do you know James?” Sara asked.
“We’ve met.” She nodded to him. “Evening to you too, James.”
James smiled at her and then turned his attention back to Sara. “Can I steal away some of your help?” he asked. “It’s such a nice evening, I thought maybe Mari would like to take a ride with me.”
Mari came toward them, blushing and brushing dirt from her skirt. Like Katie, Mari was barefoot with only a scarf for a head covering. “I wish you’d given me fair warning,” she said, smiling up at James. “I’m not fit to be seen. Can you wait long enough for me to make myself decent and see where Zachary is?”
Zachary was Mari’s son, a boy about nine years old. Mari and Zachary were staying with Sara while they made the transition from being English to becoming Amish again. Mari had been raised Amish, but had left the church as a teen and was now returning to the church.
James laughed and used two fingers to push his straw hat higher on his forehead. He was a tall, pleasant-looking man with a quick smile. “I’ll wait, but you look fine to me. If you’re going to change your clothes, you’d best be quick. Zachary’s already in the buggy, and he’s trying to convince me that we should go for ice cream.”
Mari glanced at Sara who made shooing motions. “Go on, go on,” Sara urged. “We can finish up here.”
“You’re sure?”
“Off with you before I change my mind and put James to work, too,” Sara teased.
James swung the gate wide open and Mari hurried to join him. The two walked off, already deep in conversation.
Katie watched them for a minute. She wasn’t jealous of Mari’s happiness, but she was wistful. Katie wanted to marry and have children, but she was beginning to fear it would never happen. She had always assumed God intended her for marriage and a family; it was what an Amish woman was born to. But what if He didn’t wish for her to marry?
With a sigh, Katie returned to her work and she and Sara continued weeding until they met Ellie halfway down the row. “You’re a fast worker,” she told Ellie, observing her work. The soil behind Ellie was as neat and clean as a picture in a garden magazine.
“Danke. I try.” Ellie’s face creased in a genuine smile. “I think the beans at the far end will be ready for picking by tomorrow afternoon.”
“If you can wait until after supper, I’d be glad to help you,” Katie offered. She liked picking limas, and gardening with other women was always easier than doing it alone. “Willing hands make the work go faster,” her mother always said.
“Great,” Ellie replied. “It won’t take long if we pick them together.”
Ellie was the first little person that Katie had ever known, but someone who obviously didn’t let her lack of height hinder her. Sara had explained privately that although Ellie had come to Seven Poplars to teach school, Sara had every hope of making a good marriage for her. Ellie was certainly pretty enough to have her choice of men to walk out with, with her blond hair, rosy cheeks, and sparkling blue eyes. Katie had liked her from the first, and she hoped that they might become good friends.
“All right,” Sara said, looking across the garden. “I think we’ve got time to do another row. But there are a lot of full pods on this row. I think we better get to them. Who wants to pick while the other two keep weeding?”
“You pick,” Katie told Sara. “I don’t mind weeding. It’s satisfying to see the results when I’m finished.”
“Ya,” Ellie said. “Good idea. I can weed, too.”
“All right,” Sara brushed the dirt off her hands. “It’s a bumper crop this summer. Just the right amount of rain, thank the Lord.”
“Let’s get to it,” Katie told Ellie. “Once it starts to get dark, the mosquitoes will come out, and we’ll be fair game, bug spray or no bug spray.”
Nodding agreement, Ellie and Katie began to pull weeds again while Sara sought out the plump lima bean pods amid the thick foliage. Conversation came easily to the three of them, and Katie found herself more at ease with Ellie with every passing minute. She was good company, making them double over with laughter at her tales of students. Katie hadn’t attended the Seven Poplars schoolhouse, but she’d been there several times for fund-raising events, and Ellie was such a good storyteller that she could picture each event as Ellie related it. Her own school, further south in the county, had been larger, with two rooms rather than one, but otherwise almost identical. Both schools were first through eighth grade and taught by young Amish women.
Sara soon filled her apron with limas and had to return to the house for a basket for them and a second bucket to hold the weeds. When she returned, she brought a quart jar of lemonade to share. Katie and Ellie stopped work long enough to enjoy it before taking up their task again.
“I had a letter from one of my former clients in Wisconsin,” Sara said when they’d reached midrow. “Dora Ann Hostetler.”
“Do you know her, Ellie?” Katie asked, remembering that Sara had told her that Ellie had come from Wisconsin, too.
Ellie slapped at a hovering horsefly and shook her head. “Ne, but Wisconsin’s a big state. A lot more Amish communities there than here.”
“Anyway,” Sara continued. “Dora Ann was a widow with three little girls. A plain woman, but steady, and with a good heart. I found just the man for her last year, a jolly widower with four young boys in need of a mother. She wrote to say that she and Marvin have a new baby boy. She also wanted me to know that her bishop will be visiting in Dover next month, and he’ll be preaching here in Seven Poplars. She likes him and assures me that he preaches a fine sermon.” She looked at Katie. “Will you be coming to church with us, or going home to your family’s church?”
Katie paused in her weeding. “I think I’d like to come with you while I’m here,” she said. Sara’s mention of the letter from her friend reminded her of the one that Sara had received from Uriah’s aunt. “You started to tell me earlier about the note from Uriah’s family,” she reminded.
“Yes, but...” Sara hesitated. “Would you rather discuss that in private?”
“Ne, I don’t mind.” Katie chuckled. “Actually, I’d like to hear Ellie’s opinion.”
Sara placed her basket, now nearly full of lima beans, on the ground. “Katie has an interested suitor,” she explained to Ellie. “A young man who used to be a neighbor to her family here in Kent County.”
“Uriah, his parents and brothers and sisters moved to Kentucky years ago,” Katie said as she tamped down the weeds in the bucket to make room for more. “Uriah is the oldest.”
“The family has a farm and a sawmill in Kentucky,” Sara added. She continued searching for ripe beans. “Uriah’s father made initial contact with me a few weeks ago about the possibility of making a match for his son with Katie.”
Katie threw Ellie a wry look. “It was the father who asked about me, mind you, not Uriah.”
Ellie sat back on her heels and glanced from Katie to Sara and back to Katie. “So you know Uriah from when you were younger?”
Katie
