The jeering of crows in the tree outside her window roused Susie from her slumber. Stretching, she rose to read from Rules of a Godly Life, an early eighteenth-century book used by the People to guide them along the right path. She liked to read it first thing in the morning, before her day began. And since she was awake, she might as well make use of the extra time.

Reaching for her brush, Susie began to work through her hair as she read. When her tresses were completely smoothed, she wound them into a low bun near the nape of her neck and secured it by feel with bobby pins.

Then, going to the narrow closet in the alcove of her room, she ran her fingers over the sleeves of her two best blue dresses, one darker than the other. A glance out the nearby window revealed Britta heading to the stable to water their two road horses and the pony and to milk the goats. The sun already shone bright, and Susie remembered what Mamma had read in yesterday’s newspaper about the mild springlike forecast for today.

So Susie chose the pale blue dress and removed a black apron from the hanger to wear over it, but only till after breakfast. Before leaving for church, she would don her crisp white organdy apron, making sure she looked neat and tidy. She had spilled a time or two at breakfast and didn’t want to risk doing that again. Besides, wearing her best and cleanest clothing to Preaching was an act of reverence to God.

When they arrived at David Beiler’s for the Preaching service, Susie hurried around the buggy to help Mamma step down from the left side while one of the teenage boy attendants kept the horse still. Then Britta climbed out of the second seat.

Two of David and Mattie’s teen granddaughters—Amanda and Rose Hannah—were standing together near the back porch, talking quietly and sometimes greeting people as families strode by. They waved to Samuel and Rebecca Lapp and smiled shyly at Bishop John Beiler’s handsome grandsons, identical twins Michael and Jonas. But it was the girls’ reaction to the sight of Obie Yoder and his family coming up the walkway that caught Susie’s attention. She didn’t feel jealous; it wasn’t that. Rather, it was the sudden and plain reality that she wished Obie would talk to her, tell her what she hoped he’d almost said on her birthday.

Susie walked with Mamma across the backyard and around to the separate entrance for the womenfolk, to Mamma’s spot in line with the older women. Then Susie headed toward the end of the line, past many of her older cousins, including Naomi Flaud, who cradled her infant daughter, and took her place behind tall, slender Cousin Laura Ann Mast, also twenty-two.