A Ready-Made Amish Family. Jo Brown Ann

grabbed the boys’ glasses and kept them from falling over and spilling more milk on the table. The kinder tried to help, but ended up with more food on them and across the chairs. A plate fell off the table and clattered on the floor. It landed upside down, one corner of toast peeking out from beneath it.

      Silence settled on the kitchen as they stared at the mess. He heard a muffled sound and glanced at Clara. She was biting her lower lip to keep from laughing.

      “Now I understand how the kitchen could get messy in a single day,” she said. “Maybe I should have put the oilcloth on the floor instead of on the table.”

      Isaiah had to put his hand over his mouth to stifle his laugh. The kinder were smiling, but exchanging the uneasy looks he realized were their way of reminding each other not to laugh. He lost any desire to give into the humor of the situation. There was nothing funny when four little kids refused to let themselves act as kinder should.

      Who’d told them not to laugh? Once he found out, he was going to have that person explain to the twins he or she had made a big mistake. It was gut for them to laugh. They needed to express their happy emotions as well as their sad ones.

      But they aren’t showing those either. That thought unsettled him more. How could he have failed to notice? Caught up in the day-to-day struggle to balance taking care of them with his work at the forge, he’d been too focused on each passing minute to look at the bigger picture.

      Hanging his hat on the peg, he ran to the sink and grabbed the dishrag. He wet it, wrung it out and began pushing the puddles of syrup from the edge of the table. The cloth became a sticky mess within seconds. Tossing it into the sink, he grabbed the roll of paper towels.

      “Komm, and let’s get cleaned up.” Clara motioned for the kinder to follow her toward the bathroom.

      Placing paper towels over the puddle of milk and syrup, Isaiah started to dab it up.

      “Leave it,” Clara said. “We’ll clean it once there are a few less layers of syrup on us.”

      “Let me get started so no more hits the floor.”

      “Danki.” Her smile warmed him more than another cup of her delicious kaffi. Before he could smile back, she’d turned to the wide-eyed twins. “Pick up your plates and put them in the sink on your way to the bathroom. Don’t touch anything else!”

      The abashed kinder obeyed without a peep, astonishing Isaiah anew. They’d done as he asked, though not always as he’d hoped. And the results had often been another disaster on top of the one he was trying to get put to rights.

      Isaiah went to work cleaning the table and the floor while he listened to Clara helping the twins wash in the bathroom. Later, when the youngsters were in bed and couldn’t hear, he needed to ask her how she persuaded them to obey her.