Anna's Gift (3 page)

“Anna does good hair braids,” Susanna agreed. “But I fink she needs a bath,” she told Anna. “She looks like a little piggy.”

A quick examination of the little girl convinced Anna that she wasn't all that dirty, she'd just lost a battle with her breakfast. “We don't have time for a bath. I'm sure Samuel needs to be on his way.”

Susanna wrinkled her nose as she looked at the little girl. “You spill your oatmeal this morning?”

“
'Frowed
it. It was yuck,” Mae said from her perch.

Susanna's eyes got big. “You
throwed
your oatmeal?”

“
Ya.
It was all burny.” She made a face. “It was lumpy an' I
'frowed
it.”

On her father as well,
Anna realized, suddenly feeling sympathy for both father and daughter. “Well, don't do that again,” she admonished gently, tightening the big towel around her. “It's not polite to throw your breakfast. Big girls like Susanna never throw their oatmeal.”

“Ne,”
Susanna echoed, helping the little girl rearrange her dress. “Never.” She turned to Anna. “Are you going to court Samuel?”

Anna gasped. “Susanna! What would make you ask such a thing?”

“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.

T
he 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 barnyard, Anna wrestled with her dread of venturing out on the roads. She needed to buy more paint, but she didn't know if it was wise to travel in such bad weather. The blacktop would be slippery, and there was always the danger that the horse could slip and fall. And since she didn't want to leave Susanna home alone, she'd have to take her, as well.

Anna considered calling a driver, but the money for the ride would go better into replacing the paint. If only she hadn't been so clumsy and wasted what Mam had already purchased. She wondered if she could find some leftover lavender paint in the cellar. If there was any, maybe she could cover the blue splashes, and put the room back as it had been.

But the truth was, Grossmama would be angry if she found her new bedroom
English purple,
and Mam would be disappointed in Anna. Anna had caused the trouble, and it was her responsibility to fix it. Snow or no snow, she'd have to go and buy more blue paint.

What a noodlehead she'd been! Was she losing her hearing, that she'd imagined Samuel had said that he wanted to court her? She tried not to wonder how Susanna could have misheard, as well. It was funny, really, the whole misunderstanding. Years from now, she and her sisters would laugh over the whole incident. As for Samuel, Anna thought she'd just act normal around him, be pleasant, pretend the whole awful incident had never happened and not cause either of them any further embarrassment.

After the outside chores, Anna returned to the house, built up the fire in the wood cookstove, and mixed up a batch of buttermilk biscuits while the oven was heating. Once the biscuits were baking, she washed some dishes and put bacon on. “Do you want eggs?” she asked her sister.

“Ya,”
Susanna nodded. “Sunshine up.” She finished setting the table and was pouring tomato juice in two glasses, when Flora, their Shetland sheepdog, began to bark. Instantly, Jeremiah, the terrier, added his excited yips and ran in circles.

“I wonder who's here so early?” Anna turned the sizzling bacon and pulled the pan to a cooler area of the stove.

Susanna ran to the door. “Maybe it's Mam and Grossmama.”

“Too early for them.” Thank goodness. Not that she wasn't eager for Mam to get home. Her younger sisters had been away for nearly a year, with only short visits home, and she'd missed them terribly. But Grossmama would make a terrible fuss if her room wasn't ready and the walls were still splashed with blue paint.

Susanna flung open the door to greet their visitor, and the terrier shot out onto the porch and bounced up
and down with excitement, as if his legs were made of springs. Coming up the back steps was the very last person on earth Anna expected to see. It was Samuel, and he'd brought his three daughters: five-year-old Lori Ann, nine-year-old Naomi and Mae, all bundled up in quilted blue coats and black rain boots. They poured through the door Susanna held open for them. The two older girls carried paint rollers, and Samuel had a can of paint in each hand.

“It's Samuel!” Susanna shouted above the terrier's barking. “And Mae! And Naomi! And Lori Ann!”

Anna's stomach flip-flopped as she forced a smile, wiping her hands nervously on her apron. “Samuel.” She looked to Naomi. “No school today?”

She pushed her round, wire-frame glasses back into place. “My tummy had a tickle this morning, but I'm better now.”

“I think we were missing our teacher,” Samuel explained. “I let her stay home. She never misses. Do I smell biscuits?” He grinned and held up the paint cans. “We didn't mean to interrupt your breakfast, but I wanted to get an early start on those walls.”

Confused, Anna stared at him. “You wanted to get an early start? You bought paint?”

