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delicately as a bird. “Jacob, elbows,” she said. “And Joshua, quit yapping like a magpie. Close your mouth and eat.” Ellie put down her fork a mere minute after she had picked it up and gazed over everyone at the table. “Next Sunday, gmay will be at our house for the first time since your father and I married. Everything must be perfect. We are doing extra cleaning to prepare. Seth, you will have to spend less time with your horses until then. This place is to be scrubbed from floor to ceiling.”
    Dat smiled at his new wife. “Ellie, you keep this house spic-and-span. Since we married, I have not seen so much as a crumb on the floor.”
    Ellie lifted her eyebrows. “I should say not. My standards are very high. Gmay at Rosie Neuenschwander’s was a disgrace. She may be the minister’s wife, but that is no excuse for the rust ring in her sink.” She picked up her fork and shook it in Laura’s direction. “There won’t be so much as a smudgy fingerprint in this house come Sunday.”
    Laura kicked Seth under the table then grinned at him. He skewered a piece of chicken with his fork and kept right on eating.
    “We will be packed to the rafters as it is,” Ellie said. “Thirty-three families and four widows. Our district is big enough to be divided in half, but it seems the men aren’t interested because they don’t have the hassle of preparing food and trying to squirm their way through a crowd to get one hundred and eighty-three people fed. When the room gets stuffy, the men open the windows and the women and children sit there shivering.”
    “We could bring the extension on the back yet,” Dat said.
    “And put people on the grass, Abbie? Not at my gmay.”
    Ellie took a bite and chewed slowly while Seth enjoyed the silence.
    “Laura,” Ellie said, “you will need to scrub ceilings and walls. With Pine-Sol. Orange-scented.”
    “I will be happy to help redd up,” Laura said. “My last AP test is on Thursday, and then I am all yours.”
    Ellie pursed her lips. “Fine. If you are too important to take time out to help me, then I am too busy to fix your meals. Don’t expect to eat anything in this house until Thursday. Your dat doesn’t seem to care if you jump the fence, but I won’t be a willing party to it. Either pull your weight, or go hungry. It’s your choice.”
    Dat ate his sweet potatoes with a serene look on his face, as if Ellie were discussing the minister’s latest sermon. Seth hadn’t expected anything different. To Dat, a problem didn’t exist if he ignored it.
    Seth silently debated with himself. Should he protest Ellie’s plan to starve Laura, or let it go? Ellie meant what she said. If Laura didn’t lend a hand because she needed to study, Ellie would see that she didn’t put a crumb of food in his sister’s mouth.
    Laura wouldn’t actually starve. She could eat breakfast and lunch at school and go to her Englisch friend Britny’s for supper. Seth could even pick something up from the grocery store and Laura could eat in his stable.
    But if Seth stayed quiet, would Ellie think she could get away with bullying his siblings? And if he said something, would Ellie dig in her heels and insist that Laura starve all summer until she left for college?
    “I will help extra if you let Laura eat,” he finally said, hoping Ellie would recognize how ridiculous her ultimatum sounded. “I am tall. I can scrub the ceilings without a ladder. Laura needs all her strength to take those tests. If she passes, she gets college credit. Saves a lot of money.”
    “What do I care about that? It is not my money,” Ellie said.
    “But it might be mine,” Seth said slowly, letting the meaning of his words sink in.
    Ellie had never cared to know anything of Laura’s college plans, had almost considered it a sin to talk of them, but Seth and Laura had been able to work out the financial details with the help of Laura’s counselor at school. With a good job, a scholarship, and something