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

"The calf is not well," Mother said, watching Father anxiously as he disappeared through the big painted doors. Esther knew that Father went out there because
he wanted to be alone.

Esther helped with the dishes and swept up the crumbs on the floor. But there wasn't much to do. Since Mother's young sister Ruth had come to visit, after
Dan went away, and then stayed and stayed and stayed, the work seemed always done. Aunt Ruth was a wonderful housekeeper, as Mother herself was. Now there
was always a cupboard full of pies. Except when church was held here, the pies never entirely disappeared as they used to when Dan was at home.

"What an appetite!" Mother used to say with a

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proud laugh, looking up at Dan who stood almost as high as the top of a door.

Tonight Mother and Ruth did not talk much either. Usually they chattered endlessly, about gardens and cooking and hens and lambs and babies. Or about what
had been sold at a farm-sale in the neighborhood, and at what bargain prices. Or about where church had been held last week and where it would be held
the next. Or about a Sing in somebody's barn on Saturday night, or an apple-paring on Wednesday. Until recently, they often talked about a quilting for
a bride. Or about what girls might be married in November.

Nobody had said so, but now it would not do to speak of the quillings and the marriages. Esther knew this without being told. The sad look on Ruth's face
told it all without words.

When the work was finished, Ruth went out as she often did lately and sat on the back porch with her knitting. Even as the dusk gathered she could go on
with her stitches, so nobody ever thought she was sitting out there wasting her time.

"Aunt Ruth," Esther said in a low voice, and sat very near as she loved to do, "did you see the men who came today?"

For a long moment Ruth seemed not to hear. She

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looked out toward the barn and over the wide fields and along the road, keeping her fingers busy and counting with her lips how many stitches she was making.
At last she stopped counting and said gently, "Yes, Esther, I saw them."

"You said you went to school where you-lived," Esther said.

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"Yes," Ruth said again. "That was a long way from here, but it was still Pennsylvania. We had the same laws there."

"Mother went to school too," Esther said.

Ruth counted again for a time, and then she spoke slowly as she did when she was explaining something in a lesson. "It was different there, Esther, because
there were many Amish in that neighborhood. We had a school of our own. When I go back again, I am going to study, I think, and learn to be a teacher myself.
We need more Amish teachers; you've heard the preacher say so."

She had stopped knitting entirely and looked so sad and lonesome as she spoke of going away that Esther instantly had a lump in her throat. "You know enough
to be a good teacher already," she said. "All those letters you taught me! Did you know, Ruth, that I am almost through with both Genesis and Exodus?"

"You do very well," Ruth said. She smiled. "You won't need to worry about school. You'll be able to read as well as anyone there."