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

But even her smile looked sad. Esther knew why Ruth did not want to go away again, even to her own home where she had lived a very happy life until she
was eighteen. It was because of Hans.

"Maybe you can come back here and start a school

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for us," Esther said eagerly. "Then it will be the kind of school Father wants."

Ruth reached out and pressed her hand. "Perhaps I can," she said. Then, quickly, she began to knit again. There seemed nothing more to say. Lately it had
become harder and harder to talk to Ruth. When she had first come she had been eager and gay and full of laughter; she never sat like this, in the dusk.
Was it always like that, Esther wondered, when a girl grew up and had to think about young men? She was glad she was only starting to be ten and didn't
have to be in love. Love seemed to be the trouble every time when a girl looked sad. Sarah Yoder looked even sadder than Ruth last Sunday, sitting after
church in this very place. When Esther happened to come out of the house, she had asked suddenly, "Esther, hasn't your Mother heard from Daniel at all?"

It was good Father hadn't heard her ask such a thing. Before Esther had time to shake her head, even, he had come outside with the men.

Poor Sarah! Everybody had known she liked Daniel more than she liked any other boy. And that he liked her most of all the girls. People often laughed and
teased them, for Dan always sat beside her after the Sings and she was the one he took home in his buggy, every time.

"I

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But he did not love her very much, after all, surely. Or would he have gone away? Now, even in meeting, Sarah looked as sad and as lonesome as Ruth did
this minute, clicking her needles and counting stitches and looking at the rising moon. Hans had not gone away, of course, but then he had not come to
see Ruth here at the house, either. Quite often, Esther had seen him driving his buggy past, along the road, but he had not come and turned the light of
his buggy into Ruth's room at night the way a young Amish man does when he wants to marry a girl. Now it was beginning to be September and Ruth must go
back home, and the month for being married-which was November-was not very far away.

Last Sunday, after meeting, Father had looked directly at Hans during supper. "Only one woman can make pies as well as my own wife," Father had said, "and
that is her sister Ruth."

Everybody had laughed but Ruth herself, who blushed and turned away. Esther did not know whether Hans laughed, because he lowered his head over his plate.

What Father had said was true; he would not have said it otherwise. Besides being able to cook, Ruth had a huge chest at home, Esther knew, all carved with

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birds and flowers; it was filled to the top with beautiful things Ruth herself had made.

"It is time for bed now, Esther," Mother called from the house.

Esther stood up at once. "Good night," she said.

"Good night. I'll be coming soon," Ruth answered. She looked up with a smile. ''Esther, if you're afraid about school, we will work on those letters again
before I go."

But it was not about the letters Esther thought, when she lay in her bed in the dark. Perhaps the school would not be pleasant, after all, in a place where
she must go alone. Perhaps it would be the way it was in town sometimes when people turned their heads to watch, looking and nudging each other and saying,