Sweet as Honey

Book 1: Honeybee Sisters

by Jennifer Beckstrand

Genres: Amish & Mennonite; Christian Romance; Religious & Inspirational

Synopsis

Though she has blossomed into a beauty, Lily Christner doesn't really believe it. Deep down, she still feels like a lonely, gawky teenager. Maybe that's why she's all but promised herself to Paul Glick, the one boy who never teased her in her awkward girlhood, unlike Dan Kanagy, whose creative name-calling left her in tears many a time. Now he's back in town after two years away, and being surprisingly sweet-making Lily unsettlingly yet deliciously nervous. It seems Dan wants Lily's forgiveness, and her heart. But can he convince her-not to mention her protective schwesters and aendi-that despite the past, her future lies with him?

Release date: July 1, 2016

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 326

Sample

Dan Kanagy stopped his open-air buggy in the middle of the deserted road and turned on his flashlight. Shining it along the roadside, he squinted into the darkness.

There it was. The sign that marked the turnoff to the lane he was looking for, a big, white board decorated with flowers in every variety of paint color imaginable. In bold, black letters it read: BEWARE THE HONEYBEES.

Dan had never been able to figure out if that warning referred to the large number of hives that dotted the Christners’ farm or if it referred to the Christners themselves. The community had nicknamed them the Honeybee Sisters a dozen years ago. The three Honeybee schwesters were pretty enough and smart enough to be intimidating, and they lived with their aunt, who was said to be slightly odd. At least that’s what Dan had been told. He’d never met the aunt, the aendi, but he knew the Honeybee schwesters well. He’d gone to primary school with all three of them.

The youngest, Rose, had seemed so delicate that Dan had feared she’d break if he looked at her the wrong way. Poppy Christner had punched him in the mouth on more than one occasion, and the eldest, Lily, was too wonderful for words, and entirely too wonderful for a plain, ordinary boy like Dan Kanagy.

Beware the Honeybees indeed.

Holding the reins with one hand and the flashlight in the other, Dan turned his horse, Clyde, down the long lane. It was a good thing he had his flashlight. At two o’clock in the morning under a new moon in late May, the darkness was profound. Clyde’s hooves clip-clopped over a small wooden bridge just wide enough for a buggy or a car to pass over. The light of his flashlight reflected off a pond of still water meandering under the bridge. Maybe pond was too generous. It looked more the size of a puddle.

Across the bridge, the lane curved to the right. A variety of tall and short bushes lined the lane to his right, some thick with leaves, others abloom with flowers. To his left, he could just make out a row of beehives, standing guard over the farm.

The line of bushes came to an abrupt stop as he got to the end of the lane. To his left, a small barn loomed above him. A house stood to his right fronted by a lawn full of dandelions and a wide flower bed bursting with blooms. Even by the light of his flashlight, they looked wonderful-gute. The bees probably thought they were wonderful-gute too.

Dan jumped out of his buggy and tiptoed up the path of flagstones that led to the house, not sure why he tried to be quiet. He was about to awaken the whole house. It couldn’t be helped, but he still felt bad about interrupting their sleep like this.

He walked up the porch steps, tapped lightly on the door, and listened. Nothing.

If he wanted anyone to wake up, he’d have to give up trying to be subtle. He rapped his knuckles five times against the sturdy wooden door. Holding his breath, he listened for signs of movement from within. After a few seconds, a faint light appeared behind the front window curtains. The door slowly creaked open, and Dan found himself nose to nose with the barrel of a shotgun.

He should have paid more heed to that sign.

Dan’s heart pounded like a two-deep team of horses as, still gripping his flashlight, he slowly lifted his hands above his head. Lord willing, he had a long life ahead of him and hadn’t quite figured out how he wanted to die, but getting shot in the head was not it.

The woman on the other end of the shotgun wore a neck-to-toe white nightgown and a seriously ferocious scowl on her lips. She had fashioned her salt-and-pepper hair into a braid that rested on her shoulder like a strange pet. Dan couldn’t begin to guess why he noticed her hair at a time like this, but it seemed to be tinged a light shade of blue. Lovely and odd at the same time.

This must be the aendi.

