With Phil and Martin Landis--and the ubiquitous Landis baby--she explored every field, woods and roadside in the Crow Hill section of the county. From association with her Phil and Martin had developed an equal interest in outdoors. The Landis boy often came running into the Reist yard calling for Amanda and exclaiming excitedly, “I found a bird’s nest! It’s an oriole this time, the dandiest thing way out on the end of a tiny twig. Come on see it!”
Amanda was the moving spirit of that little group of nature students. Phil and Martin might have never known an oriole from a thrush if she had not led them along the path of knowledge. Sometimes some of the intermediate Landis children joined the group. At times Lyman Mertzheimer sauntered along and invited himself, but his interest was feigned and his welcome was not always cordial.
“You Lyman Mertzheimer,” Amanda said to him one day, “if you want to go along to see birds’ nests you got to keep quiet! You think it’s smart to scare them off the nests. That poor thrasher, now, that you scared last week! You had her heart thumpin’ so her throat most burst. And her with her nest right down on the ground where we could watch the babies if we kept quiet. You’re awful mean!”
“Huh,” he answered, “what’s a bird! All this fuss about a dinky brown bird that can’t do anything but flop its wings and squeal when you go near it. It was fun to see her flop all around the ground.”
“Oh, you nasty mean thing, Lyman Mertzheimer"--for a moment Amanda found no words to express her contempt of him--"sometimes I just hate you!”
He went off laughing, flinging back the prediction, “But some day you’ll do the reverse, Amanda Reist.” He felt secure in the belief that he could win the love of any girl he chose if he exerted himself to do so.
The little country school of Crow Hill was necessarily limited in its curriculum, hence when Amanda expressed a desire to become a teacher it was decided to send her to the Normal School at Millersville. At that time she was sixteen and was grown into an attractive girl.
“I know I’m not beautiful,” she told her mother one day after a long, searching survey in the mirror. “My hair is too screaming red, but then it’s fluffy and I got a lot of it. Add to red hair a nose that’s a little pug and a mouth that’s a little too big and I guess the combination won’t produce any Cleopatra or any Titian beauty.”
“But you forgot the eyes,” her mother said tenderly. “They are pretty brown and look--ach, I can’t put it in fine words like you could, but I mean this: Your eyes are such honest eyes and always look so happy, like you could see through dark places and find the light and could look on wicked people and see the good in them and be glad about it. You keep that look in your eyes and no pretty girl will be lovelier that you are, Amanda.”
“Mother,” the girl cried after she had kissed the white-capped woman, “if my eyes shine it’s the faith and love you taught me that’s shining in them.”