Anna's Gift Read Free Page B

idea where to find them.
    The first thing he needed to do, before he went looking for the supplies, was to take his shoes off so he didn’t track paint through the house. Setting the ladder upright, he sat down on the lower rung and began to unlace his brogans.
    Samuel wondered if he’d gone about this all wrong. The custom was for the suitor to ask a go-between to talk to the girl’s family before a proposal of marriage was formally offered. But with Anna’s father dead and not a single brother, that left Hannah as the sole parent. Samuel supposed he could have approached Anna’s uncle by marriage, Reuben Coblentz, but that would have involved Reuben’s wife, Martha. Reuben didn’t scratch until Martha told him where he itched. Plus, Hannah and Martha didn’t always see eye to eye, and Hannah had made it clear that she didn’t care for her late husband’s sister interfering in her personal family matters.
    That left speaking directly to Hannah before he approached Anna, but he’d decided against that because he was afraid that Hannah might have misconstrued his previous regular visits to the Yoder farm. There wasn’t any doubt in Samuel’s mind that most of the community thought that he was courting Hannah, or at least testing the waters. It could well be that Hannah thought so, too, and he didn’t want to make matters worse by embarrassing her, maybe even hurting her feelings. Samuel liked Hannah, and he always enjoyed her company, but there was no comparing the warm friendship that he felt for her to his keen attraction to Anna.
    What Samuel and his late wife, Frieda, had had was a comfortable marriage, but his father and her family had arranged the match. Samuel had been willing because itseemed such a sensible arrangement. He thought Frieda would make a good wife, and he’d always been reluctant to go against his father’s wishes.
    He’d been just nineteen to Frieda’s twenty-three when they wed. Everyone said that it was a good match, and he could remember the excitement of their wedding day. Neither of them had expected romance, but they’d come to respect and care for each other, and they both adored the children the Lord sent them.
    When Frieda’s heart had failed and he’d lost her, he’d genuinely mourned her passing. But Frieda had been gone a long time, so long that he sometimes had trouble remembering her face. And he was lonely, not just for a helpmate, not just for a mother for his children, but for someone with whom he could open his heart.
    If he was honest with himself, Samuel reckoned he’d been attracted to Anna for at least two years. Just seeing her across a room gave him a breathless, shivery thrill that he’d never experienced before. Oh, he wasn’t blind. He knew what the other young men in the community thought about Anna. She wasn’t small or trim, and she didn’t have delicate features. Some fellows went so far as to make fun of her size. Not where Anna could hear, of course, or him either. He would have never stood by and allowed such a fine woman to be insulted by foolish boys who couldn’t see how special she was.
    In his heart, Samuel had always admired strong women. Other than Frieda, who’d been the exception, every girl he’d ever driven home from a singing or a young people’s gathering had been sturdy. His mother, his sisters and his aunts were all good cooks and mothers, and all of formidable size. Like Anna, they all had the gift of hospitality, of making people feel welcome in their homes. And regardless of what anyone else thought,he appreciated Anna Yoder for who she was. “Big women have big hearts,” his father always said, and Samuel agreed.
    For longer than he wanted to admit, Samuel had been watching Anna and trying to convince himself that it was just his loneliness. After all, how fair was it for a man with five children and the responsibility of a