Dan had been warned she was strange, but a shotgun to the face was not quite what he had expected. He hoped “strange” didn’t mean “crazy wild woman apt to shoot unsuspecting boys who came to her house.”

The three Honeybee schwesters, all clad in baby-blue flannel nightgowns and matching braids, flanked their aunt on both sides. Lily, with that cute upturned nose and bright, intelligent eyes, held the lantern and frowned in Dan’s direction. Poppy folded her arms and scowled at him while Rose looked so terrified, Dan nearly felt compelled to gather her in his arms for a brotherly hug.

“Ha! We finally caught you,” said the aunt.

Lily drew her brows together. “It appears more like he turned himself in.”

The aunt motioned in his direction with the barrel of the gun. “What do you want? Come to confess?”

He certainly hoped her trigger finger wasn’t sweaty. “I mean no harm. I’ve come with a message for Lily.”

The aunt, Poppy, and Rose turned to Lily with wide eyes.

The shotgun seemed to droop slightly. “You must be Aunt Honeybee . . . I mean Lily’s aendi.”

“My name’s Bitsy. But you can call me Hyacinth, if you like.”

A laugh escaped Lily’s mouth before she pursed her lips together and resumed her determined frown.

Bitsy glanced sideways at Lily with a smile dancing in her eyes if not on her face. She lowered the shotgun halfway. “Don’t you like Hyacinth, Lily? It’s very British.”

“Hyacinth is awful fancy and takes too long to say. We like you as plain, sensible Aendi Bitsy.”

Bitsy scrunched her lips to one side of her face. “The curse of an Amish woman, always having to be plain and sensible.”

Dan lowered his hands slowly and carefully. “My name is Daniel Kanagy. We’ve never met, but your nieces and I went to school together. I’ve been away in Pennsylvania for two years, so maybe they don’t recognize me. I got back yesterday morning.”

“Did you forget where you live?” Bitsy asked.

Dan glanced at Lily. “You remember me, don’t you? I called you Amtrak in school.” Amtrak because she used to have these really cute braces that looked like railroad tracks across her teeth.

Bitsy scowled and raised an eyebrow and the shotgun. She looked at Lily. “Is he the one who . . . ?”

“Jah,” Lily mumbled, lowering her eyes. “He’s the one.”

Is he the one who what? The one who they were planning on murdering tonight?

Bitsy’s expression was not neighborly. “Do you want me to shoot him?”

Dan pasted a smile on his face as if he were in on the joke. The Amish were pacifists. Bitsy was teasing him.

Probably.

Lily sighed, reached out, and nudged the barrel of the shotgun so it pointed to the floor. “Nae, Aendi B. Don’t shoot him. We’ve both grown up since then.”

Grown up since when? Had he missed something important? And why in the world had he offered to be the one to fetch Lily Christner? Aunt Bitsy would never have pointed a gun at Dat.

Well, most likely not.

Bitsy rested the gun at her side and leaned on it like a cane. “So, what do you want at two in the morning, Daniel Kanagy? If you’re here to try your chances with one of the girls, you’ll have to come at normal hours like the rest of the boys.”

In the excitement and sheer terror of having a gun pointed at him, Dan had almost forgotten what he’d come for. “It’s about my mammi.”

Lily gasped and put a hand to her mouth. “Is she okay?”

“She’s taken a turn for the worse. It won’t be long now, maybe before morning. She really wants to see you before she goes.”

“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Bitsy scolded.

“Well, because . . .” he stammered, “there was a shotgun pointed at my face.”

Bitsy harrumphed. “There was no need to panic about it.”

Dan nodded, trying to be agreeable. He and Bitsy obviously didn’t see eye to eye about that. “I’m here to take Lily to Mammi’s house if she wants to go. The whole family is gathered to say good-bye.”

Lily handed the lantern to Poppy. “Of course I want to go. Give me a few minutes to get dressed.”

She disappeared up the stairs while the other three continued to stare at him. Did he look that frightening? He only had a day’s growth of whiskers on his chin.

Rose finally broke the uncomfortable silence. “Why don’t you come in and sit at the table while you wait?”

Bitsy nodded almost imperceptibly, propped her gun against the wall, and stepped back so Dan could enter.

He stepped into the house as if it might explode—as if someone might start shooting at him if his boots were muddy.

