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steadied himself against a branch and watched her, wondering why it had taken his father’s lecture to stir him into action. For years he’d been going to all the young people’s frolics, flirting with this girl and that, when all the time he’d hardly noticed Ellen. He had seen her, of course, gone to church with her, worked on community projects with her, eaten at her father’s table and welcomed her to his own home. But he hadn’t thought of her in the way he suddenly did now, as a special woman whom he might want to make his wife. The thought warmed him and made him smile. “You don’t think I’m too young for you, do you?” he asked.
    “Nay,”
she said, taking her time to answer. “I suppose not. But it’s a new idea for me, that I marry a friend, rather than someone I was in love with.”
    Micah felt a rush of pleasure. “How do we know we won’t discover love for each other if we don’t give ourselves the chance?”
    Her dark eyes grew luminous. Her bobber jerked and then dove beneath the surface of the creek, but Ellen didn’t seem to notice the tension on her fishing pole. “You think that could happen?”
    He grinned. “I think that there’s a very good possibility that that’s
exactly
what might happen.”

Chapter Three
    T hey walked back to her lane just as twilight was falling over the farm fields. “
Danki
, Micah,” Ellen said. “The fishing was fun. I’d forgotten how much I liked it.”
    Her first moments alone with him, when they’d left the house, had been awkward. But then they’d fallen back into the easy rhythm of their younger days with none of the clumsiness of the situation that she’d feared. Being so comfortable with Micah made her wonder if maybe they could be happy together. What if Micah
was
whom God had intended for her all along?
    “You should take these,” he said, holding a string of three perch.
    “You caught two of them. Don’t you want to take them home to fry for breakfast?”
    He still held them out. “Three measly fish for the five of us? Not worth the trouble of cleaning and cooking them. No, you’d best take them.”
    “
Danki
for the fish, too, then.
Dat
loves fried fish for breakfast.”
    “You’re welcome. And you
are
going to think about walking out with me,” Micah reminded. “Right?” He stood there, fishing poles in hand, smiling at her and completely at ease.
    “
Jah
, I will.” She smiled at him. “God give you a restful sleep.”
    “And you, Ellen.” He used no courting endearments, but she liked the way he said her name, and she felt a warm glow inside as she savored it. She didn’t want to spoil the feeling and was afraid that he might linger, might want to sit with her on the porch or stay on after her parents had gone to bed. Instead, he bestowed a final grin and strode off whistling in the direction of his own home.
    Ellen walked slowly up the driveway and through her father’s barnyard, inhaling deep of the scent of her mother’s climbing roses and the honeysuckle that grew wild along the edge of the hedgerow. She drank in the peace of the coming night. Crickets and frogs called their familiar sounds, and evening shadows draped over the barnyard, easing her feelings of indecision. How wonderful life is, she thought. You expect each day to be like the one before, but the wonder of God’s grace was that you never really knew from one hour to another what would come next.
    A single propane lamp glowed through the kitchen window, but the house was quiet. Simeon, Neziah and the boys had left. The only sign of movement was a calico cat nursing kittens near the back door. But the light meant that her parents were still up. Her father was too fearful of fire to retire and leave a lamp burning. Ellen stepped inside, the string of fish dangling from her finger.
“Mam?”
she called softly.
“Dat?”
    “Out here.” Her father’s voice came from the front of the house.
    Their home was small as Amish homes went, but