Read Romance books for free


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.”




Read romance online


On our website you can read books romance online without registration. Every day spent some time to find your new favourite book in the coolest library. Tablets and smartphones are the most-used devices to read electronic books. Our website is very easy to use. No need for registration. Access around the clock.
Let your romantic story begin with our electronic library.

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



1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ... 36
Go to page:
her. Next week when we went to market and passed the store she was still in the window. Then one day Pop went to Lancaster alone and when he came home I asked if the doll was still there, and he said she wasn’t in the window. I cried, and was so disappointed and you said to Pop, ‘That’s a shame, Philip.’ And I thought, too, it was a shame he let somebody else buy that doll when I wanted it so. Then on Christmas morning—what do you think—I came down-stairs and ran for my presents, and there was that same big doll settin’ on the table in the room! Millie and you had dressed her in a blue dress. Course she wasn’t in the window when I asked Pop, for he had bought her! He laughed, and we all laughed, and we had the best Christmas. I sat on my little rocking-chair and rocked her, and then I’d sit her on the sofa and look at her—I was that proud of her.”

“That’s five, six years ago, Amanda.”

“Yes, I was little then. I mind a story about that little rockin’-chair, too, Mom. It’s up in the garret now; I’m too big for it. But when I first got it I thought it was wonderful fine. Once Katie Hiestand came here with her mom, and we were playin’ with our dolls and not thinkin’ of the chair, and then Katie saw it and sat in it. And right aways I wanted to set in it, too, and I made her get off. But you saw it and you told me I must not be selfish, but must be polite and let her set in it. My, I remember lots of things.”

“I’m glad, Amanda, if you remember such things, for I want you to grow up into a nice, good woman.”

“Like you and Millie, ain’t? I’m goin’ to. I ain’t forgot, neither, that once when I laughed at Katie for saying the Dutch word for calendar and gettin’ all her English mixed with Dutch, you told me it’s not nice to laugh at people. But I forgot it the other day, Mom, when we laughed at Aunt Rebecca and treated her mean. But she’s so cranky and—and–”

“And she helped sew on your dresses,” added the mother.

“Now that was ugly for us to act so! Why, ain’t it funny, Mom, it sounds so easy to say abody should be kind and yet sometimes it’s so hard to do it. When Aunt Rebecca comes next time I’m just goin’ to see once if I can’t be nice to her.”

“Of course you are. She’s comin’ to-morrow to help with the apple butter. But now you must go to sleep or you can’t get up early to see Millie put the cider on. Philip, he’s asleep this long while already.”

A few minutes later the child was in bed and called a last good-night to the mother, who stood in the hall, a little lighted lamp in her hand. Amanda had an eye for beauty and the picture of her mother pleased her.

“Ach, Mom,” she called, “just stand that way a little once, right there.”

“Why?”

“Ach, you look wonderful like a picture I saw once, in that gray dress and the lamp in your hand. It’s pretty.”

“Now, now,” chided the mother gently, “you go to sleep now. Good-night.”

“Good-night,” Amanda called after the retreating figure.

CHAPTER III BOILING APPLE BUTTER

Amanda rose early the next morning. Apple-butter boiling day was always a happy one for her. She liked to watch the fire under the big copper kettle, to help with the ceaseless stirring with a long-handled stirrer. She thrilled at the breathless moment when her mother tested the thick, dark contents of the kettle and announced, “It’s done.”

At dawn she went up the stairs with Uncle Amos to the big attic and opened and closed doors for him as he carried the heavy copper kettle down to the yard. Then she made the same trip with Millie and helped to carry from the attic heavy stone crocks in which to store the apple butter.

After breakfast she went out to the grassy spot in the rear of the garden where an iron tripod stood and began to gather shavings and paper in readiness for the fire. She watched Millie scour the great copper kettle until its interior shone, then it was lifted on the tripod, the cider poured into it, and the fire started. Logs were fed to the flames until a roaring fire was in blast. Several times Millie skimmed the foam from the cider.

“This is one time when signs don’t work,” the hired girl confided to the child. “Your Aunt Rebecca says that if you cook apple butter in the up-sign of the almanac it boils over easy, but it’s the down-sign to-day, and yet this cider boils up all the time.”

“I guess it’ll all burn in the bottom,” said Amanda, “if it’s the down-sign.”

“Not if you stir it good when the snitz are in. That’s the time the work begins. Here’s your mom and Philip.”

“Ach, Mom,”—Amanda ran to meet her mother—“this here’s awful much fun! I wish we’d boil apple butter every few days.”

“Just wait once,” said Millie, “till you’re a little bigger and want to go off to picnics or somewhere and got to stay home and help to stir apple butter. Then you’ll not like it so well. Why, Mrs. Hershey was tellin’ me last week how mad her girls get still if the apple butter’s got to be boiled in the hind part of the week when they want to be done and dressed and off to visit or to Lancaster instead of gettin’ their eyes full of smoke stirrin’ apple butter.”

Mrs. Reist laughed.

“But,” Amanda said with a tender glance at the hired girl, “I guess Hershey’s ain’t got no Millie like we to help.”

“Ach, pack off now with you,” Millie said, trying to frown. “I got to stop this spoilin’ you. You don’t think I’d stand in the hot sun and stir apple butter while you go off on a picnic or so when you’re big enough to help good?”