The main floor of the house looked to be mostly one big room. An ample kitchen with a large butcher-block island stood to his left, a sitting room with a fireplace, two sofas, and two overstuffed chairs to his right. A heavy wooden table, large enough to seat a dozen comfortably, sat right in front of him.

The honey-colored wood floor had seen some use. It shone like it had just been polished, but scuff marks and scratches marred the entire surface. And had someone taken a swing at one of the floorboards with an ax?

Dan pulled a chair from the table and sat, never taking his eyes from Bitsy’s face. He wanted to be ready in case she pulled a knife on him.

Rose took a coffeepot from the cupboard. “I’ll make you a cup of kaffee.”

“Jah, okay, denki,” he said. Even though he’d already had two cups before coming, he instinctively knew it would be best to agree with everything and not give Bitsy an excuse to pull out a peashooter.

Bitsy and Poppy folded their arms and stood over him, like two giant maples guarding the forest. “Hold out your hands,” Bitsy said.

Dan tried to act as if he saw nothing amiss with this request. “I . . . I . . . what did you say?”

“Do you have any bee stings?”

Dan held his arms out straight while Bitsy and Poppy examined them. He pushed his short sleeves above his shoulders, just in case they wanted to be thorough.

Bitsy nodded. “You have the muscles of a hard worker.”

A grin pulled at his lips as he lifted his trousers legs. Might as well let them inspect up to his knees and be satisfied. Satisfied with what, he hadn’t a clue.

This night was getting stranger and stranger by the minute.

Poppy turned her face away when he exposed his legs, but Bitsy chuckled and took a good look. “You have a sense of humor, Daniel. I’ll give you that.”

He gave her a self-deprecating smile.

She gave him a self-satisfied one. “You’re clean, but I still need to know where you were last Monday evening?”

Rose brought a steaming mug of kaffee and a slice of some sort of cake to the table. “Bee Sting Cake,” she said, setting the plate in front of him. “Lily made it.”

The two-layered cake was golden brown with what must have been a whole tree of slivered almonds on top. It looked irresistible. The Honeybee Schwesters were well-known for their baking skills.

“We shouldn’t accuse him, Aunt Bitsy,” Rose said. “He’s a guest in our home.”

“I got back from Pennsylvania yesterday,” Dan said. “I’ve been there for almost two years.”

Poppy frowned and slid her arm around Bitsy’s waist. “He didn’t do it, B.”

Bitsy slumped her shoulders. “I know. But it would be very convenient if he were that easy to catch.”

Bitsy and Poppy each slid a chair from the table and sat down. Rose sidled into the chair farthest from Dan. He drank a sip of kaffee and took a bite of cake. It melted in his mouth and almost made up for all of the uncomfortable staring.

Almost. Three pairs of eyes bored into his skull. He supposed it was only to be expected. He was a relative stranger sitting in their kitchen in the middle of the night trying not to drown in the kaffee Rose had graciously brewed for him.

Rose spoke as if she hoped no one heard her. She’d been timid like that in school. “We’re sorry for unjustly accusing you. Aren’t we, Aendi Bitsy?”

“Unjustly accusing me of what?” Dan asked, guessing that the apology had something to do with the inspection of his arms.

Bitsy squared her shoulders. “You’re right, Rosie. I shouldn’t have been so hostile. He’s still out of my good graces, but I’m sorry for thinking he could be low enough to hurt our bees.”

Why was he out of Bitsy’s good graces? They’d only just met.

Poppy glanced at Dan. “Last Monday night, someone tipped over one of our hives.”

“Are the bees okay?” Dan said.

Bitsy pressed her lips into a hard line. “We think so. One of the supers is cracked and we lost some brood, but the queen is alive and the bees are still foraging.”

“We figure whoever did it must have gotten stung at least a dozen times before he could get away,” Poppy said.

Bitsy raised an eyebrow. “Be on the lookout for someone with an unusual amount of bee stings.”

What was an unusual amount of bee stings? Dan hoped he’d know it when he saw it. He took another bite of cake, which was turning out to be the best thing about the whole evening. “Do you have a dog? A dog would warn you if someone trespassed onto your property.”

Bitsy propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand. “We have a cat.”

Was that a tattoo on her wrist? It looked like a picture of the honeybee, but Dan averted his eyes before he got a good look. He didn’t want to gawk.

