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blue paint on the wall and the strip she’d painted near the ceiling. Even her brushes had been washed clean and laid out on a folded copy of The Budget.
    Anna was so surprised that she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She didn’t have to wonder who had done it. She knew. Susanna could never have cleaned up the mess, not in two days. Anna was still standing there staring when Susanna wandered in.
    â€œI’m hungry,” she said. “I didn’t get my lunch.”
    Anna sighed. “ Ne. You didn’t, did you?” She glanced around the room again, trying to make certain that she hadn’t imagined that the paint was cleaned up. “Samuel did this?”
    Susanna nodded smugly. “He got rags under the sink. Mam’s rags.”
    â€œYou mustn’t say anything to anyone about this,” Anna said. “Promise me that you won’t.”
    â€œAbout the spilled paint?”
    â€œAbout the spilled paint, or that I fell off the ladder, or the mistake you made—” she glanced apprehensively at her sister “—about thinking Samuel wanted to court me.”
    Susanna wrinkled her nose and shifted from one bare foot to another. “But it was funny, Anna. You fell on Samuel. He fell in the paint. It was funny.”
    â€œI suppose we did look funny, but Samuel could have been hurt. I could have been hurt. So I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say one word about Samuel coming here today. Can you do that?”
    Susanna scratched her chubby chin. “Remember when the cow sat on me?”
    â€œYa,” Anna agreed. “Last summer. And it wasn’t funny, because you could have been hurt.”
    â€œIt was just like that,” Susanna agreed. “A cow fell on me, and you fell on Samuel. And we both got smashed.” She shrugged and turned and went out of the room. “Just the same.”
    Exactly, Anna thought, feeling waves of heat wash under her skin. And that’s how Samuel must have felt—like a heifer sat on him. Only, this cow had thrown her arms around his neck and exposed her bare legs up to her thighs like an English hoochy-koochy dancer.
    If she lived to be a hundred, she’d never forgive herself. Never.

Chapter Three
    T he following morning proved cold and blustery, with a threat of snow. All through the morning milking, the feeding of the chickens and livestock and breaking the thin skim of ice off the water trough in the barnyard, Anna wrestled with her dread of venturing out on the roads. She needed to buy more paint, but she didn’t know if it was wise to travel in such bad weather. The blacktop would be slippery, and there was always the danger that the horse could slip and fall. And since she didn’t want to leave Susanna home alone, she’d have to take her, as well.
    Anna considered calling a driver, but the money for the ride would go better into replacing the paint. If only she hadn’t been so clumsy and wasted what Mam had already purchased. She wondered if she could find some leftover lavender paint in the cellar. If there was any, maybe she could cover the blue splashes, and put the room back as it had been.
    But the truth was, Grossmama would be angry if she found her new bedroom English purple, and Mam would be disappointed in Anna. Anna had caused the trouble, and it was her responsibility to fix it. Snow or no snow, she’d have to go and buy more blue paint.
    What a noodlehead she’d been! Was she losing her hearing, that she’d imagined Samuel had said that he wanted to court her? She tried not to wonder how Susanna could have misheard, as well. It was funny, really, the whole misunderstanding. Years from now, she and her sisters would laugh over the whole incident. As for Samuel, Anna thought she’d just act normal around him, be pleasant, pretend the whole awful incident had never happened and not cause either of them any further embarrassment.
    After the