“Because Samuel said—”
“Were you listening in on our conversation, Susanna?” Anna’s eyes narrowed. “You know what Mam says about that.”
“Just a little. Samuel said he wants to court you.”
“Ne,” Anna corrected. “You heard wrong. Again. That’s exactly why Mam doesn’t want you listening in.”
That, and because Susanna repeated everything she heard, or thought she heard, to anyone who would listen. Obviously, she had misheard. They’d both heard wrong. That was why Anna had lost her balance and fallen off the ladder. She’d misunderstood what Samuel said. There was no way that he wanted to court her. No way at all. She was what she was, the Plain Yoder girl, the healthy girl—which was another way of saying fat. But was it really possible that they had both misheard?
More possible than Samuel wanting to court her!
Anna hurried out of the bathroom. “Bring her in as soon as I’m decent.”
She dashed down the hall to the large bedroom over the kitchen and quickly dressed in fresh underclothing, a shift, dress and cape. She combed her wet hair out, twisted it into a bun and pinned it up, covering it with a starched white kapp. A quick glance in the tiny mirror on the back of the door showed that every last tendril of red hair was tucked up properly.
The few moments alone gave her time to recover her composure, so that when the girls came in, she could turn her attention to Mae. Please let me get through this day, Lord, she prayed silently.
When Susanna and Mae came into the bedroom, Anna sat the child on a stool and quickly combed, parted and braided her thin blond hair. “There. That’s better.” She brushed a kiss on the crown of Mae’s head.
“She needs a kapp,” Susanna, ever observant, pointed out. “She’s a big girl.”
“Ya,” Mae agreed solemnly. “Wost my kapp.”
“Find me an old one of yours,” Anna asked Susanna. “It will be a little big, but we can pin it to fit.”
In minutes, Mae’s pigtails were neatly tucked inside a slightly wrinkled but white kapp, and she was grinning.
“Now you’re Plain,” Susanna said. “Like me.”
“Take her downstairs to her father,” Anna said. “Samuel will be wondering why we’ve kept her so long.”
“You coming, too?” Susanna asked.
Anna shook her head. “I’ll be along. I have to clean up the bathroom.” It wasn’t really a fib, because she did have to clean up the bathroom. But there was no possibility of her looking Samuel in the eye again today, maybe not for weeks. But she couldn’t help going to the top of the stairs and listening as Samuel said his goodbyes.
“Don’t worry, Samuel,” Susanna said cheerfully. “Anna wants to court you. It will just take time for her to get used to the idea.”
“Court you,” Mae echoed.
What Samuel said in reply, Anna couldn’t hear. She fled back to the safety of the bathroom and covered her ears with her hands. She should have known that her little sister would only make things worse. Once Susanna got something in her head, it was impossible to budge her from it. And now Samuel would be mortified by the idea that they all thought he wanted to court her instead of Mam.
Anna stayed in the bathroom for what seemed like an hour before she finally got the nerve to venture out. She might have stayed all morning, but she knew she had to clean up the paint before it dried on Mam’s floor. She would have to mop up everything and get ready to start painting again tomorrow, after she and Susanna went into town to get more paint. The trip itself would take three hours, beginning to end.
Anna wasn’t crazy about the idea of going to Dover alone in the buggy; she liked it better when Miriam or Mam drove. She didn’t mind taking the horse and carriage between farms in Seven Poplars, but all the traffic and noise of town made her uncomfortable.
By the time Anna got downstairs, she’d worked herself into a good worry. How was she going to get all the painting done, tend to the farm chores and clean the house from top to bottom, the way she’d hoped?
Calling for Susanna, Anna forced herself down the hall toward Grossmama’s bedroom. She pushed opened the door and stopped short, in utter shock. The ladder was gone. The bucket was gone, and every drop of paint had been scrubbed off the floor and woodwork. The room looked exactly as it had this morning, before she’d started—other than the splashes of blue paint on the wall and the strip she’d painted near the ceiling. Even her brushes had been washed clean and laid out on a folded copy of The Budget.
Anna was so surprised that she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She didn’t have to wonder who had done it. She knew. Susanna could never have cleaned up the mess, not in two days. Anna was still standing there staring when Susanna wandered in.
“I’m hungry,” she said. “I didn’t get my lunch.”
Anna sighed. “Ne. You didn’t, did you?” She glanced around the room again, trying to make certain that she hadn’t imagined that the paint was cleaned up. “Samuel did this?”
Susanna nodded smugly. “He got rags under the sink. Mam’s rags.”
“You mustn’t say anything to anyone about this,” Anna said. “Promise me that you won’t.” “About the spilled paint?”
“About the spilled paint, or that I fell off the ladder, or the mistake you made—” she glanced apprehensively at her sister “—about thinking Samuel wanted to court me.”
Susanna wrinkled her nose and shifted from one bare foot to another. “But it was funny, Anna. You fell on Samuel. He fell in the paint. It was funny.”
“I suppose we did look funny, but Samuel could have been hurt. I could have been hurt. So I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say one word about Samuel coming here today. Can you do that?”
Susanna scratched her chubby chin. “Remember when the cow sat on me?”
“Ya,” Anna agreed. “Last summer. And it wasn’t funny, because you could have been hurt.”
“It was just like that,” Susanna agreed. “A cow fell on me, and you fell on Samuel. And we both got smashed.” She shrugged and turned and went out of the room. “Just the same.”
Exactly, Anna thought, feeling waves of heat wash under her skin. And that’s how Samuel must have felt—like a heifer sat on him. Only, this cow had thrown her arms around his neck and exposed her bare legs up to her thighs like an English hoochy-koochy dancer.
If she lived to be a hundred, she’d never forgive herself. Never.
Chapter Three
The following morning proved cold and blustery, with a threat of snow. All through the morning milking, the feeding of the chickens and livestock and breaking the thin skim of ice off the water trough in the