An Amish woman with a tattoo. Had that ever been done before? And he couldn’t be sure, but he thought maybe she had three holes in each ear where earrings might go. Who was this woman, and had the bishop ever gotten a good look at her earlobes?

It made his head hurt thinking about trying to figure out Bitsy Honeybee.

A large, puffy ball of brilliant white fur brushed up against Dan’s leg. After all he’d been through tonight, his nerves were a little tight. He nearly jumped out of his skin.

Bitsy rolled her eyes at the ball of fur that turned out to be a fat kitty. “She’s not much of a security system. Doesn’t make a peep at trespassers and wouldn’t attack a robber even if he had a slice of bacon wrapped around his neck.”

Dan tried to imagine a place where robbers wore bacon as scarves.

Bitsy picked up the cat and went nose to nose with her as if she were scolding a young child. “Some watch-cat you are, Farrah Fawcett. You’re supposed to protect the family from danger.”

The cat seemed a little put out with Bitsy’s lecture. Her tiny pink nose looked as if she had pressed it against a window and squished it flat. Her eyes glowed bright mustard yellow and her mouth curved in a perpetual frown. Bitsy nuzzled the cat’s head against her chin before handing her off to Rose who cooed and cradled the cat in her lap.

Dan’s lips twitched into a grin. Bitsy had named her cat after a bathroom fixture? “I suppose the shotgun works if the cat doesn’t.”

Bitsy waved her hand in the direction of the shotgun propped against the wall. “It’s not loaded. I don’t believe in guns.”

She could have fooled him.

Dan’s heart did a little flip when he heard Lily coming down the stairs. For years he’d had a crush on Lily Christner, even if she had completely ignored him since eighth grade. Right before he had left for Pennsylvania, Lily had started going to Dan’s mammi’s house to read to her. Lily’s kindness and Mammi’s letters only served to keep her fresh on his mind for two whole years.

Of course, nothing could ever come of his infatuation. Paul Glick was the twenty-foot-high brick wall that stood in his way. And Dan had never been good at climbing walls.

While she pinned her hair into a tight bun, Lily seriously considered sneaking down the stairs and out the back door and driving herself to Dan’s mammi’s house. The thought of being within a mile of Dan Kanagy sent her into a panic. The thought of being in the same buggy made her ill. What would Paul say? He hated the very sight of any member of the Kanagy family. Even the thought that Lily read to Erda Kanagy three days a week made Paul break out in hives.

She growled in frustration. Hitching up the horse and buggy at two in the morning wasn’t practical, and Dan had gone to all this trouble to fetch her. She would ride into town in his buggy, but that didn’t mean she had to talk to him. Or look at him. Or fret about him.

Unfortunately, she would have to hear him if he chose to speak. If he called her “Amtrak” one more time, she thought she might burst into tears.

She quickly slipped out of her nightgown and into her dress. She chose the blue dress because Erda liked blue, even if she couldn’t see it anymore. Lily felt a hitch in her throat. Was Erda really going to God tonight? And how would Lily fill the hole in her heart when Erda left her?

Lily had already taken her contacts out, so she slid on her old pair of thick glasses. Her eyesight was terrible, and before she got contacts, Dan had teased her persistently about her glasses. She had to give him credit for creativity. He never called her something unoriginal like “Four Eyes.” Instead he called her “Coke Bottle” or “Scuba Diver” or his most hurtful favorite, “Frog Eyes.”

She’d spent a lot of afternoons after school watering her pillow because of Dan Kanagy. It had been eight years since then but the memories still stung like a hive of bees.

She quickly slipped on her crisp white kapp and then her shoes. Even with dread growing in her chest like mold, this was no time to stall. She would feel terrible if Erda passed away before she could say good-bye.

She clomped down the stairs as if she were going to her own funeral and chastised herself for acting so childish. The most important thing was to see Erda before she went to Heaven. Erda was ninety-five years old, eager, and ready to go. They’d been expecting it for several weeks, but now that her death was so close, Lily felt heartbroken. Despite her unfortunate grandson, Erda had become one of Lily’s most cherished friends.

