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Updated: June 7, 2025
Reist, a widow, her two children, her brother Amos Rohrer, who was responsible for the success of the farm, and a hired girl, Millie Hess, who had served the household so long and faithfully that she seemed an integral part of the family. Mrs. Reist was a sweet-faced, frail little woman, a member of the Mennonite Church.
Reist, so said the inscription in the big family Bible. But it was difficult to understand how the two women could have been mothered by one person. Millie, the hired girl, expressed her opinion freely to Amanda one day after a particularly trying time with the old woman. "How that Rebecca Miller can be your mom's sister now beats me. She's more like a wasp than anything I ever seen without wings.
In all her years she had failed to appreciate the futility of fuss, the sin of useless worry, and had never learned the invaluable lesson of minding her own business. "She means well," Mrs. Reist said in conciliatory tones when Uncle Amos or the children resented the interference of the dictatorial relative, but secretly she wondered how Rebecca could be so so she never finished the sentence.
So it happened that after a very commonplace goodbye given to Amanda in the presence of the entire Reist household Martin Landis left Lancaster County a few weeks before Thanksgiving and journeyed to South Carolina to spend a quiet vacation at a mountain resort. To Amanda Reist, pegging away in the schoolroom during the gray November days, his absence caused depression.
He flurried past the Reist farmhouse, head down like a criminal so that none should recognize him. With quick steps that almost merged into a run he went up the road. When he reached the little Crow Hill schoolhouse a sudden thought came to him. He climbed the rail fence and entered the woods, plodded up the hill to the spot where Amanda's moccasins grew each spring.
When the place was once more in order and the Landis family, the last guests, had gone off in the darkness, the children flinging back loud good-nights, Mrs. Reist, Philip, Millie and Uncle Amos sat alone on the porch and talked things over. "It was some wedding, Mother," was the opinion of the boy. "Yes." "Prettiest thing I ever seen," said the hired girl. "Yes, so it was," Uncle Amos agreed.
Uncle Amos, a fat, flushed little man, upon whose shoulders rested the responsibilities of that big farm, sat at the head of the table. His tired figure sagged somewhat, but his tanned face shone from a vigorous scrubbing. Millie sat beside Mrs. Reist, for she was, as she expressed it, "Nobody's dog, to eat alone." She expected to eat with the folks where she hired.
And pie ain't good for him, neither, between meals." "I guess it won't hurt him," said Mrs. Reist; "the boy's growin' and he has just a lunch at noon, so he gets hungry till he walks in from the trolley. Boys like pie. His father was a great hand for pie." "Well," said the aunt decisively, "I would never spoiled children if I had any. But I had none." "Thank goodness!"
At the door of her home he bade her good-night and went off whistling, feeling only a slight unhappiness at her refusal to marry him. It was, he felt, but a temporary rebuff. She would capitulate some day. His consummate egotism buoyed his spirits and he went down the road dreaming of the day he'd marry Amanda Reist and of the wonderful gowns and jewels he would lavish upon her.
"I ain't had so much fun since Adam was a boy," Philip admitted with pretended seriousness, while the family smiled at his drollness. Apple-butter boiling on the Reist farm occurred frequently during August and September.
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