A Merry Heart (21 page)

She glanced at the clock on the table by her bed and frowned. It was only four in the morning. She didn’t have to get up for another hour, yet she was afraid to go back to sleep. What if her dream continued? She didn’t want to think about William, Nick, or Amos. For that matter, it would suit her fine if she never thought of any man ever again!

A
s the months flew by and Lewis’s wedding drew closer, Miriam began to feel a sense of panic. Mom wasn’t willing to move back home and allow Miriam to take her place at Andrew and Sarah’s, so Miriam had about decided that she would have to stay at the house with Lewis and Grace after they were married. She hoped the newlyweds would understand and that she would be able to handle not being in charge of the house once Grace took over.

One morning on the way to school, Miriam passed Amos’s rig. He and Mary Ellen were obviously headed for the schoolhouse. Mary Ellen leaned out the window and waved. “Hello, Teacher Mim!”

Miriam waved in response and urged her horse into a trot. She didn’t think it would be right for any of her students to arrive at school before their teacher did.

As she pulled into the school yard a short time later, she was relieved to see that none of the other children were there yet. She halted her horse, climbed down from the buggy, and had just started to unhitch the mare when the Hiltys showed up.

Miriam watched as Amos got out and went around to help his daughter down. In spite of her mistrust of the man, she had to admit that he was a good father, and Mary Ellen obviously loved him very much.

Just as the child stepped down from the buggy, her foot snagged in the hem of her dress. She looked down and gasped. “It’s torn! Pappy, please don’t make me go to school today. The others will laugh at me; I just know they will.”

The sympathetic look Amos first gave his daughter turned to obvious frustration. “I can’t do anything about your dress right now, Mary Ellen. We’ll take it over to Maudie Miller’s after school lets out. She can mend it for you then.”

Mary Ellen shot him an imploring look. “No, Pappy, please. I don’t want to wait that long.”

Feeling the child’s embarrassment as if it were her own, Miriam stepped forward. “Let me get my horse put in the corral, and then we’ll go inside the schoolhouse. I’ll mend your dress before the others get here.”

When Amos turned to face Miriam, he wore a look of astonishment. “Would you really do that for her? Do you have the necessary tools?”

Miriam gave a small laugh. “You needn’t be so surprised, Amos. In spite of what some may say about me, I’ve actually been known to do a few acts of kindness.”

“I—I didn’t mean to say—”

“Never mind. Just go on your way, and Mary Ellen will be fine.”

“Well, let me take care of your horse then.”

“Danki.” Miriam put her hand across Mary Ellen’s back and guided her toward the schoolhouse; then she turned back
and called to Amos, “Oh, and by the way—you don’t use tools to sew, but I do keep a small kit full of sewing supplies in my desk for such an emergency as this.”

Amos mumbled something under his breath and headed over to Miriam’s buggy to unhitch the horse.

When Miriam entered the schoolhouse with Mary Ellen, she saw right away that the child’s face was streaked with tears. The first thing she did was to dip a clean cloth into the bucket of water she kept nearby and gently wipe the little girl’s face. “Now stand on this chair while I hem up your dress,” she instructed.

“How come?”

“It would be quicker and easier if your dress was off, but some of the other kinner may arrive soon, and you wouldn’t want to be caught without your dress on, would you?”

Mary Ellen shook her head. “No, Teacher Mim.”

“Now, hold real still, and no rutsching.”

“I’ll try not to squirm, I promise.”

Miriam threaded a needle and began the task of putting Mary Ellen’s hem back into place. When the job was completed, Mary Ellen smiled happily and jumped down from the chair. “Danki, Teacher. You did a good job, and it looks real nice now.”

“Gern gschehne—you are welcome,” Miriam replied as the door opened and three of the Hoelwarth boys burst into the room.

She was glad the sewing job had been completed, because the Hoelwarths were all teases, and they would probably have taunted Mary Ellen if they’d seen her standing on a chair getting her dress mended.

All the way home, Amos thought about Miriam and how she had seemed so concerned about Mary Ellen’s torn dress.

“Miriam has a lot of good in her, Lord,” he said out loud. “Trouble is she doesn’t seem to know it. So maybe what we need here is some way to bring out all that goodness.”

Keeping his focus straight ahead, Amos guided his horse and buggy down the road, allowing his thoughts to wander back to the day when he and Miriam were still kinner in school. . . .

“Let’s get a game of baseball going,” Noah Troyer shouted when the school children were dismissed for morning recess.

Amos always enjoyed a good game of ball, so he eagerly grabbed the baseball glove from under his desk and headed outside to the playground. It was a hot, humid day, and before he joined the game, he made a quick trip to the pump around back for a drink of water. He came across Miriam and her youngest brother, Lewis, whose face was wet with tears. “I wanna play ball,” the boy wailed, “but Noah says I’m too young, and he told me to go play on the swings with the girls.”

Miriam dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around her brother. “It’s okay. You and I can have our own game of ball.”

Lewis looked up at her, and a slight smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “Really?”

She nodded. “I was going to read for a while, but I’ll go inside and get a ball from Teacher Leah.”

Amos was tempted to ask if he might join in their game, but the shyness he felt whenever he was around girls prevented him from saying anything. So he gave the pump handle a couple of thrusts and took a big drink of water.

Miriam’s got such a kind heart
, he thought, as he headed over to the ball field a few minutes later.
Someday, if I ever get up the nerve, I’m gonna ask that girl to marry me.

