"Let me see once," asked Aunt Rebecca. "Why, that's Amos and your mom."
Mrs. Reist smiled and Uncle Amos chuckled. "We're peaches there, ain't?
I guess if abody thinks back right you see there were as many crazy
styles in olden times as there is now."
Tintypes of men and women in peculiar dress of Aunt Rebecca's youth
called forth much comment and many questions from the interested
Amanda. "Are there no pictures in here of you?" she asked her aunt.
"Yes, I guess so. On the last page or near there. That one," she said
as the child found it, a tintype of a young man seated on a vine-
covered seat and a comely young woman standing beside him, one hand
laid upon his shoulder.
"And is that Uncle Jonas?"
"No--my goodness, no! That's Martin Landis."
"Martin Landis? Not my--not the Martin Landis's pop that lives near
us?"
"Yes, that one."
"Why"--Amanda was wide-eyed and curious--"what were you doin' with your
hand on his shoulder so and your picture taken with him?"
Aunt Rebecca laughed. "Ach, I had dare to do that for we was promised
then, engaged they say now."
"You were goin' to marry Martin Landis's pop once?" The girl could not
quite believe it.
"Yes. But he was poor and along came Jonas Miller and he was rich and I
took him. But the money never done me no good. Mebbe abody shouldn't
say it, since he's dead, but Jonas was stingy. He'd squeeze a dollar
till the eagle'd holler. He made me pinch and save till I got so I
didn't feel right when I spent money. Now, since he's gone, I don't
know how. I act so dumb it makes me mad at myself sometimes. If I go to
Lancaster and buy me a whole plate of ice-cream it kinda bothers me. I
keep wonderin' what Jonas'd think, for he used to say that half a plate
of cream's enough for any woman. But mebbe it was to be that I married
Jonas instead of Martin Landis. Martin is a good man but all them
children--my goodness! I guess I got it good alone in my little house
long side of Mrs. Landis with all her children to take care of."
Amanda remembered the glory on the face of Mrs. Landis as she had said,
"Abody can have lots of money and yet be poor and others can have
hardly any money and yet be rich. It's all in what abody means by rich
and what kind of treasures you set store by. I wouldn't change places
with your rich Aunt Rebecca for all the farms in Lancaster County."
Poor Aunt Rebecca, she pitied her! Then she remembered the words of the
memory gem they had analyzed in school last year, "Where ignorance is
bliss 'tis folly to be wise." She could understand it now! So long as
Aunt Rebecca didn't see what she missed it was all right. But if she
ever woke up and really felt what her life might have been if she had
married the poor man she loved--poor Aunt Rebecca! A halo of purest
romance hung about the old woman as the child looked up at her.