"It's Wutz I mean," she said. "Truly, I mind not a bit living as in one of those automobile-wagons, since it's with you, and only for a little while."
"I'll hire a crew of our neighbors to help with the barn tomorrow," Aaron said. "That done, you'll have but one pig to sleep with."
After grace, they sat on cases of tobacco to eat their meal from a table of feed sacks covered with oilcloth. "The man in the ship's little kitchen let me make and freeze pies, Stoltz," Martha said. "He said we'd have a deepfreeze big as all outdoors, without electric, so use it. Eat till it's all, Maan; there's more back."
Yonnie bumped against Aaron's eating-elbow. "No man and his wife have eaten in such a zoo since Noah and his wife left the ark," Aaron said. He cut a slice of Schnitz-pie and palmed it against the bull's big snout to be snuffled up. "He likes your cooking," he said.
"So wash his face," Martha told him.
Outside the tent there was a clatter of horse-iron on frozen ground. "What the die-hinker is that?" Aaron demanded. He stood and picked up the naphtha lantern.
Outside, Aaron saw a tall black stranger, astride a horse as pale as the little Murnan moons that lighted him. "Rankeshi dade!" the visitor bellowed.
"May your life be a long one!" Aaron Stoltzfoos repeated in Hausa. Observing that his caller was brandishing a clenched fist, the Amishman observed the same ambiguous courtesy. "If you will enter, O Welcome Stranger, my house will be honored."
"Mother bless thee, Bearded One," the Murnan said. He dismounted, tossing his reins to one of the four retainers who remained on horseback. He entered the tent after Aaron; and stared about him at the animals, letting his dark eyes flick across Martha's unveiled face. At the Amishman's invitation, the visitor sat himself on a tobacco case, revealing as he crossed his legs elaborately embroidered trousers and boot tops worked with designs that would dazzle a Texan. Martha bustled about hiding the remains of their meal.