intends for you. I’ve told both of my sons that I expect each of them to pay court to you and make a match as soon as may be decently arranged. The choice between them will be yours, Ellen. Steady Neziah and his children or my rascally, young Micah.” He gazed out over the pony with a sly smile. “And I care not which one you take.”
* * *
It was an hour later at the craft store when Ellen was finally able to share her morning adventure with Dinah Plank, the widow who helped in the shop and lived in the apartment upstairs. Dinah, a plump, five-foot-nothing whirlwind of gray-haired energy, was a dear friend, and Ellen valued her opinion.
“So, Simeon came right out and told you that you should marry one of his sons?” Dinah paused in rearranging the display of organic cotton baby clothing and looked at her intently through wire-framed eyeglasses. “Acting as his sons’ go-between, is he?”
“So it seems.” Ellen stood with an empty cardboard box under each arm. She had two orders to pack for mailing, and she wanted to get them ready for UPS.
“What did you tell him?” The older woman shook out a tiny white infant’s cap and carefully brushed the wrinkles out of it. Light poured in through the nine-paned windows, laying patterns of sunlight across the wide-plank floor of the display room and bouncing off the whitewashed plaster walls.
“Nothing, really. I was so surprised, I didn’t know what to say.” She put the mailing boxes on the counter and reached underneath for a couple of pieces of brown-paper wrapping. “I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. They’ve been such goot neighbors, and of course, my dat and Simeon are fast friends.”
“You think Simeon has already said something to your father?”
“I can’t imagine he did.” She lined the first cardboard box with two pieces of brown paper. “Dat would have certainly said something.”
Dinah propped up a cloth Amish doll, sewn in the old-fashioned way, without facial features. The doll was dressed for Sunday services with a black bonnet and cape, long black stockings and conservative leather shoes. “Well, you’re not averse to marrying, are you?”
“Nay. Of course not.” She reached for the stack of patchwork-quilt-style placemats she was shipping. “I’m just waiting for the man God wants for me.”
“And you’ll know him how?” She rested one hand on her hip. “Will this man knock on your door?”
Ellen frowned and added another layer of brown paper to the box before adding eight cloth napkins.
“My marriage to Mose was arranged by my uncle, and it worked out well for both of us.” Dinah tilted her head to one side in a way she had about her when she was trying to convey some meaning that she didn’t want to state outright. “We each had a few burrs that needed rubbing off by time and trial and error, but we started with respect and a common need. I wanted a home and marriage with a man of my faith, and Mose needed sons to help on his farm.”
Ellen nodded. She’d heard this story more than once, how Dinah and Mose had married after only meeting twice, and how she’d left Ohio to come to Lancaster County with him. The marriage had lasted thirty-four years, and Dinah had given him four sons and three daughters. Most lived nearby, and any of her children would have welcomed Dinah into their home. But she liked her independence and chose to live alone here in the apartment in Honeysuckle, and earn a living helping with the craft shop.
“I was an orphan without land or dowry,” Dinah continued, fiddling with the doll’s black bonnet. “And few ever called me fair of face. But I was strong, and God had given me health and ambition. I knew that I could learn to love the man I married. Mose was no looker, either, but he owned fifty acres of rich ground and was a respected farrier. Together, with the help of neighbors, we built a house with our own hands and backs.”
“And were you happy?”
Dinah smiled, a little sadly. “Jah, we were very happy together. Mose was an able provider and he worked hard. Respect became friendship and then partnership, and...somewhere along the way, we fell in love.” She tapped the shelf with her hand. “So my point of this long story is that Mose didn’t come knocking on my door. Our marriage was more or less arranged.”
Ellen sighed and smoothed the denim blue napkins. “But it sounds so much like a business transaction—Simeon deciding that his sons need wives and then telling them who they should court. Me living next door, so I’m the nearest solution. If one of them wanted to walk out with me, why didn’t he say so, instead of waiting for their father to make the suggestion?”
Ellen sank onto a three-legged wooden stool carved and painted with a pattern of intertwined hearts and vines. She glanced around the room, thinking as she always did, how much she loved this old building. It had started life nearly two hundred years earlier as a private home and had been in turn a tavern, a general store, a bakery and now Beachey’s Craft Shop.
“Maybe you should have married when you had the chance.”
“I wasn’t ready,” she said. “And you know there were other reasons, things we couldn’t work out.”
“With Neziah, you mean?” Dinah passed.
Ellen nodded. She was as shocked by Simeon’s idea that she should consider Neziah again, as she was by the whole idea that he should tell her or his boys who they should marry.
“That was years ago, girl. You were hardly out of your teens, and as hardheaded as Neziah. Are you certain you’re not looking for someone that you’ve dreamed up in your head, a make-believe man instead of a flesh-and-blood one?” The sleigh bells over the front door jingled, indicating a visitor.
Ellen rose.
Dinah waved her away. “I’ll see to her. You finish up packaging those orders. Then you might put the kettle on. If it’s pondering you need, there’s nothing like a cup of tea to make the studying on it easier.”
“Maybe,” Ellen conceded.
Dinah shrugged. “One thing you can be glad of.”
“What’s that?”
“That old goat Simeon wasn’t asking to court you himself.” She rolled her eyes. “Thirty-odd years difference between you or not, he wouldn’t be the first old man looking for a fine young wife.”
“Dinah!” she admonished. “How could you say such a thing?”
Dinah chuckled. “I said it, but you can’t tell me you weren’t thinking it.”
“I suppose Simeon is a good catch, though a little too old for me.” Ellen glanced up, smiling mischievously. “Maybe you’re the one who should think about courting one of the Shetler bachelors.”
Dinah laughed as she walked away. “Maybe I should.”
That afternoon Ellen walked her scooter up the steep driveway to her house. “Start each day as you mean to go,” her father always said. And today surely proved that wisdom. She hadn’t reached the craft shop until past her usual hour that morning, and now she was late arriving home. She left the scooter
