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A big variety of genres offers in worldlibraryebook.com. Today we will discuss romance as one of the types books, which are very popular and interesting first of all for girls. They like to dream about their romantic future rendezvous, about kisses under the stars and many flowers. Girls are gentle, soft and sweet. In their minds everything is perfect. The ocean, white sand, burning sun
.He and she are enjoying each other.
Nowadays we are so lacking in love and romantic deeds. This electronic library will fill our needs with books by different authors.


What is Romance?


Reading books RomanceReading books romantic stories you will plunge into the world of feelings and love. Most of the time the story ends happily. Very interesting and informative to read books historical romance novels to feel the atmosphere of that time.
In this genre the characters can be both real historical figures and the author's imagination. Thanks to such historical romantic novels, you can see another era through the eyes of eyewitnesses.
Critics will say that romance is too predictable. That if you know how it ends, there’s no point in reading it. Sorry, but no. It’s okay to choose between genres to get what you need from your books. But in romance the happy ending is a feature.It’s so romantic to describe the scene when you have found your True Love like in “fairytale love story.”




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Read books online » Romance » Amanda by Anna Balmer Myers (popular books to read TXT) 📖

Book online «Amanda by Anna Balmer Myers (popular books to read TXT) đŸ“–Â». Author Anna Balmer Myers



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two?” demanded Millie. “Bet you’re up to some tricks again, by the gigglin’ of you and the rutchin’ around you’re doin’! I just bet you’re up to something,” she grumbled, but her eyes twinkled.

“Nothin’ ails us,” declared Phil. “We just feel like laughin’.”

“Ach,” said Aunt Rebecca, “this dumb laughin’ is all for nothin’. Anyhow, you better not laugh too much, for you got to cry as much as you laugh before you die.”

“Then I’ll have to cry oceans!” Amanda admitted. “There’ll be another Niagara Falls, right here in Lancaster County, I’m thinkin’.”

“Ach,” said Millie, “that’s just another of them old superstitions.”

“Yes,” Aunt Rebecca said solemnly, “nobody believes them no more. But it’s a lot of truth in ‘em just the same. I often took notice that as high as the spiders build their webs in August so high will the snow be that winter. Nowadays people don’t study the almanac or look for signs. Young ones is by far too smart. The farmers plant their seeds any time now, beans and peas in the Posey Woman sign and then they wonder why they get only flowers ‘stead of peas and beans. They take up red beets in the wrong sign and wonder why the beets cook up stringy. The women make sauerkraut in Gallas week and wonder why it’s bitter. I could tell them what’s the matter! There’s more to them old women’s signs than most people know. I never yet heard a dog cry at night that I didn’t hear of some one I know dyin’ soon after. I wouldn’t open an umbrella in the house for ten dollars—it’s bad luck—yes, you laugh,” she said accusingly to Philip. “But you got lots to learn yet. My goodness, when I think of all I learned since I was as old as you! Of all the new things in the world! I guess till you’re as old as I am there’ll be lots more.”

“Sure Mike,” said the boy, rather flippantly. “What’s all new since you was little?” he asked his aunt.

“Telephone, them talkin’ machines, sewin’ machines—anyhow, they were mighty scarce then—trolleys–-”

“Automobiles?”

“My goodness, yes! Them awful things! They scare the life out abody. I don’t go in none and I don’t want no automobile hearse to haul me, neither. I’d be afraid it’d run off.”

“Great horn spoon, Aunt Rebecca, but that would be a gay ride,” the boy said, while Amanda giggled and Uncle Amos winked to Millie, who made a hurried trip to the stove for coffee.

“Ach,” came the aunt’s rebuke. “You talk too much of that slang stuff. I guess I’ll take the next trolley home,” she said, unconscious of the merriment she had caused. “I’d like to help with the dishes, but I want to get home before it gets so late for me. Anyhow, Amanda is big enough to help. When I was big as her I cooked and baked and worked like a woman. Why, when I was just a little thing, Mom’d tell me to go in the front room and pick the snipples off the floor and I’d get down and do it. Nobody does that now, neither. They run a sweeper over the carpets and wear ‘em out.”

