LITMIR.BIZ

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worked herself into a good worry. How was she going to get all the painting done, tend to the farm chores and clean the house from top to bottom, the way she’d hoped?

      Calling for Susanna, Anna forced herself down the hall toward Grossmama’s bedroom. She pushed opened the door and stopped short, in utter shock. The ladder was gone. The bucket was gone, and every drop of paint had been scrubbed off the floor and woodwork. The room looked exactly as it had this morning, before she’d started—other than the splashes of 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.

      “I’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.”

      “You mustn’t say anything to anyone about this,” Anna said. “Promise me that you won’t.” “About the spilled paint?”

      “About 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.”

      “I 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?”

      “Ya,” Anna agreed. “Last summer. And it wasn’t funny, because you could have been hurt.”

      “It 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

      The 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 outside chores, Anna returned to the house, built up the fire in the wood cookstove, and mixed up a batch of buttermilk biscuits while the oven was heating. Once the biscuits were baking, she washed some dishes and put bacon on. “Do you want eggs?” she asked her sister.

      “Ya,” Susanna nodded. “Sunshine up.” She finished setting the table and was pouring tomato juice in two glasses, when Flora, their Shetland sheepdog, began to bark. Instantly, Jeremiah, the terrier, added his excited yips and ran in circles.

      “I wonder who’s here so early?” Anna turned the sizzling bacon and pulled the pan to a cooler area of the stove.

      Susanna ran to the door. “Maybe it’s Mam and Grossmama.”

      “Too early for them.” Thank goodness. Not that she wasn’t eager for Mam to get home. Her younger sisters had been away for nearly a year, with only short visits home, and she’d missed them terribly. But Grossmama would make a terrible fuss if her room wasn’t ready and the walls were still splashed with blue paint.

      Susanna flung open the door to greet their visitor, and the terrier shot out onto the porch and bounced up and down with excitement, as if his legs were made of springs. Coming up the back steps was the very last person on earth Anna expected to see. It was Samuel, and he’d brought his three daughters: five-year-old Lori Ann, nine-year-old Naomi and Mae, all bundled up in quilted blue coats and black rain boots. They poured through the door Susanna held open for them. The two older girls carried paint rollers, and Samuel had a can of paint in each hand.

      “It’s Samuel!” Susanna shouted above the terrier’s barking. “And Mae! And Naomi! And Lori Ann!”

      Anna’s stomach flip-flopped as she forced a smile, wiping her hands nervously on her apron. “Samuel.” She looked to Naomi. “No school today?”

      She pushed her round, wire-frame glasses back into place. “My tummy had a tickle this morning, but I’m better now.”

      “I think we were missing our teacher,” Samuel explained. “I let her stay home. She never misses. Do I smell biscuits?” He grinned and held up the paint cans. “We didn’t mean to interrupt your breakfast, but I wanted to get an early start on those walls.”

      Confused, Anna stared at him. “You wanted to get an early start? You bought paint?”

      “Last night.” He smiled again, and mischief danced in his dark eyes as he set the cans on the floor. The girls added the rollers and brushes to the pile. “I just took my shirt along to the store, and they were able to match the color perfectly.”

      “Good you brought paint,” Susanna announced. “Now we don’t have to take the buggy to town.”

      “I don’t know what to say.” Anna gripped the front of her apron. “It’s kind of you, but you have so much to do at your farm. We’ll pay for the paint, of course, but—”

      “I smell something burning.” Naomi peered over her glasses and grimaced.

      Anna spun around to see smoke rising from the stove. “Oh, my biscuits!” She ran to snatch open the oven door, and used the hem of her apron to grab the handle of the cast-iron frying pan.

      “Be careful,” Samuel warned. A cloud of smoke puffed out of the oven, stinging Anna’s eyes. She gave a yelp as the heat seared her palm through the cloth, and she dropped the frying pan. It bounced off the open door, sending biscuits flying, and landed with a clang on the floor. Anna clapped her stinging hand to her mouth.

      Lori Ann squealed, throwing her mitten-covered hands into the air, and the terrier darted across the

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