Family Blessings. Anna Schmidt

at the moment. May I be of some help?”

      He seemed to consider this and then plunged in to tell her his story. “Perhaps your father mentioned that I intend to open an ice cream shop,” he explained. “I’ve also taken a position with the Sarasota Ice Company and bought the property next door.” He waited for her to speak and when she said nothing, he continued, “I might have use for some of his wares in my ice cream shop, and when I spoke with your father last night …”

      “You want to sell our baked goods right next door to us?” Pleasant’s polite smile faded. In many ways Pleasant was a far better business manager than Gunther Goodloe had ever been. Gunther tended to be softhearted when it came to delayed payments or supplies not delivered as promised. Pleasant had no such problems. And when it came to the prospect of a competitor moving in on them, she …

      The smile flashed again. “Actually, Frau Obermeier, I need cones for my ice cream and I was hoping that your father might help me concoct a recipe that would make my cones different from those of any potential competitors. But he assures me that you are the expert when it comes to baking.”

      “Ice cream cones,” she murmured, fully understanding his interest now. This was business. Well, it would certainly be a change from the basic breads and rolls she turned out day after day. “How many were you thinking of ordering?”

      Jeremiah laughed and the sound was like music in the otherwise subdued surroundings. Oh, he was a charmer, this one.

      “Why, Frau Obermeier, we are not talking of a single order here. Once we come upon the perfect recipe, I shall need a steady supply of them.”

      Pleasant saw Merle’s sister, Hilda, approaching the bakery. Her heavyset sister-in-law huffed her way up the three shallow steps that led from the street to the door and entered. “Pleasant,” she said, addressing Pleasant but looking at the stranger. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure. I am Mrs. Obermeier’s sister-in-law, Hilda Yoder.”

      “I am Jeremiah Troyer and I’m pleased to meet you, Frau Yoder. Your husband owns the dry goods store?”

      “Yes, that’s right.” In spite of the fact that Hilda often made a point of reminding others that pride was viewed as a sin by people of their Amish faith, she couldn’t help preening a bit to have her husband known.

      “I was coming to call on him next,” Jeremiah reported. “And since Herr Goodloe is not here at the moment, perhaps I should stop back later this afternoon.”

      “That might be best,” Hilda said before Pleasant could answer.

      Jeremiah put on his stiff-brimmed summer straw hat and tipped it slightly toward Hilda and then Pleasant. “Give my regards to your father, Frau Obermeier,” he said. “And please accept my deepest sympathies to both you ladies for the loss of your husband and brother,” he added before leaving the shop and heading across the way to Yoder’s Dry Goods.

      Pleasant did not realize how closely she was watching him until Hilda lightly touched her arm and cleared her throat. “What are those boys up to now?”

      Through the open front door Pleasant could see Merle’s five-year-old twins—Will and Henry—wrestling with each other in the dusty street. “They’ll spoil their clothes,” Hilda chided, but Pleasant only laughed.

      “Oh, they’re just playing, Hilda. Clothes can be washed, you know.”

      “Of course, you would think that,” Hilda replied stiffly, making it clear that in her view, Pleasant knew nothing about properly raising children—especially a pair of rambunctious five-year-olds. “It just seems to me with all you have to do at the bakery, you are certainly busy enough without adding extra loads of laundry to your chores.” She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “I understand that Gunther intends to do business with the bishop’s great-nephew and apparently it somehow involves you—some foolishness about needing you to make ice cream cones.”

      Before Pleasant could think of any appropriate response to her sister-in-law’s comment, Hilda had left the shop, carefully skirting her way around the boys as she returned to the dry goods store.

      “Boys, stop that,” Pleasant called to the twins who rolled to a sitting position and blinked innocently up at her.

      “Yes, Mama,” they chorused.

      Pleasant felt the familiar tug at her heart to hear any of Merle’s children call her “Mama” without even thinking about it. That triumph—especially with Rolf and Bettina, the older two—had required a good deal of patience on her part and she treasured each and every use of the title. Always shy and withdrawn, even somewhat sickly while their father was alive, the two older children had blossomed under Pleasant’s care. Rolf and Bettina never missed school and were often seen taking care of some chore or another around the large house. The twins—only toddlers when their mother died—had accepted her without question from the day she moved into the house.

      Her heart melted as it always did in the presence of the identical boys. “Come here,” she said, stooping down and holding out her arms to receive them. Giggling, they ran to her, colliding with her at the same moment so that they nearly knocked her off balance. “Look at the two of you,” she fussed as she tucked their shirts into matching homespun trousers and slicked down identical cowlicks with fingers she wet on her tongue. “Now please try to stay clean,” she pleaded as they scampered away.

      It was at times like these that thoughts of Merle sprang to mind unbidden. He had had such a difficult youth as he often reminded her when he thought she was being too soft with the children. His own father had shamed the family by running away with his wife’s sister when Merle was only a little older than Rolf was now. Merle had been forced to leave school and take a job in addition to managing the small family farm in order to support his mother and siblings. Knowing his painful past made the fact that Merle would never see how well his own children had turned out all the more poignant. And yet, she realized, that in the year she had been married to him, never had she witnessed a moment of such unconcealed love between Merle and any of his children as she had just enjoyed with the twins. Merle Obermeier had been a bitter man and in a year of marriage she had made little progress toward softening his ways.

      She was about to close the shop’s front door to prevent the dust from the street from blowing in when she saw Jeremiah Troyer exit the dry goods store and wave to her. She waited until he was in front of the bakery and then asked, “Did you need something more, Herr Troyer?”

      “I came back to give you this,” Jeremiah said, his tone easy and calm as he held out a folded piece of paper to Pleasant. “It’s one of the recipes used by someone I knew back in Ohio. I’d like to consider something similar to this for the cones,” he told her. “It’s important to set one’s product apart from that of the competition.”

      “You had an ice cream business in Ohio then?” she asked as she stepped onto the front stoop and accepted the recipe.

      “Not exactly. You see, Frau Obermeier, as a boy I was ill with rheumatic fever, and my uncle—my father’s eldest brother—thought it best that I take a job in town since I was too weak to work in the fields. The only person hiring was Peter Osgood, the pharmacist. He bought the cream and eggs for making the ice cream he served in the soda shop in the front of his drugstore from our farm. One day he mentioned that he was looking for a young man to help make the ice cream.” Jeremiah shrugged. “I was already making the delivery of eggs and cream. It stood to reason that I might as well stay to do the work, and so I was hired. I was there for ten years.”

      Pleasant fingered the rough thick paper he’d handed her for a moment. His childhood held some similarities to that of Merle’s thin and awkward eldest son, Rolf. “Mr. Osgood knows you have his recipes?”

      Jeremiah laughed. “I didn’t steal them. He handed them to me himself at the train station when he came to see me off and wish me well. In fact, you may have the opportunity to meet him one day. He’s promised to come for a visit.”

      “And