An Amish Christmas With the Bontrager Sisters Read Online Free PDF

words.
    “Martha Bontrager disgraced herself and her family when she ran away, not once, but twice! That’s how determined she was to lead an English life with that Englischer ,” Jane spat. “She says they were engaged but some of us think she was lying to legitimize her life of sin. We don’t even know if she is pure,” Jane lowered her voice but Martha still heard every hurtful word. “Those sisters court nothing but bad luck and you’d do well to not look there for a wife.”
    “I can only wish that Gott will open your heart to kindness and take the bitterness from your tongue,” Jacob said lightly but made no move to get in the wagon. “As long as I am driving this wagon no one will walk home.”
    Martha wiped the tears from her face and turned away. She didn’t think she could face a wagon full of her community members at the moment. One foolish mistake in her rumspringa and she was marked for life. Her own shame and isolation she could endure, but to paint her sisters with the same brush was beyond her endurance.
    She ignored the scratching in her throat and the bouts of sneezing as she walked down the main street till the dirt road that would take her home.

    *

    There had been no word from Jeramiah. Five months to the day he had left yet no letter had arrived, no note asking after his children. It was like there was a veil between him and his family that neither could permeate.  
    Emma saw her sister grow big with child, yet her own womb lay barren. But that didn’t worry Emma as much as Sarah’s failing health did. It looked as if the boppli was leeching all of Sarah’s strength from her, the boppli growing big in the womb and Sarah shrinking to a husk of her former self.
    “Something is very wrong,” she confided in Jarron. “I think Sarah is ill.”
    “Having a baby is hard at the best of times,” Jarron soothed. “And Sarah is having hers in the most terrible of circumstances.”
    “She doesn’t eat properly,” Emma admitted. “How does she expect to keep her strength up?”
    “If it will comfort you, we can take her to the English hospital in town,” Jarron said. “But I doubt she will seek English medication.”
    “We have to try,” Emma said. “For Isaac and Ruth. They can not afford to lose another parent.”
    With this thought in mind, Emma visited her parent’s house. Isaac could be seen leveling hay in the barn while a goat tried to eat the seat of his breeches. Emma laughed as Isaac tried to shoo it away but it always came back, eventually tearing the back pockets off.
    Ruth was in the kitchen with her grossmammi baking a cake and Sarah was in the corner next to the fire knitting a wrap for the new boppli . Sarah looked frail, her hands all skin and bones shook slightly and stumbled often. Her eyes had sunken into their sockets and her hair looked dry and coarse, not its usual lustrous self.
    “Something smells nice,” Emma said in greeting.  
    “Ja,” Mamm smiled. “Ruth is making a honey cake.”
    “And what a big girl you are,” Emma said fondly and Ruth grinned.
    “Soon she will be pottering around the kitchen and I can put my feet up and rest,” Sarah smiled at her dochder .  
    “You can take care of the boppli ,” Ruth said importantly. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
    Sarah’s laugh became a wracking cough. Ruth rushed over with water. Mamm and Emma exchanged worried glances.
    “Ruthie,” Mamm said pleasantly. “Why don’t you take a few slices out to your bruder and grossdaed ? Ask them how your first cake is.”
    Ruth took a plate full of sliced cake obediently.  
    “May I have one as well, grossmammi ?” she asked sweetly.
    “Seeing as you made it,” Mamm said, winking at her grossduchder , “you may have two.”
    Ruth giggled with delight and skipped out of the house.  
    “Are you here to talk some sense into me?” Sarah smiled tiredly.
    “Jarron has taken an appointment with the doctors at the hospital,” Emma said gravely.