"I want to do everything I can to make up for the past," explained David. "I can't make it right entirely. I wish I could."
To Essie the balancing of accounts always appealed.
"That is right," said she.
"But there is Alvin's father," David went on. "We cannot leave him where he is if he can be persuaded to come away. He doesn't understand yet that we have discovered that he was not guilty, but we hope he may."
Essie answered without pause. Essie had as clear an idea of her own duty as she had of other people's—a rather uncommon quality.
"We will take him home to us," said she.
When the interview was over, David went with the squire to partake of Bevy's dinner. The squire and his two companions had not been unobserved in their progress through Millerstown. Sarah Ann Mohr, on her way to David's house with a loaf of fresh bread and a Schwenkfelder cake and two pies and a mess of fresh peas from her garden and with great curiosity in her kindly heart about David's future movements, saw the three, and stood still in her tracks and cried out, "Bei meiner Sex!" which meaningless exclamation well expressed the confusion of her mind. When they vanished into Essie's kitchen, she cried out, "What in the world!"—and, basket in hand, plates rattling, instant destruction threatening her pies, she flew back to the house of Susannah Kuhns. Susannah hurried to the house of Sarah Knerr, and together all sought Bevy, as the only woman connected with any of the three men. Other Millerstonians saw them assembled and the conference grew in numbers.
"The squire and David and Alvin Koehler together at the Mennonite's!" cried Susannah.
"Perhaps he is to marry her and Alvin," suggested a voice at the edge of the crowd.
"David used to sit with her, too, sometimes," Sarah Knerr reminded the others. "Perhaps there is trouble and it will give a court hearing."