“Well, if need be, I’ll help ya hitch up next time.” She paused. “I mean it.”

“Are ya gonna drive us, too?” He laughed softly.

“I would, if ya didn’t mind.”

“I’d mind, all right.”

Now she was laughing.

“Goodness, you’re not like any girl I know,” he said, glancing at her in the soft, golden lantern light.

She shrugged, embarrassed. Had she overstated her caring, saying she’d hitch up for him . . . even drive his buggy? She remembered what Dat said on the way to Singing tonight, about putting the other person first in a relationship.

“So I guess our first official buggy date will have to wait,” Sol said, his eyes still on her. “But I’m mighty happy you wanna be my girl, Ellie . . . if you’re really sure. I want ya to know what you’re getting into.”

“I haven’t changed my mind.” She held his gaze there in the lantern light.

Sol nodded, seemingly relieved. “So next Singing, I want us to be out in my courtin’ buggy for all die Youngie to see.”

She felt so warm and contented hearing this.

“But if that Singing is held somewhere too far to walk home and my hand still isn’t healed enough,” Sol said, “we could skip goin’, and I could come down here to visit. How’d that be?”

“I wouldn’t mind that. We could walk in the orchard—where we first got to know each other.”

“Where God brought us together,” he said, leaning closer.

“True,” she whispered.

“By then, the moon’ll be out, hopefully . . . and lots brighter.”

“We don’t have to think too far ahead,” she replied. “Your hand could improve a lot in two weeks . . . and your hearing.” She recalled what Dawdi Hezekiah said about things taking time to heal.

“I knew you were real special when we first started talking,” he said. “The way you stopped to chat with the orchard crew . . . and the love ya have for Evan even though he’s gone against everything the People believe in. And Leah, too—you never said an unkind word about her when she up and left so suddenly.”

“You seemed to understand how hard that was for me . . . what I was feelin’.”

He was quiet for a time, the glider gradually slowing. “Seems to me like we’ve practically been a couple for a while already.”

She nodded. “We’ve had something big in common, each of us missin’ a sibling.”

Over the last year, Sol had expressed so many of the same things she’d been feeling and struggling with. And now, here they were talking like a pair who’d known each other for a long time—which, of course, they had.