Amanda - Anna Balmer Myers (read e book TXT) 📗

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