“Last night.” He smiled again, and mischief danced in his dark eyes as he set the cans on the floor. The girls added the rollers and brushes to the pile. “I just took my shirt along to the store, and they were able to match the color perfectly.”

“Good you brought paint,” Susanna announced. “Now we don't have to take the buggy to town.”

“I don't know what to say.” Anna gripped the front of her apron. “It's kind of you, but you have so much to do at your farm. We'll pay for the paint, of course, but—”

“I smell something burning.” Naomi peered over her glasses and grimaced.

Anna spun around to see smoke rising from the stove. “Oh, my biscuits!” She ran to snatch open the oven door, and used the hem of her apron to grab the handle of the cast-iron frying pan.

“Be careful,” Samuel warned.

A cloud of smoke puffed out of the oven, stinging Anna's eyes. She gave a yelp as the heat seared her palm through the cloth, and she dropped the frying pan. It bounced off the open door, sending biscuits flying, and landed with a clang on the floor. Anna clapped her stinging hand to her mouth.

Lori Ann squealed, throwing her mitten-covered hands into the air, and the terrier darted across the floor, snatched a biscuit and ran with it. In the far doorway, the dog dropped the biscuit, then bit into it again, and carried it triumphantly under the table. Flora grabbed one, too, and ran for the sitting room with her prize.

“They're burned,” Naomi pronounced, turning in a circle in the middle of the biscuits. “You burned them, Anna.”

“Never mind the biscuits, just pick them up,” Samuel said. Somehow, before Anna could think what to do next, he had taken charge. He crossed the kitchen, retrieved the cast-iron frying pan from the floor using a hand towel, and set it safely on top of the stove. “How bad is the burn?” he asked as he put an arm around her shoulders, guiding her to the sink. “Is it going to blister?”

“I'm all right,” Anna protested, twisting out of his warm embrace. Her palm stung, but she was hardly aware of it. All she could think of was the sensation of Samuel's strong arm around her and the way her knees felt as wobbly as if they were made of biscuit dough.

Samuel gently took her hand in his large calloused one, turned on the faucet, and held her palm under the cold water. “It doesn't look bad,” he said.

“Ne.”
Anna felt foolish. How could she have been so careless? She was an experienced cook. She knew better than to take anything out of the oven without a hot mitt.

“Let the water do its work.” Samuel said, speaking softly, as if to a skittish colt, and the tenderness in his deep voice made Anna's heart go all a-flutter again. “The cold will take the sting away.”

“Does it hurt?” Susanna asked.

Anna glanced at her sister. Susanna looked as if she were about to burst into tears. “
Ne.
It's fine,” Anna assured her. Susanna couldn't bear to see anyone in pain. From the corner of her eye, Anna saw Mae raise a biscuit to her mouth. “Don't eat that,” she cautioned. “It's dirty if it's been on the floor.”

Samuel chuckled, picked up a handful of the biscuits and brushed them off against his shirt. “A little scorched, but not so bad they can't be salvaged,” he said.

“In our house, we have a five-second rule,” Naomi explained, grabbing more biscuits off the floor. “If you grab it up quick, it's okay.”

“Mam says floors are dirty,” Susanna said, but she was picking up biscuits as well, piling them on a plate on the table.

Anna knew her face must be as hot as the skillet. Why was it that the minute Samuel Mast walked in the door, she turned into a complete klutz? She hadn't burned biscuits in years. She always paid close attention to whatever she had in the oven. She wished she could throw her apron over her face and run away, like yesterday, but she knew that she couldn't get away with that twice.

“Don't put them on the table,” Anna said. “They're ruined. I'll feed them to the chickens.”

“But I want biscuit and honey,” Mae pouted, eyeing the heaped plate. “Yes'erday, she…” She pointed at Susanna. “
She
gave me a honey biscuit. It was yum.”

“Shh,” Naomi said to her little sister. “Remember your manners, Mae.”

“I can make more,” Anna offered.

“Nonsense.” Samuel scooped up Mae and raised her high in the air, coaxing a giggle out of her. “We'll cut off the burned parts and eat the other half, won't we?”

Anna took a deep breath and shook her head. She was mortified. What would Mam think, if she found out that she'd served guests burned biscuits they'd picked up off the floor? Pride might be a sin, but Mam had high standards for her kitchen. And so did she, for that matter. “Really, Samuel,” she protested. “I'd rather make another batch.”

“Tell you what,” he offered, depositing Mae on the floor and unbuttoning his coat. “I came here to offer you a deal. Maybe we can make biscuits part of it.”

