you walking out together, I mean, not you picking one of us. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. My vadder is right that I’ve been rumspringa too long. I didn’t want to discuss it back there, but I’ve been talking to the bishop about getting baptized. I’m ready to settle down, and a good woman is just what I need.”
Ellen sat down on the log and dangled her legs over the edge. She was barefooted, and he couldn’t help noticing her slender, high-arched feet. “I’m nearly four years older than you,” she said.
He grinned at her. “That hasn’t mattered since I left school and started doing a man’s work. I’ve always thought you were one of the prettiest girls around, and we’ve always gotten along.” Maybe not the prettiest, he thought, being honest with himself, but Ellen was nearly as tall as he was and very attractive. She’d always been fun to be with, and she was exactly the kind of woman he’d always expected to marry when he settled down. Ellen never made a fellow feel like less than he was, always better. Being with her always made him content...sort of like this creek, he decided.
“And our fathers’ lands run together, of course.” She took the pole he offered and bent over her line, carefully threading a night crawler onto the hook. “Handy for pasturing livestock.”
He studied her to see if she was serious or testing him, but she kept her eyes averted, and he couldn’t tell. He decided to play it safe. “We’ve been friends since we were kids. We share a faith and a community. Maybe that’s a good start for a marriage.”
“Maybe.” She cast her line out, and the current caught her blue-and-white bobber and whisked it merrily along.
“Dat says all the best marriages start with friendship,” he added.
“And it doesn’t bother you that I’m thirty-three and not twenty-three?”
“Would I be here if it did?” Now she did raise her head and meet his gaze, and he smiled at her. “It was my vadder’s idea, but I wouldn’t have agreed if I didn’t think it was something I wanted to do. You’re a hard worker. I hope you think the same of me. I’ve got a good trade, and I own thirty acres of cleared farmland in my own name. And the two of us have a lot in common.”
“Such as?”
“I like to eat and you’re a good cook.” He laughed.
She smiled.
“Seriously, Ellen. You get my jokes. We both like to laugh and have a good time. You know it’s true. There’s a big difference between me and Neziah.”
“He has always been serious in nature.”
“And more so since the accident. He doesn’t take the joy in life that he should. Bad things happen. I didn’t lose a wife, I know, but I lost my mother in that accident. You have to go on living. Otherwise, we waste what the Lord has given us.”
She nodded, but she didn’t speak, and he remembered that he’d always liked that about her. Ellen was a good listener, someone you could share important thoughts with.
“Sometimes I think my brother’s meant to be a preacher, or maybe a deacon. He’s way too settled for a man his age. Just look at his driving animal. I always thought you could tell a man’s nature by his favorite driving animal.”
“Neziah drives a good mule,” she suggested.
“Exactly. Steady in traffic. Strong and levelheaded, even docile. An old woman’s horse.” It was no secret that he was different than Neziah. He liked spirited horses and was given to racing other buggies on the way to Sunday worship, not something that the elders smiled on.
“Don’t be so hard on your brother,” Ellen defended. “He has his children’s safety to think about. You know how some of these Englishers drive. They don’t think about how dangerous it is to pass our buggies on these narrow roads.”
“Jah, I know, but I’m careful about when and where I race. I don’t mean to criticize Neziah. He’s a good man, and I’d not stand to hear anyone criticize him. But he’s too staid for you. Remember that time we all went to Hershey Park? You and me, we liked the fast rides. Neziah, he got sick to his stomach. We’re better suited, and if you’ll give me a chance, I’ll prove it to you.”
“I think I—” She sounded excited for a second then sighed. “I had a bite but I think the fish is playing with me.” She reeled in her line and checked the bait. Half of her worm was missing. “Look at that. Now I’ll have to put on fresh bait.”
He steadied himself against a branch and watched her, wondering why it had taken his father’s lecture to stir him into action. For years he’d been going to all the young people’s frolics, flirting with this girl and that, when all the time he’d hardly noticed Ellen. He had seen her, of course, gone to church with her, worked on community projects with her, eaten at her father’s table and welcomed her to his own home. But he hadn’t thought of her in the way he suddenly did now, as a special woman whom he might want to make his wife. The thought warmed him and made him smile. “You don’t think I’m too young for you, do you?” he asked.
“Nay,” she said, taking her time to answer. “I suppose not. But it’s a new idea for me, that I marry a friend, rather than someone I was in love with.”
Micah felt a rush of pleasure. “How do we know we won’t discover love for each other if we don’t give ourselves the chance?”
Her dark eyes grew luminous. Her bobber jerked and then dove beneath the surface of the creek, but Ellen didn’t seem to notice the tension on her fishing pole. “You think that could happen?”
He grinned. “I think that there’s a very good possibility that that’s exactly what might happen.”
They walked back to her lane just as twilight was falling over the farm fields. “Danki, Micah,” Ellen said. “The fishing was fun. I’d forgotten how much I liked it.”
Her first moments alone with him, when they’d left the house, had been awkward. But then they’d fallen back into the easy rhythm of their younger days with none of the clumsiness of the situation that she’d feared. Being so comfortable with Micah made her wonder if maybe they could be happy together. What if Micah was whom God had intended for her all along?
“You should take these,” he said, holding a string of three perch.
“You caught two of them. Don’t you want to take them home to fry for breakfast?”
He still held them out. “Three measly fish for the five of us? Not worth the trouble of cleaning and cooking them. No, you’d best take them.”
“Danki for the fish, too, then. Dat loves fried fish for breakfast.”
“You’re welcome. And you are going to think about walking out with me,” Micah reminded. “Right?” He stood there, fishing poles in hand, smiling at her and completely at ease.
“Jah, I will.” She smiled at him. “God give you a restful sleep.”
“And you, Ellen.” He used no courting
