparation of another wedding outfit was begun in the Reist farmhouse.
“I don’t need fancy things like Amanda,” declared the hired girl. “I wear the old style o’ clothes yet. And for top things, why, I made up my mind I’m goin’ to wear myself plain and be a Mennonite.”
“Plain,” said Mrs. Reist. “Won’t Amos be glad! He likes you no matter what clothes you wear, but it’s so much nicer when you can both go to the same church. He’ll be glad if you turn a Mennonite.”
“Well, I’m goin’ to be one. So I won’t want much for my weddin’ in clothes, just some plain suits and bonnets and shawl. But I got no chest ready like Amanda has. I never thought I’d need a Hope Chest. When I was little I got knocked around, but as soon as I could earn money I saved a little all the time and now I got a pretty good bit laid in the bank. I can take that and get me some things I need.”
Mrs. Reist laid her hands on the shoulders of the faithful hired girl. “Never mind, Millie, you’ll have your chest! We’ll go to Lancaster and buy what you want. Amos got his share of our mother’s things when we divided them and he has a big chest on the garret all filled with homespun linen and quilts and things that you can use. That will all be yours.”
“Mine? I can’t hardly believe it. You couldn’t be nicer to me if you was my own mom. And I ain’t forgettin’ it neither! I said to Amos we won’t get married till after Amanda and when you and Phil are all fixed in your new house. Then we’ll go to the preacher and get it done. We don’t want no fuss, just so we get married, that’s all we want. It needn’t be done fancy.”