“Well, I’ve finally asked her to marry me,” Amos mumbled, as his thoughts returned to the present. “But unless God changes Miriam’s heart, I’ll never have the chance to show how much I love her.”

A truck sped by Amos’s buggy just then, causing the horse to spook and veer off to the left. Amos gripped the reins and shouted, “Whoa, there. Steady, boy!”

He struggled to gain control of the skittish animal, but it was too late. The buggy flipped onto its side as the horse broke free and took off down the road. Except for a couple of bumps and bruises, Amos was relieved that he had escaped serious injury. The last thing Mary Ellen needed was to lose another parent or to have him end up in the hospital.

He reached over and pushed the opposite door of the buggy open, then crawled out. “That’s what I get for letting my mind wander and not paying better attention to my driving,” he muttered. “Now I’ve got a buggy to repair, not to mention a runaway horse that needs to be found.”

The morning went by quickly, and soon it was lunchtime.
Miriam watched as Mary Ellen opened her metal lunch box. The child ate hungrily, but Miriam was appalled to see what Amos had given his daughter to eat. The contents of the lunch box revealed a biscuit, some dried beef jerky, a green apple, and a bottle of water.

Miriam wondered if Mary Ellen’s father had been in a hurry that morning or was completely ignorant as to a child’s nutritional needs. She had seen some of the pitiful lunches he’d made Mary Ellen in the past, but none of them had looked this bad.

Miriam shook her head and sighed, wishing she hadn’t already eaten her own lunch, for she would have shared some of her sandwich with Mary Ellen.
That man really does need a wife, and Mary Ellen surely needs a mother.

She looked away from the little girl and directed her gaze out the window. She had to get her mind on something else. She could feel one of her sick headaches coming on and knew she had to ward it off, so she reached into her desk drawer and retrieved a bottle of white willow bark capsules. The Thermos of water that normally sat on her desk was half full, so she popped two capsules into her mouth and swallowed them down.

Miriam was relieved when all the children had finished their lunches and filed outside to play. Now maybe she would have a few minutes of peace. But that was not to be. After only a brief time, a commotion outside ended her solitude.

When Miriam went out to investigate, she found a group of children gathered around Mary Ellen. This was not the first time she’d witnessed some of them picking on the child, and she wondered what the problem could be.

Mary Ellen lay crumpled on the ground, whimpering pathetically, while several of the older boys, including two of the Hoelwarths, pointed at her and jeered. John Hoelwarth held a long stick in his hand and was poking Mary Ellen with it. “Get up, baby Hilty. Quit your cryin’. You’re such a little boppli!”

Angrily, Miriam grabbed the stick from John and whirled him around to face her. “What is going on here, and why are you poking at a defenseless little girl and calling her a baby?”

John hung his head as he made little circles in the dirt with the toe of his boot. “I was only tryin’ to make her quit bawling. She sounds like one of my daed’s heifers.”

The children’s laughter rang out, vibrating through Miriam’s tensed body. “Quiet!” she shouted. “I want to know why Mary Ellen was crying, and why you’ve been teasing her again.”

“Look at her hair, Teacher,” Sara King said. “She hasn’t got a mamm, and her daed can’t fix it so it stays up the way it should. She looks pretty silly, don’t ya think?”

Miriam bent down and gently pulled Mary Ellen to her feet. “Come inside now. I’ll fix your hair and clean you up.” To the other children, she said, “You may all stay outside until I call you. Then we’ll discuss what’s happened here.” She turned and led Mary Ellen to the schoolhouse.

It took nearly half an hour for Miriam to get the child calmed down, cleaned up, and her hair put back in place.

“Try not to let the kinner’s teasing bother you,” Miriam said. “Some of the older ones like to make trouble. Everyone but you will be made to stay after school.”

“It don’t matter,” Mary Ellen said with a shake of her
head. “They’ll always tease me, ’cause I have no mamm. If Mama were alive still, she’d sew my dresses so the hems stayed up. She would fix me good lunches like the others have, and she’d do better with my hair then Pappy does. He tries real hard, but he can’t do some things the way a mudder can.” Mary Ellen sniffed deeply, although she did manage a weak smile. “Teacher Mim, I sure wish you was my mamm.”

Miriam swallowed hard. There was no doubt about it. Mary Ellen needed her. For that matter, Amos probably did, too. And as much as she hated to admit it, she needed them—or at least their home to live in. She knew she could never give up her faith to marry Nick, and perhaps a marriage without love wouldn’t be such a bad thing. If she married Amos, all concerned would have mutual needs met.

Heartrending though the decision was, Miriam knew what she wanted to do. She would tell Amos that she had changed her mind and decided to accept his proposal, and she must do it soon before she lost her nerve.

I
will not tease” had been written on the blackboard one hundred times by each of the boys who had tormented Mary Ellen, and Miriam had kept the entire class after school and given them a lecture on kindness.

It had been a long, emotionally exhausting day at school, and Miriam was glad it was finally over. Now she must ride over to the Hiltys’ and speak to Amos before she lost her nerve. The decision to marry him had not been an easy one, and her mind was full of questions. Would he still want to marry her? Would Mary Ellen be happy about it? What would her own family think? Most of all, she wondered if she could really make herself go through with it.

Miriam poured herself a glass of water and swallowed the two white willow bark capsules she had put in her mouth. If she was going to face Amos, it had better not be with a pounding headache. With a sigh of resignation, she gathered up her things and headed out the door.