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

As she and Dan started walking together, Esther could not think of a word to say. Dan too walked in silence. Finally, near the home place, Dan stopped and
said, "Tell Father if you feel you should. They are my best friends at school. I was walking home and they offered me a ride. I always wanted to see what
one of those machines was like. Now I know."

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She did not tell Father. She felt she should tell him, but she didn't. Afterward, of course, she knew she had made a mistake. When a preacher at a meeting
said, as one did very often, never to make The First Step Away, she knew now what it was he meant. After Dan had gone away, she understood. Without the
first step you could not make the second, the third, the final one that took you out of sight. You could never arrive at the house yonder if you never
stepped from your own. It was very simple to stay at home.

A day came when Dan was walking with her on the street in town. Father was buying feed for the chickens. Dan looked at anybody who passed, Esther saw. He
did not look either bold or shy as he looked, but curious. He looked even at girls. Then he said the strangest thing Esther ever heard in all her life.
"I wonder," Dan said, "what harm a button may do a man's soul."

A button? At first she could not imagine what it was he meant by such a question. Coats were as well fastened with hooks and eyes. Aprons tied. And bonnets.
But the question kept coming back into Esther's mind. What harm can a button do a man's soul? All people but the Plain People fastened clothes with buttons.

In the middle of a meeting one Sunday, soon after that, Esther's eyes would not leave the preacher's coat behind his Book. All smooth; no button anywhere.

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What harm can a button do a man's soul? she thought. Such a question had never been asked in one of those meetings, she was sure. Or answered. It frightened
her to be sitting among the People with such a question strong in her mind. She began to count how many had come, how many men, how many women, how many
children, how many pies would be needed, anything to make her mind too busy to think about buttons. But even so, the question had kept slipping through
her mind, between the numbers, like a little snake slipping under a stone.

She would never forget the supper after meeting that night. She had been helping to carry the food, and suddenly she heard Dan asking that question in front
of them all. She did not dare to look at Father or at anybody. She stopped still with the platter of meat in her hands, looking at the floor. There was
a silence, and everybody looked, then, at the preacher.

Preacher Stutzinger had been chosen by lot, having drawn a certain paper from the Bible on a chosen day. So it was known he was approved by God Himself.

"Well, Daniel," he said, "I've heard that buttons are good places for the Devil to hang onto!"

The men laughed, but it was not good hearty laughter, and they stopped laughing very soon.

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"There are those who say buttons are made from the bones of animals, so are never used," the preacher said. "But we eat meat, and buttons may be made of
wood. The reason I have heard given is that buttons are a decoration. They are to men as jewelry is to vain women." He looked around at the solemn faces.
"Soldiers wear buttons," he said. "They polish them like medals!"

To Esther's relief, Dan nodded then and said, "It is a good reason." Dan might sing of love and mockingbirds, but he felt like Father and all the others
about the wickedness of men fighting other men.

Everybody had begun to eat once more, and that question never bothered Esther in church afterward.

But then-Dan had finished at the school. He could read anything he tried to read and knew many things about the world that he liked to tell Esther when