Christmas at Rose Hill Farm Read Online Free

days’ time, those two little rooms would be his and Bess’s new home. This task should have been done weeks ago but the holdup was Bess. She couldn’t decide what color to paint it—which struck him as odd, because their church didn’t offer much of a choice. Pale green or pale blue.
    Yesterday, Amos visited Bess at Rose Hill Farm and gently tried to press her to make a decision. She told him to just go ahead and choose, so he did, and he hoped she’d be happy with it. It was hard to tell with Bess. She was agreeable to everything he suggested, said she’d go along with either color he chose—but he didn’t want her to just go along with it. He wanted her to love it.
    His mind drifted back to church last Sunday, as the bishop announced they were to be published, and color drained from Bess’s face. He saw it happen, right before his very eyes, the way he’d read about in books. For a moment, he thought she mightfaint. He knew she felt anxious about being the center of attention, but was it typical for a girl to nearly lose consciousness?
    â€œPssst.”
    Amos twitched, thinking a fly was buzzing near him, though it was too cold for flies.
    â€œPssst. Over here.”
    He spun around and found Maggie Zook standing over by the community bulletin board on the wall, under the covered porch of the hardware store. “What are you doing?”
    She put a finger to her lips and shushed him, the way a teacher might. “Looking for new job postings.”
    He walked over to her. “Why are you whispering?”
    â€œI didn’t want to broadcast to everyone in Stoney Ridge that I’m looking for a job.”
    Amos squinted in confusion. “How are you going to find a job if you don’t want anyone to know you’re looking?”
    She glanced up and down the road. “Maybe not everyone. Maybe just my father.”
    â€œAh.” Maggie’s father was Caleb Zook, the bishop. “I don’t want to know why.” Amos wasn’t sure if it might be a church issue, or a father-daughter issue—but either way, he wanted none of it. As soon as he said it, he felt a tug of regret. Her small face grew troubled. Gentling his tone, he added, “I’m sure you’ve got a good reason.”
    Maggie followed on his heels as he went in the store to look at rows of paint chips. “There’s a job opening here at the hardware store. I thought you might put in a good word for me.”
    Oh no. Heat climbed up Amos’s neck. He wasn’t going to get roped into this again. The last time he helped Maggie get a job, she lasted less than a day. After she begged him, he acquiesced and recommended her to the owner of the Hay & Grain. She forgot to latch the cage filled with live mice—the owner kept apet snake—and during the night the mice escaped. Months later, the Hay & Grain was still overrun with mice. An infestation, the owner said. Maggie claimed it was an accident, that it could have happened to anyone, but Amos had a suspicion that her humanitarian streak beat out her practical streak. Knowing her like he did, he figured that she wanted to give the mice a fighting chance to survive. She hated snakes, Maggie did.
    Worse still, the owner felt Amos was partially responsible and no longer gave him a discount on bulk purchases.
    And the hardware store—well, now, this was his special place. His home away from home. He enjoyed spending Saturday afternoons wandering the aisles, tinkering with gadgets. If he helped Maggie get a job here and she did something disastrous, which was very, very likely, he would be sunk.
    She was gazing up at him with that riot of tangles poking out under her black bonnet, with those big liquid brown eyes of hers, like he was quite possibly the most wonderful man on earth, and his gut twisted. His firm resolve started to weaken.
    Started . . . and then . . .
    He had a stroke of genius.