Mrs. Reist's desire for a happy childhood for her children was easily
realized, especially in the case of Amanda. She had the happy faculty
of finding joy in little things, things commonly called insignificant.
She had a way of taking to herself each beauty of nature, each joy note
of the birds, the airy loveliness of the clouds, and being thrilled by
them.
With Phil and Martin Landis--and the ubiquitous Landis baby--she
explored every field, woods and roadside in the Crow Hill section of
the county. From association with her Phil and Martin had developed an
equal interest in outdoors. The Landis boy often came running into the
Reist yard calling for Amanda and exclaiming excitedly, "I found a
bird's nest! It's an oriole this time, the dandiest thing way out on
the end of a tiny twig. Come on see it!"
Amanda was the moving spirit of that little group of nature students.
Phil and Martin might have never known an oriole from a thrush if she
had not led them along the path of knowledge. Sometimes some of the
intermediate Landis children joined the group. At times Lyman
Mertzheimer sauntered along and invited himself, but his interest was
feigned and his welcome was not always cordial.
"You Lyman Mertzheimer," Amanda said to him one day, "if you want to go
along to see birds' nests you got to keep quiet! You think it's smart
to scare them off the nests. That poor thrasher, now, that you scared
last week! You had her heart thumpin' so her throat most burst. And her
with her nest right down on the ground where we could watch the babies
if we kept quiet. You're awful mean!"
"Huh," he answered, "what's a bird! All this fuss about a dinky brown
bird that can't do anything but flop its wings and squeal when you go
near it. It was fun to see her flop all around the ground."
"Oh, you nasty mean thing, Lyman Mertzheimer"--for a moment Amanda
found no words to express her contempt of him--"sometimes I just hate
you!"
He went off laughing, flinging back the prediction, "But some day
you'll do the reverse, Amanda Reist." He felt secure in the belief that
he could win the love of any girl he chose if he exerted himself to do
so.
The little country school of Crow Hill was necessarily limited in its
curriculum, hence when Amanda expressed a desire to become a teacher it
was decided to send her to the Normal School at Millersville. At that
time she was sixteen and was grown into an attractive girl.
"I know I'm not beautiful," she told her mother one day after a long,
searching survey in the mirror. "My hair is too screaming red, but then
it's fluffy and I got a lot of it. Add to red hair a nose that's a
little pug and a mouth that's a little too big and I guess the
combination won't produce any Cleopatra or any Titian beauty."