"Sorensen, Virginia - Plain Girl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sorensen Virginia)

noticed. It was good to see him come into a door, filling it up and then towering in the room. Esther always loved to see people turn and look at him when
he came. Mother always looked proud and smiled as she lowered her eyes, not wishing to show how proud she was. Every time Father prayed that he might remain
simple and humble, Esther wondered whether he was thinking of how proud Daniel had made him feel every day.

All Plain Men prayed against Pride. Every Sunday there was something in the sermons to warn women against Vanity.

Perhaps Dan had been too proud, Esther thought. His skin was clear, his cheeks pink and his hair bright yellow. When he spoke his voice boomed out, and
when he sang- Sometimes, when he sang at meeting

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Esther forgot to take her own part, it was so beautiful. But one day she had heard him singing out in the barn.

As Esther lay in her bed, waiting for dawn, she wondered if that had not been the beginning.

It was a different song and Dan's voice boomed out of the barn with it. It was a song never heard in any Amish house, here or anywhere. It had gay words
to a gay tune, all about mockingbirds on a hill, singing in the morning. You would not imagine such a song could do more harm in the world than the birds
themselves.

Esther saw Father listening. Then he marched out to the barn, and she ran after him to see what happened. "Where does that foolish song come from, Daniel?"
Father asked.

Dan laughed. Even at the time, before there had been much trouble, Esther knew it was a mistake for Dan to laugh.

"From John's radio," he said. "He has permission to have a radio in his barn."

Dan did not need to remind Father about the radio. Everybody knew. Since a terrible storm came suddenly the year before, one radio was kept in the neighborhood
so the People could learn in advance about the weather. Advice was given to farmers too, about planting and other matters to do with the farms. Every

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Sunday evening, after the preaching, and sometimes at the market in town, the men stood around talking about whether the advice on the radio had been good
that week, or bad.

Father always said it was bad, or else he said it told him nothing he had not learned long before from the Almanac.

"Daniel, the radio is not meant to hear music," Father said.

"Well, sometimes more than the weather will come while a man is milking a cow," Dan said.

Father told him never to sing the song again. He knew plenty of good songs to sing out of the Ausbund, the book used by the People for singing for nearly
four hundred years.

When Esther heard Dan singing the song again, she shook in her skin until she saw that Father was away. Sometimes he sang it when Father .was working far
out in the fields. And not only the song about the mockingbirds came from the barn. There were other songs, one especially that had such a beautiful melody
Esther caught herself thinking of the tune when she lay in bed at night. It said "I love! I love you! I love you!" over and over. Esther wondered whether
Dan ever sang it to Sarah when he took her home from

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