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

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ESTHER ASKS A QUESTION

"Very well."

"Do you read in the books yet?"

"Mostly in one book."

"And you write the letters?"

Her heart bounced like the little red ball. How did He know? But then she realized what it was he meant. He did not mean letters to Mary, but the letters
A and B and C and all the rest.

"Yes," she said, relieved. "All of the alphabet now."

He drove along in silence awhile. The horse went clip-clop-clop, clip-clop-clop, a sound Esther loved.

"It's too bad you are the only one of the Plain children at the school just now," Father said. "It isn't easy to be alone there. But next year there will
be the Yoder child, and the year after, several others."

She looked up at him gratefully. Perhaps he did know, after all, exactly how hard it was. He had said, "It isn't easy . . ." She thought, "I'll ask him.
It'll be all right to ask him now." But she didn't know exactly what to ask, or how. She swallowed twice and then began slowly, looking straight ahead
down the road. "I've been wondering since I came to school-"

He did not look at her either. He gazed at the rump of the horse going from side to side. "Yes, Esther?" he asked.

"I've been wondering why- Well-" Her voice

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stopped as on the edge of a cold pool and then plunged: "Why is it that people must wear different clothes?" She would like it if she had been able to ask
the question the way Dan did, how buttons might harm a man's soul. But this was good enough to begin with. She knew her question was well understood.

"You have been wondering why we wear different clothes, Esther?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

He did not answer until he had turned the buggy into their own farm and the horse had stopped by the barn. He did not start to get out of the buggy, but
sat still for a while. Esther sat still beside him, looking at the horse and at her hands in her lap and at the toes of her shoes.

"It is not only wearing," he said at last. "It is who we are. It is what we believe." He said it with his strongest look; she knew the look was there even
before she raised her eyes to his face. It was the look he had when he swung an ax over his head, or when he carried a big stone. It was stronger than
the look he read the Bible with.

"We are Plain People," he said, "and so we wear plain clothes. There are not very many in the world now who live as it was intended in the beginning."

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