salt and pepper.” Amelia bounced up and down so hard that the lunchbox fell out of her hands.
Caleb stooped to pick it up.
“Ooh!” Amelia cried.
“It’s all right,” he assured her. “Nothing broken.” He followed Rebecca and a chattering Amelia into the lunchroom. He didn’t know what else to do. And as he did, he noticed that under her raincoat, Amelia looked surprisingly neat. Her face was so clean it was shiny and her hair was plaited into two tiny braids that peeked out from under an ironed kapp. Even the hem of her blue dress that showed under her slicker was pressed.
“What...what did you two do this morning?” he asked Amelia.
“We cleaned, Dat. And cooked. And I helped.” She nodded. “I did.”
No tears, no whining, no fussing. Amelia looked perfectly content.... More than content. He realized that she looked happy. He should have been pleased—he was pleased—but there was something unsettling about this young Yoder woman.
Rebecca stopped and glanced back over her shoulder at him. Her face was smooth and expressionless, but a dimple and the sparkle in her blue eyes made him suspect that she was finding this amusing. “Do you approve?”
“Wait until I see what my kitchen looks like,” he answered gruffly.
Amelia giggled. “I told you, Dat. We cleaned.”
Rebecca’s right eyebrow raised and her lips quivered with suppressed laughter. “A week’s trial,” she reminded him. “That’s all I agreed to. By then I should know if I want to work for you.”
On Friday, Caleb left work a half hour early and started home. He’d finished the ornate Victorian oak bracket that he’d been fashioning all afternoon, and he didn’t want to begin a new piece so late in the day. Three years ago, he’d switched from building custom kitchen cabinets to the handcrafted corbels, finials and other architectural items that he sold to a restoration supply company in Boise. Englishers who fixed up old houses all over the country spent an exorbitant amount of money to replicate original wooden details. Not that Caleb wasn’t glad for the business, but he guessed his thrifty Swiss ancestors would be shocked at the expense of fancy things when plain would do.
He rarely left his workbench before five, but he was still uneasy leaving Amelia with the Yoder girl. Better to arrive early and check up on them. So far, Rebecca Yoder seemed capable, and he had to admit that his daughter liked her, but time would tell. Amelia sometimes went days without getting into real mischief. And then, it was Gertie, bar the door—meaning that his sweet little girl could stir up some real trouble.
The walk home from the shop took only a few minutes, but his new workshop was far enough from his house to be respectable. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been fitting for him to have an unmarried girl housekeeping and watching his daughter for him. He left in the morning when Rebecca arrived and she went home in the late afternoon when he returned from work. The schedule was working out nicely, and as much as he hated to admit it, it was nice to know that someone would be there in the house when he arrived home. A house could get lonely with just a man and his little girl.
When Caleb arrived home, Rebecca’s pony was pastured beside his driving horse, and the two-wheeled, open buggy that she’d ridden in this morning was waiting by the shed. A basket of green cooking apples, three small pumpkins and a woman’s sewing box filled the storage space at the rear of the buggy. As he crossed the yard toward the house, Caleb noticed that one of the kitchen windows stood open. Wonderful smells drifted out, becoming stronger as he let himself in through the back door into an enclosed porch that served as a laundry and utility room.
Fritzy greeted him, stump of a tail wagging, and Caleb paused to scratch the dog behind his ears. “I’m home,” he called. And then, to Fritzy, he murmured in Deitsch, “Good boy, good old Fritzy.”
Amelia’s delighted squeal rang out, and Caleb grinned, pleased that she was so happy to see him. But when he stepped into the kitchen, he discovered that his daughter’s attention was riveted on an aluminum colander hanging on the back of a chair.
“Again!” Amelia cried. “Let me try again!”
“Ne,” Rebecca said. “My turn now. You have to wait until it’s your turn.”
“One!” Amelia yelled.
Caleb watched, bewildered, as an object flew through the air to land in the colander.
“Two!” Into the colander.
“Three!”
A third one bounced off the back of the chair and slid across the floor to rest at his feet.
“You missed!” Amelia crowed. “My turn!”
“Vas ist das?” Caleb demanded, picking up what appeared to be a patchwork orange beanbag. “What’s going on?”
“Dat!” Amelia whirled around, flung herself across the room and leaped into his arms. “We’re playing a throwing game,” she exclaimed, somehow extracting the cloth beanbag from his hand and nearly whacking him in the eye with it as she climbed up to lock her arms around his neck. “At Fifer’s Orchard they had games and a straw maid and—”
“A maze,” Rebecca corrected. “A straw bale maze.”
“And a train,” Amelia shouted. “A little one. For kinder to ride on. And a pumpkin patch. You get on a wagon and a tractor pulls you—”
Caleb’s brow creased in a frown. “A train? You let Amelia ride on a toy train like the Englisher children?” His gaze fell on a large orange lollipop propped on the table. The candy was shaped like a pumpkin on a stick, wrapped in clear paper and tied with a ribbon. “And you bought her English sweets?” Caleb extricated himself from Amelia’s stranglehold, unwound her arms and lowered her gently to the floor. “Do you think that was wise?” he asked, picking up the lollipop and turning it over to frown at the jack-o’-lantern face painted on the back. “These things are not for Amish children.”
“Ya, so I explained to her and I’d explain to you if you’d let me speak,” Rebecca said, a saucy tone to her voice. “We weren’t the only Amish there. And it was Bishop Atlee’s wife who bought the lollipop for her. I could hardly take it back and offend the woman. I told Amelia that she couldn’t have it unless you approved, and then only after her supper. I didn’t allow her to go into the Fall Festival area with the straw maze, the rides and the face painting. I told her that those things were fancy, not plain.”
“But...” he began.
Rebecca went on talking. “Amelia didn’t fuss when I told her no, and she helped me pick a basket of apples.” Rebecca flashed him a smile. “Three of those apples are baking with brown sugar in the oven. For after your evening meal or tomorrow’s breakfast.”
Caleb ran a finger under his collar. He could feel heat creeping up his throat and his cheeks were suddenly warm. Once again this red-haired Yoder girl was making him feel foolish in his own house. “So she didn’t ride the toy train?”
“A wagon, Dat.” Amelia tossed the orange beanbag into the air. “Rebecca said that we could...to pick pumpkins and apples.”
“To find the best ones,” Rebecca explained. “We had to go to the field, so we rode the tractor wagon. Otherwise we couldn’t have carried it all back.”
“Too heavy!” Amelia exclaimed, catching hold of his hand and tugging him toward the stove. “And we made a stew—in a pumpkin! For supper!” Amelia bounced and twirled, coming perilously near the stove. He caught her around the waist and scooped her up out of danger as she chattered on without a pause for breath. “I helped, Dat. Rebecca let me help.”
Caleb exhaled, definitely feeling