The Amish Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

thirty,
Vadder
. It’s not as if no girl would have me.”
    “I’ll fetch the coffee and apple pie,” Ellen offered. She began clearing away the plates while Simeon wagged a finger at Micah.
    “You know I’m but speaking what’s true. Deny it if you can. Neither of you have been putting your minds to finding a good wife. And you must marry. It’s not decent that you don’t. I’ve talked to you until I’m blue in the face, and I’ve prayed on it. What came to me was that we didn’t have to look far to find the answer to at least one of our problems.”
    “Jah.”
Ellen’s mother leaned forward on her elbows and pushed back her plate. “And you’ve worried about your sons no more than I’ve lost sleep over our girl. She should have been a wife years ago, should have filled our house with grandchildren. She’s a good daughter, a blessing to us in our old age. But it’s time she found a husband, and none better than one of your boys.”
    “I agree,” Ellen’s father said. “I’ve known Neziah and Micah since they were born. I could ask no more for her than she wed such a good man as either of them.” He smiled and nodded his approval. “The pity is, we didn’t think of this solution sooner.”
    “No solution if Ellen’s not willing,” Neziah pronounced. His serious gaze met hers and held it. “Are you in favor of this plan or are you just afraid to speak up and turn us out the door with our hats in hand?”
    Everyone looked at her again, including the two children, and Ellen felt a familiar sinking feeling. What
did
she want? She didn’t know. She stood in the center of the kitchen feeling foolish and clutching the pie like a drowning woman with a lifeline. “I...Well...”
    “Is the thought of marrying one of us distasteful to you?” Neziah asked when she couldn’t answer.
    He had none of the showy looks of his brother. Neziah’s face was too planed, his brow too pronounced, and his mouth too thin to be called handsome. Not that he was ugly; he wasn’t that. But there was always something unnerving about his dark, penetrating gaze.
    Neziah was only three years older than she was, but he looked closer to ten. Hints of gray were beginning to tint his walnut-brown hair. The sudden loss of his wife and mother in the same accident three years ago had struck him hard. Maybe it was the responsibility of being both father and mother to two young children that stamped him with an air of heaviness.
    “We’re all friends here,” Neziah continued. “No one will think less of you if this isn’t something you want to consider.”
    Micah relaxed in his chair. “I say we’ve thrown this at her too fast. I wouldn’t blame her for balking.” He met Ellen’s gaze. “Give yourself a few days to think it over, Ellen. What do you say?”
    “Jah,”
Ellen’s mother urged, rising to take the pie from her hands. “Say you will think about it, daughter.”
    “You know your mother and I wouldn’t even consider the idea if we thought it was wrong for you.” Her father beamed, and Ellen’s resistance melted.
    What could be wrong with thinking it over? As Simeon and her
dat
had said, either of the Shetler brothers would make a respectable husband. She would be a wife, a woman with her own home to manage, possibly children. She took a deep breath, feeling as if she were about to take a plunge off the edge of a rock quarry into deep water far below. She actually felt a little lightheaded. “I will,” she said. “I’ll think on the whole idea, and I will pray about it. Surely, if it is the Lord’s plan for me, He’ll ease my mind.” She held up her finger. “But my agreement is to
think
on the whole idea. Nothing more.”
    Simeon smacked his hands together. “
Goot.
It is for the best. You will come to realize this. And whichever one you pick, I will consider you the daughter I never had.”
    Ellen turned toward Simeon, intent on making it clear to her neighbor that she hadn’t agreed to walk out