“But the floors are full of germs,” said Amanda.

“Cherms—what are them?”

“Why, dreadful things! I learned about them at school. They are little, crawly bugs with a lot of legs, and if you eat them or breathe them in you’ll get scarlet fever or diphtheria.”

“Ach, that’s too dumb!” Aunt Rebecca was unimpressed. “I don’t believe in no such things.” With that emphatic remark she stalked to the sitting-room for her bonnet. She met Phil coming out, his hands in his pockets. He paused in the doorway as Amanda and her mother joined the guest.

Aunt Rebecca lifted the black silk bonnet carefully from the little table and Amanda shifted nervously from one foot to the other. If only Aunt Rebecca wouldn’t hold the bonnet so the worm would fall to the floor! Then the woman gave the stiff headgear a dexterous turn and the squirming thing landed on her head.

“My goodness! My goodness!” she cried as something soft brushed her cheek. Intently inquisitive, she stooped and picked from the floor a fat, green, wriggling tobacco worm.

“One of them cherms, I guess, Amanda, ain’t?” she said as she looked keenly at the child.

Amanda blushed and was silent. Philip was unable to hide his guilt. “Now, when did tobacco worms learn to live in bonnets?” she asked the boy as she eyed him reproachfully.

Mrs. Reist looked hurt. Her gentle reproof, “Children, I’m ashamed of you!” cut deeper with Amanda than the scolding of Aunt Rebecca—“You’re a bad pair! Almost you spoiled me my good bonnet. If I’d squeezed that worm on my cap it would have ruined it! My goodness, you both need a good spankin’, that’s what. Too bad you ain’t got a pop to learn you!”

“It was only for fun, Aunt Rebecca,” said Amanda, truly ashamed. But Phil put his hand over his mouth to hide a grin.

“Fun—what for fun is that—to be so disrespectful to an old aunt? And you, Philip, ain’t one bit ashamed. Your mom just ought to make you hunt all the worms in the whole tobacco patch. My goodness, look at that clock! Next with this dumb foolin’ I’ll miss that trolley yet. I must hurry myself now.”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Rebecca,” Amanda said softly, eager to make peace with the woman, whom she knew to be kind, though a bit severe.

“Ach, I don’t hold no spite. But I think it’s high time you learn to behave. Such a big girl like you ought to help her brother be good, not learn him tricks. Boys go to the bad soon enough. I’m goin’ now,” she addressed Mrs. Reist, “and you let me know when you boil apple butter and I’ll come and help stir.”

“All right, Rebecca. I hope the children will behave and not cut up like to-day. You are always so ready to help us—I can’t understand why they did such a thing. I’m ashamed.”

“Ach, it’s all right, long as my bonnet ain’t spoiled. If that had happened then there’d be a different kind o’ bird pipin’.”

After she left Philip proceeded to do a Comanche Indian dance—in which Amanda joined by being pulled around the room by her dress skirt—in undisguised hilarity over the departure of their grim relative. Boys have little understanding of the older person who suppresses their animal energy and skylarking happiness.

“I ain’t had so much fun since Adam was a boy,” Philip admitted with pretended seriousness, while the family smiled at his drollness.

CHAPTER II THE SNITZING PARTY

Apple-butter boiling on the Reist farm occurred frequently during August and September. The choice fruit of the orchard was sold at Lancaster market, but bushels of smaller, imperfect apples lay scattered about the ground, and these were salvaged for the fragrant and luscious apple butter. To Phil and Amanda fell the task of gathering the fruit from the grass, washing them in big wooden tubs near the pump and placing them in bags. Then Uncle Amos hauled the apples to the cider press, where they came forth like liquid amber that dripped into fat brown barrels.

Many pecks of pared fruit were required for the apple-butter boiling. These were pared—the Pennsylvania Dutch say snitzed—the night before the day of boiling.

