The next morning Amanda helped her mother with the Saturday baking
while Millie and Uncle Amos tended market.
"This hot weather the pies get soft till Sunday if we bake them a'ready
on Friday," Mrs. Reist said to Millie, "so Amanda and I can do the
bakin' while you go to market. I guess we'll have a lot of company
again this Sunday, with church near here."
"All right, let 'em come," said the hired girl composedly. "I don't
care if you don't. It's a good thing we all like company pretty good,
for I think sometimes people take this place for a regular boarding-
house, the way they drop in at any time, just as like when we're ready
to set down for a meal as at any other hour. Philip said last week,
when that Sallie Snyder dropped in just at dinner, that he's goin' to
paint a sign, 'Mad Dog,' and hang it on the gate. But I think we might
as well put one up, 'Meals served at all hours,' but ach, that's
Lancaster County for you!"
Mrs. Reist liked to do her baking early in the day. So it happened that
when Martin Landis stopped in to see Amanda before he went to his work
in the city he saw on the kitchen table a long row of pies ready for
the oven and Amanda deftly rolling the edge of another.
"Whew!" he whistled. "Mrs. Reist, is that your work or Amanda's so
early in the morning?"
"Amanda's! My granny used to say still that no girl was ready to get
married till she could roll out a thin pie dough. I guess my girl is
almost ready, for she got hers nice and thin this morning. Ach," she
thought in dismay as she saw the girl's face flush, "now why did I say
that? I didn't think how it would sound. But Amanda needn't mind
Martin!"
Merry little twinkles played around Martin's gray eyes as he answered,
"I see. Looks as if Amanda's ready for a husband--if she's going to
feed him on pies!"
"On pies--Martin Landis!" scorned the girl. "I'd have a dyspeptic on my
hands after a few days of pie diet."
"Well, you'd make a pretty good nurse, I believe."
"Nurse--not me! The only thing I know how to nurse is hurt birds and
lame bunnies and such things. You just lay them in a box and feed them,
and if they get well you clap your hands, and if they die you put some
leaves and flowers on them and bury them out in the woods--remember how
we used to do that?"
"Do I? I should say I do! The time we had the fence hackey that Lyman
Mertzheimer hurt with a stone--"