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respond, but he cut her off. “Fact of the matter is Anna’s been acting mighty strange lately, and we need your help finding out what’s up.”
    Rachel wrinkled her nose. Was Dad saying what she thought he was saying? Did he actually want her to spy on her sister? If Dad thought she and Anna were still close, he was sorely mistaken. Here of late, Rachel and Anna didn’t see eye-to-eye on much of anything. Rachel knew if Anna’s talk about learning more of the English ways ever reached Mom and Dad, they would be very concerned. That was obvious by the way Dad had reacted last night when Anna suggested they should modernize some. Rachel didn’t want to be the one to tell them what was going on inside Anna’s stubborn head. Not that she knew all that much. Fact was she wouldn’t have known anything at all if she hadn’t overheard Anna and Silas’s conversation while she was hiding in the tree.
    “So what do you say?” Dad asked, scattering Rachel’s thoughts.
    She flicked her tongue across her lower lip. “What exactly am I expected to do?”
    “To begin with, your mamm’s told me that Anna has a suitor, yet she’s not the least bit interested in being courted by that nice fellow.”
    “You must mean Silas Swartley. He’s sweet as molasses on Anna, but she won’t give him the time of day.”
    Dad glanced toward the front of the market buggy, where Joseph stood fiddling with the horse’s harness. “Kind of reminds me of your mamm when I was tryin’ to show her how much I cared.”
    Rachel listened politely as her father continued. “Sometimes a man shows his feelings in a strange sort of way.” He nodded toward Joseph and chuckled softly. “Now take that big brother of yours—we all know that he’s sweet on Pauline Hostetler, but do you think he’ll do a thing about it? No way! Ever since Pauline returned from Ohio, Joseph’s been making eyes at her, but he won’t make a move to ask her out. That boy’s gonna fool around, and soon some other fellow’s bound to come along and win Pauline’s heart. Then it’ll be too late for my bleed son.”
    Rachel knew all about Joseph’s crush on Pauline, as well as his bashful ways. He had been carrying a torch for Pauline ever since Eli Yoder had dropped her flat to marry Laura, the fancy English woman from Minnesota. The fact that Pauline was three years older than Joseph didn’t help things, either. Rachel had to wonder if the age difference bothered Pauline the way it did her brother. It seemed rather strange that the twenty-four-year-old woman still wasn’t married. Either she’d never gotten over Eli, or Pauline simply wasn’t interested in Joseph. He sure wasn’t going to take the initiative; Rachel was sure of that.
    “Well, I’m thinkin’ that if anyone can talk to Anna about giving Silas a chance, it would be you,” Dad said, cutting into Rachel’s contemplations one more time. “She needs to know that she’s being foolish for snubbing someone as nice as Silas.”
    She swallowed hard. If her father only knew what he was asking of her. It was hard enough to see Silas hanging around Anna all the time. How in the world could Rachel be expected to talk Anna into something she really didn’t want to do? Truth be told, Rachel would just as soon slop the hogs every day for the rest of her life as to tell Anna how stupid she was for snubbing Silas. But she knew her father probably wouldn’t let up until she had agreed to his request.
    Rachel let her gaze travel over their orderly farmyard for a few seconds as she thought things through. “Jah, okay. I’ll have a little talk with Anna about Silas,” she finally agreed.
    “And you’ll tell us if anything strange is going on with your sister?”
    Rachel nodded, feeling worse than the thick scum that would no doubt be covering much of their pond by late August. “Okay, Dad. I’ll tell you what’s going on.”
***
    Joseph cringed as Rachel walked away. He hadn’t eavesdropped on purpose,