“But that’s just what you would do! I know you! Didn’t you spend almost your whole Christmas savin’ fund on me and Phil last year?”

“Ach, you talk too much! Let me be, now, I got to boil apple butter.”

Philip ran for several boxes and old chairs and put them under a spreading cherry tree. “We take turns stirrin’,” he explained, “so those that don’t stir can take it easy while they wait their turn. Jiminy Christmas, guess we’ll have a regular party to-day. All of us are in it, and Aunt Rebecca’s comin’, and Lyman Mertzheimer, and I guess Martin Landis, and mebbe some of the little Landis ones and the whole Crow Hill will be here. Here comes Millie with the snitz!”

The pared apples were put into the kettle, then the stirring commenced. A long wooden stirrer, with a handle ten feet long, was used, the big handle permitting the stirrer to stand a comfortable distance from the smoke and fire.

The boiling was well under way when Aunt Rebecca arrived.

“My goodness, Philip,” she began as soon as she neared the fire, “you just stir half! You must do it all around the bottom of the kettle or the butter’ll burn fast till it’s done. Here, let me do it once.” She took the handle from his hands and began to stir vigorously.

“Good!” cried the boy. “Now we can roast apples. Here, comes Lyman up the road, and Martin Landis and the baby. Now we’ll have some fun!” He pointed to the toad, where Martin Landis, a neighbor boy, drew near with his two-year-old brother on his arm.

“But you keep away from the fire,” ordered Aunt Rebecca.

The children ran off to the yard to greet the newcomers and soon came back joined by Lyman and Martin and the ubiquitous baby.

“I told you,” Lyman said with mocking smiles, “that Martin would have to bring the baby along.”

Martin Landis was fifteen, but hard work and much responsibility had added to him wisdom and understanding beyond his years. His frank, serious face could at times assume the look of a man of ripened experience. At Lyman’s words it burned scarlet. “Ach, go on,” he said quietly; “it’d do you good if you had a few to carry around; mebbe then you wouldn’t be such a dude.”

That brought the laugh at the expense of the other boy, who turned disdainfully away and walked to Aunt Rebecca with an offer to stir the apple butter.

“No, I’ll do it,” she said in a determined voice.

“Give me the baby,” said Mrs. Reist, “then you children can go play.” The little tot ran to her outstretched arms and was soon laughing at her soft whispers about young chickens to feed and ducks to see.

“Now,” Amanda cried happily, “since Mom keeps the baby we’ll roast corn and apples under the kettle.”

In spite of Aunt Rebecca’s protest, green corn and ripe apples were soon encased in thick layers of mud and poked upon the glowing bed under the kettle.

“Abody’d think none o’ you had breakfast,” she said sternly.

“Ach,” said Mrs. Reist, “these just taste better because they’re wrapped in mud. I used to do that at home when I was little.”

“Well, I never did. They’ll get burned yet with their foolin’ round the fire.”

Her prophecy came perilously close to fulfilment later in the day. Amanda, bending near the fire to turn a mud-coated apple, drew too close to the lurking flames. Her gingham dress was ready fuel for the fire. Suddenly a streak of flame leaped up the hem of it. Aunt Rebecca screamed. Lyman cried wildly, “Where’s some water?” But before Mrs. Reist could come to the rescue Martin Landis had caught the frightened child and thrown her flat into a dense bed of bean vines near by, smothering the flames.

Then he raised her gently. Much handling of his younger sisters and brothers had made him adept with frightened children.

“Come, Manda,” he said soothingly, “you’re not hurt. Just your dress is burned a little.”

“My hand—it’s burned, I guess,” she faltered.

Again force of habit swayed Martin. He bent over and kissed the few red marks on her fingers as he often kissed the bumped heads and scratched fingers of the little Landis children.

“Ach—” Amanda’s hand fluttered under the kiss.

Then a realization of what he had done came to the boy. “Why,” he stammered, “I didn’t mean—I guess I oughtn’t done that—I wasn’t thinking, Manda.”

“Ach, Martin, it’s all right. You didn’t hurt it none.” She misunderstood him. “See, it ain’t hurt bad at all. But, Martin, you scared me when you threw me in that bean patch! But it put the fire out. You’re smart to think of that so quick.”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Reist found her voice, and the color crept back to her cheeks again. “Martin, I can’t thank you enough.”

“Um,” Lyman said sneeringly, “now I suppose Martin’s a hero.”

“So he is!” said the little girl with decision. “He saved my life, and I ain’t forgettin’ it neither.” Then she sat down by her mother’s side and began to play with the baby.

“Well, guess the fun’s over,” said Lyman. “You went and spoiled it by catching fire.” He went off in sulky mood.

“My goodness,” exclaimed Aunt Rebecca, “mebbe now you’ll keep away from this fire once.”

Amanda kept away. The fun of the apple-butter boiling was ended for her. She sat quietly under the tree while Millie and Aunt Rebecca and Phil took turns at stirring. She watched passively while Millie poured pounds of sugar

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ... 36
Go to page:

Free ebook «Amanda by Anna Balmer Myers (popular books to read TXT) đŸ“–Â» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment