October song Read Online Free PDF Page B

when she’d first heard of a problem. After all, Mary had been underfoot most all of Katie’s growing-up years. Rebecca
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    scarcely could recall a time when she and Katie were bakin’ cookies or sweetbread that Mary Stoltzfus wasn’t right here in this kitchen, helping right along.
    Thinking on it, she remembered just how busy things had been this past week, what with the food preparations for Eli’s wedding falling squarely on her shoulders.Hurting folk often get lost in the shuffle come wedding season,she thought. Sad to say, but it was true.
    So.. she would make it a point to pay Mary a visit tomorrow.
    “Bishop John’s concerned ‘bout his wife,” Samuel said, coming in from the barn.
    “How’s that?” she asked.
    “Seems Mary’s pining for . our
    Katie.”
    The girls had loved each other as sisters, sharing their childhood years so much that the People often thought of them as two peas in a pod, really. Why, they walked to school together every day, worked in each other’s “charity” gardens, helped their mammas with chores, sewed for-gut dresses here, even baby-sat for neighbors together.
    Samuel went on. “John asked if you
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    might go see her.”
    I’ll drop everything tomorrow and go.” He went and sat in the hickory rocker in the corner of the kitchen. “Wouldn’t be such a gut idea to invite Katie along, I’m thinking.” A warning, true, but quite an unnecessary one, for she’d never thought of such a thing.
    The whole Mary-‘n’-Katie dilemma was a knotty problem. Both for Rebecca and her husband. “Such a sad and sorrowful thing when the shun is upheld at all costs.” She surprised herself by blurting out the words, never much thinking how Samuel might take their meaning.
    ” ‘Wis always much harder to turn one’s back on ‘thus saith the Lord’ than on ‘thus saith the church,’ ” came Samuel’s sympathetic reply.
    Rebecca wondered if his view on the shunning was weakening some. But she wouldn’t presume to ask.
    He rocked silently for a time. Then, slowly, he said, “I clearly see the purpose for social avoidance in the Scriptures, don’t misunderstand. Sometimes,Ijust don’t know if we oughta impose the Bann on folk who are wholly followin’ the Lord — that is, if they prove themselves as being built up in the faith in their new church.”
    58Well, now, she’d never heard Samuel talkthisway. Thinking on his comment, she fell silent.
    Rebecca waited till the bishop’s children had gone to school the next day before set ting off toward the peaceful spread of land. She was glad for a morning all to herself. This way she could reflect on her and Samuel’s further discussion last evening. Seemed all he wanted to talk ‘bout was Katie and the peculiar situation they, as a family, found themselves in. At first she’d thought him a bit peeved at her, but he had been tryin’ his best to be understood. For the first time in many months, he’d opened up his heart to her. In the end, after a gut long time of it, they’d come to grips with the shunning quandary, its divi sive overtones. And since they were deep in such talk, she’d stuck her neck out and shared with Samuel the invitation that had come in the mail from Daniel and Katie.
    Samuel had visibly bristled, but as they talked, he seemed slightly open to having Katie, at least, come over totheirhouse for a short visit. But not the other way round. “And not for a meal, mind you.” He’d added quickly, ” ‘With such an one no not to eat,’ according to First Corinthians.”
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    Shunning a former church member daughter or no — had a way of disrupting close-knit families. Couldn’t help but. As for the years stretching out ahead, Rebecca could only think that Samuel’s dairy-farming days were coming to an end and prob’ly here perry quick. If Beniamindidmarry come next year, they had just twelve months or so to work through all the aspects of their youngest son takin’ over the farm and their