“Mom,” Amanda told her mother as they ate supper one night when many apples were to be pared for the next day’s use, “Lyman Mertzheimer seen us pick apples to-day and he said he’s comin’ over to-night to the snitzin’ party—d’you care?”

“No. Let him come.”

“So,” teased Uncle Amos. “Guess in a few years, Manda, you’ll be havin’ beaus. This Lyman Mertzheimer, now,—his pop’s the richest farmer round here and Lyman’s the only child. He’d be a good catch, mebbe.”

“Ach,” Amanda said in her quick way, “I ain’t thinkin’ of such things. Anyhow, I don’t like Lyman so good. He’s all the time braggin’ about his pop’s money and how much his mom pays for things, and at school he don’t play fair at recess. Sometimes, too, he cheats in school when we have a spellin’ match Friday afternoons. Then he traps head and thinks he’s smart.”

Uncle Amos nodded his head. “Chip o’ the old block.”

“Now, look here,” chided Millie, “ain’t you ashamed, Amos, to put such notions in a little girl’s head, about beaus and such things?”

The man chuckled. “What’s born in heads don’t need to be put in.”

Amanda wondered what he meant, but her mother and Millie laughed.

“Women’s women,” he added knowingly. “Some wakes up sooner than others, that’s all! Millie, when you goin’ to get you a man? You’re gettin’ along now—just about my age, so I know—abody that cooks like you do—

“

 

“Amos, you just keep quiet! I ain’t lookin’ for a man. I got a home, and if I want something to growl at me I’ll go pull the dog’s tail.”

That evening the kitchen of the Reist farmhouse was a busy place. Baskets of apples stood on the floor. On the table were huge earthen dishes ready for the pared fruit. Equipped with a paring knife and a tin pie-plate for parings every member of the household drew near the table and began snitzing. There was much merry conversation, some in quaint Pennsylvania Dutch, then again in English tinged with the distinctive accent. There was also much laughter as Uncle Amos vied with Millie for the honor of making the thinnest parings.

“Here comes Lyman. Make place for him,” cried Amanda as a boy of fifteen came to the kitchen door.

“You can’t come in here unless you work,” challenged Uncle Amos.

“I can do that,” said the boy, though he seemed none too eager to take the knife and plate Mrs. Reist offered him.

“You dare sit beside me,” Amanda offered.

Lyman smiled his appreciation of the honor, but the girl’s eyes twinkled as she added, “so I can watch that you make thin peelin’s.”

“That’s it,” said Uncle Amos. “Boys, listen! Mostly always when a woman’s kind to you there’s something back of it.”

“Ach, Amos, you’re soured,” said Millie.

“No, not me,” he declared. “I know there’s still a few good women in the world. Ach, yea,” he sighed deeply and looked the incarnation of misery, “soon I’ll have three to boss me, with Amanda here growin’ like a weed!”

“Don’t you know,” Mrs. Reist reminded him, “how Granny used to say that one good boss is better than six poor workers? You don’t appreciate us, Amos.”

“I give up.” Uncle Amos spread his hands in surrender. “I give up. When women start arguin’ where’s a man comin’ in at?”

“I wouldn’t give up,” spoke out Lyman. “A man ought to have the last word every time.”

“Ach, you don’t know women,” said Uncle Amos, chuckling.

“A man was made to be master,” the youth went on, evidently quoting some recent reading. “Woman is the weaker vessel.”

“Wait till you try to break one,” came Uncle Amos’s wise comment.

“I,” said Lyman proudly, “I could be master of any woman I marry! And I bet, I dare to bet my pop’s farm, that any girl I set out to get I can get, too. I’d just carry her off or something. ‘All’s fair in love and war.’”

“Them two’s the same thing, sonny, but you don’t know it yet,” laughed Uncle Amos. “It sounds mighty strong and brave to talk like you were a giant or king, or something, and I only hope I’m livin’ and here in Crow Hill so I can see how you work that game of carryin’ off the girl you like. I’d like to see it, I’d sure

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