Читать книгу Courting Ruth - Emma Miller - Страница 12

The following Monday afternoon, Ruth left Susanna and Anna baking bread to walk to the school. Mam wanted to work on lesson plans after supper, and Ruth had offered to carry her heavy books home for her. It was so rare that Ruth had time alone to think, and it was such a pretty day that she enjoyed having the errand.

Eli Lapp and how to handle him was foremost in her mind. It was clear that he wasn’t going to stop following her around until she made him understand that he was wasting his time with her. She needed to explain that it was nothing against him; she had no plans to marry anyone.

Still, she had to admit that she liked being told she was pretty, and that he was both clever and attractive. Vanity, she feared, was one of her sins. After all the talk about her being an old maid, it was nice that someone liked her, but it had to stop. The trouble was, she didn’t know what she should say to Eli. How could she tell him to quit courting her when he’d said nothing about wanting her for his girlfriend? What if he laughed at her? What if he told her that she had completely misunderstood, and she was the last girl he would consider as a wife?

And then there was the problem of Irwin. The boy had promised Mam that he’d meet her at the schoolhouse on Saturday, but he hadn’t shown up, and she’d had no opportunity to speak to him alone at church. Ruth wondered if Irwin had come to school today and if Mam had been able to question him about the fire.

Eli Lapp hadn’t attended the Sunday services, but that hadn’t kept him from being the center of attention. Hearing the girls giggling about how handsome he was, or the mothers repeating that Eli was just the sort of boy that Preacher Reuben warned them about, was no help.

“Shepherds of our church must be diligent to protect our lambs,” Aunt Martha had warned a group of mothers. “The loose ways of the world threaten our faith.”

Ruth wondered if her father would have agreed with Aunt Martha, or would he have made Eli welcome and tried to turn him back to the Plain ways? Ruth hadn’t done anything wrong in the barn, but if people knew she’d been alone in the buggy in the barn with Eli, her reputation could be tarnished. For all she knew, Irwin was the kind of person to tell tales, and that worried her. It wasn’t necessary to simply avoid wrongdoing, but a Plain person had to avoid the perception of wrongdoing as well.

For an instant, just as Ruth rounded the bend through the trees, she remembered the schoolhouse as she’d seen it the day of the fire, and a knot rose in her throat. So many bad things could have happened. But this time, there was no smoke or the scent of smoke. School was out for the afternoon, but a few of the boys had remained for a game of softball on the grassy field. Samuel Mast’s buggy was there, as well as Roman’s big team and wagon, the horses standing nose to nose at the hitching rail.

When Ruth entered the schoolroom by the temporary steps, she found Roman, Samuel and her mother deep in conversation about the building repairs. Mam was smiling, and it sounded as though she was getting her wish for more room. The hand-drawn plans spread out on the desk enlarged the main area by the size of the original cloakroom and included a new porch with an inside sink and water faucet.

“Isn’t this wonderful?” Mam exclaimed. “We’ll be able to add eight more desks and a new cloakroom.”

“Will it be done in time for the new school year?” Ruth asked, looking over the drawing.

Roman nodded. “With Eli to help, we’ll finish by September.”

“So Eli’s good with his hands,” Samuel observed.

“Ya, he’s a fine craftsman, that boy.”

“You can go on home,” Mam urged, resting her hand on Ruth’s arm. “We’ve still got things to discuss here, but there’s no need for you to wait for me. If you can take the reading books and the big arithmetic book, I can manage the rest.”

Ruth gathered up all the texts, including the oversize cursive writing book, said goodbye, and walked out of the school. She had just started toward the woods when Eli stepped out from behind the shed.

“Don’t pop out at people like that,” she said. Her cheeks felt as warm as if she’d been standing over a kettle of simmering jam. Just being near him scrambled her wits and made her tongue thick, and she was immediately more annoyed with herself than with him. She was a woman grown and should have more sense.