“I…I l-l-like b-biscuits,” Lori Ann said shyly. “A-a-and I'm hungry.”

“He made us egg,” Mae supplied, tugging on Anna's apron. “Don't like runny egg.” Anna noticed that she was wearing the too-large
kapp
that she and Susanna had put on her yesterday, while her sisters wore wool scarves over their hair. Mae's
kapp
was a little worse for wear, but it gave Anna a warm feeling that Samuel had thought to put it on her today.

“Hush, girls,” Samuel said. It was his turn to flush red. “They don't think much of my cooking. Naomi's learning, but she's only nine.”

“Naomi's eggs is yuck,” Mae agreed.

Naomi stuck her tongue out at her sister.

“We don't criticize each other's work, and
you
shouldn't make ugly faces,” Anna corrected. Then she blushed again. What right did she have to admonish Samuel's children? That would be Mam's task, once she and Samuel were husband and wife. But it was clear that someone needed to take a hand in their raising. Men didn't understand little girls, or kitchens for that matter.

“Listen to Anna,” Samuel said with a grin. “It's cold outside, Naomi. Your Grossmama used to tell me that if I stuck my tongue out at my sisters my face might freeze. You don't want your face to freeze like that, do you?”

Susanna giggled. “That would be silly.”

“And we're not outside.”

Samuel gave Naomi a reproving look.

“Sorry, Mae.” Embarrassed, Naomi looked down at her boots. Puddles of water were forming on the floor around them.

“For goodness' sakes, take off your coats,” Anna urged, motioning with her hands. “It's warm in the kitchen, and you'll all overheat.”

“I'm afraid we tracked up your clean floor with our wet boots,” Samuel said.

Anna shrugged. “Not to worry. You can leave them near the door with ours.” She motioned to Susanna. “Get everyone's coats and hang them behind the stove to dry. I have bacon ready, and I'll make French toast. We'll all have breakfast together.”

“What—what about b-b-b-biscuits?” Lori Ann asked.

“Let me give you a hot breakfast, and I promise I'll make a big pan later,” Anna offered.

Lori Ann sighed and nodded.

Samuel looked at his daughters shrugging off their
wet coats, then back at Anna. “We didn't come to make more work for you. We ate. We don't have to eat again.”

Anna waved them to the table. “Feeding friends is never work, and growing children are never full.” She opened the refrigerator and scanned the shelves, choosing applesauce, cold sweet potatoes and the remainder of the ham they'd had for supper the night before. “Susanna, would you set some extra plates and then put some cocoa and milk on to heat?”

“I—I—I l-l-like c-c-cocoa,” Lori Ann stuttered. Lori Ann had pale blue eyes and lighter hair than either of her sisters. Anna thought that she resembled the twin boys, Rudy and Peter, while Mae looked like her late mother.

Mae, in her stocking feet, scrambled up on the bench. “Me, too! I wike cocoa.”

“If you're sure it's not too much trouble,” Samuel said, but his eyes were on the ham and bacon, and he was already pulling out the big chair at the head of the table.

Anna felt better as she bustled around the kitchen and whipped up a hearty breakfast. She liked feeding people, and she liked making them comfortable in Mam's house. When she was busy, it was easier to forget that Samuel was here and Mam wasn't.

“I want honey biscuit,” Mae chirped. When no one responded, she repeated it in
Deitsch,
the German dialect many Amish used in their homes.

“Be still,” Naomi cautioned. “You're getting French toast or nothing.”

“She speaks both
Deitsch
and English well for her age,” Anna said, flipping thick slices of egg-battered toast in the frying pan.

“Louise has done well with her. I know many children don't speak English until they go to school, but I think it's best they speak
Deitsch
and English from babies on.”

“Ya,”
Susanna agreed, taking a seat between two of the girls. “English and
Deitsch.
”

“Mam says the same thing.” Anna brought cups of cocoa to the table for everyone. “She says young ones learn faster. I suppose we use more English than most folks.”

“She's smart, your mother,” Samuel answered. “The best teacher we've ever had. The whole community says so.”

Anna smiled as she checked on the browning slices of fragrant French toast. This was good, Samuel complimenting Mam. Maybe Anna hadn't ruined Mam's chances with him, after all.

“This is a real treat for us.” Samuel sat back in Dat's chair and sipped his cocoa. “The neighbors, and your mother especially, have been good about sending food over, but I can't depend on the kindness of my friends forever.”