Little Amish Matchmaker by Linda Byler Read Free Book Online Page A

teacher’s desk for another copy, one woolen black sock falling sloppily over her Skechers. Third graders were an annoyance, no question. But if you went to a one-room Amish school, you just had to put up with them, that was the way of it.
    So now. Night sky and pond in place. This was going to be awesome!
    “Boys,” Teacher Catherine announced. “The girls will soon be finished with their bells, so they may help you with the freehand drawing of figures, horses, whatever. Isaac?”
    Before he could stop himself, his arm shot up. “Well, we can’t have just anyone helping, can we?”
    Then he was subject to the most awful glare of disapproval. It shot from her blue eyes, a laser of reproach. Not one word was necessary.
    Isaac felt his face fire up to about 500 degrees. He wished he could turn into an ant and disappear beneath the baseboard.
    He should have stayed quiet.
    But these girls and their cutesy-pie drawings of flowers and butterflies and birds and stuff. How could they ever be expected to come up with anything decent? This poster was serious material.
    Isaac cringed when Ruthie hung the last cluster of bells on the window shade and went to the cupboard for art paper. He had to admit, though, they had done a real good job on those handmade bells.
    “Put your books away for lunch,” Teacher Catherine announced. Instantly there was a rustle of paper, heads bent to put things in their desks. “Davey, is it your turn to pass the waste can?”
    Davey nodded happily, picked up the tall Rubbermaid waste can and slowly wended his way down the aisle as everyone hurried to throw their crumpled paper, bits of crayon, and colored pencil shavings into it before he moved on.
    The wooden desks all had a hole cut on top, to the right, where pupils had kept their inkwells in times past. There were no more antique ink pens, of course, so that hole was perfect for stuffing crumpled waste paper.
    Hickory Grove School was an older one, so they still had those desks, but the newer ones were made without the hole. Dan Stoltzfus and his helpers made school desks now, sleek and smoothly finished, the steel parts painted black, all glossy and shiny like the buggies.
    Some of the Amish schools got the desks the English schools no longer needed. They were not attached to the floor, the lids opened and you could see your whole cache of books and stuff at once. Nothing fell out of those desks, which was nice, but the teachers complained about them being noisy, saying the tops were propped up too long while bent heads did a lot of whispering behind them.
    Dora got the teakettle from the stove top, poured the steaming hot water into the blue plastic dishpan, then carried it to the hydrant beside the porch to add cold water. Why didn’t she fill it half-full with cold water first, then add the hot? If she thought, she wouldn’t have to carry all that hot water out the door.
    You simply couldn’t get past it. Girls had very little common sense.
    She set the dishpan on a small dry sink, added a squirt of anti-bacterial soap, and washed her hands, drying them with brown paper towels from the dispenser on the wall.
    “First row,” Teacher Catherine said. Row after row, the scholars filed in an orderly fashion, washing their hands, drying them, grabbing their lunch boxes from the cloakroom and returning to their seats. Teacher Catherine bowed her head, the pupils followed suit and they sang their dinner prayer in a soft melody.
    When they finished, the “amen” fading away, most of the pupils made their way to the front of the room, where the propane-gas stove held dozens of foil-wrapped sandwiches, hot dogs, chicken patties, or small casseroles containing the previous evening’s leftovers. Tiny Tupperware containers of ketchup were scraped over hot dogs and chicken patties and put on a roll. Juice boxes or containers of milk washed down the good, hot food.
    Calvin opened his lunch and produced a ham sandwich loaded with lettuce and tomato.