When she walked into the kitchen, Dan stood so fast that his chair almost tipped over. His hand shot out and grabbed it before it went down, then he self-consciously shoved his hands into his pockets. “Ready?”

“Jah,” she said, grabbing her black sweater from the hook by the door. The first day of summer was almost four weeks away, and the nights were chilly yet.

To her surprise, he sort of yanked the sweater from her hands and helped her into it. “I’ve got a blanket in the buggy if you get cold.”

“Jah. Okay.”

Aunt Bitsy reached out and pinched Lily’s earlobes between her thumbs and index fingers, which was her way of saying “I love you.” Aunt B had a thing for ears. “Make sure Erda knows we’re thinking of her.” Her expression looked stern, like a good librarian, but Lily knew her well enough to recognize the tender emotions in her eyes.

Dan opened the door for her and then offered a hand to help her into his two-seater, open-air buggy. Lily groaned inwardly. She would be forced into very close proximity to Dan Kanagy. How would she stand it?

He sat next to her and snatched a blanket from behind them. “Do you want this? It’s pretty cold.”

Keeping with her resolve not to talk to him, she shook her head.

Even in the dark, she could see his grin. “Are you sure? It was a gift from an Englisch friend. It’s got a print of a strange creature on it. His name is SpongeBob SquarePants.”

Dan shined his flashlight on the blanket. It was covered with images of a yellow square with eyeballs and buck teeth. Lily had never seen anything so strange. Dan chuckled. “Weird, huh? I knew you’d like it.”

Meaning, he thought she was weird. He seemed intent on mocking her with every breath he took.

She folded her arms to ward off the chill. It really was cold, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of wrapping his weird blanket around the weird girl sitting next to him. “You don’t seem very concerned about your mammi,” she said, knowing it wasn’t a very nice thing to say but hoping to deflect his attention from her strange and ugly self.

He immediately stiffened, and she felt bad that her chiding had hit home. She never dreamed she’d be able to make a dent to his exterior. “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. My mammi is blind and arthritic and in constant pain. She misses my dawdi something awful and has been wanting to follow him home ever since he died twelve years ago.”

“Jah, she has.”

Dan stuffed the weird blanket between them, laid the glowing flashlight on top of the blanket, and turned the horse around so they were headed down the lane. “I’m not happy to see her go, but she’s happy to be going. I rejoice at a life lived in Jesus. I’m sorry if I offended you.”

“I’m not offended,” Lily stuttered.

You think I’m weird and ugly. I’m not offended at all.

She fell silent and pretended to be interested in the scenery to her right, even though it was too dark to see much of anything. Hopefully he’d get the hint that she didn’t want to talk.

Nae. He didn’t take the hint. “While I worked in Pennsylvania, I got a letter from my mammi every week. My schwester would write it down for her and send it to me.” He actually leaned closer and nudged her with his shoulder. “Mammi is very fond of you. Every letter included at least a paragraph about sweet Lily Christner.”

Lily’s face got warm. No doubt Dan would use something from his mammi’s letters to poke fun at her. “I didn’t do all that much.”

Without warning, Dan pulled on the reins and stopped, actually stopped the buggy on the small bridge that spanned their even smaller pond. He turned his whole body toward her and pinned her with a look that, even in the dim light of the flashlight, could have melted butter. “Nae, Lily. You brought so much joy to my mammi’s last years. You are not just some girl who read to an old lady. You changed her life. Our whole family is very grateful.” His gaze intensified. “You need to understand how we feel.”

Lily nodded because her tongue had tied itself into a very tricky knot. How could she resist such surprising sincerity? She didn’t deserve it, but she could see Dan believed it.

Smiling sadly, he jiggled the reins and turned his gaze to the road up ahead. “Besides family, you’re the only one she wants to see before she goes. That should tell you something.”

Lily cleared her throat. She couldn’t have anyone thinking better of her than she actually was. “I enjoyed reading with your mammi as much as she did. Sometimes I felt almost selfish I took so much pleasure in it.”

“You still made a sacrifice, and I am in awe of your kindness.”

“It broke my heart when Erda told me she couldn’t see well enough to read anymore. I knew how much she loved books, so I suggested we read together. I can’t consider it a sacrifice. Erda is like the mammi I never had.” Lily bit her tongue. Hopefully Dan hadn’t noticed that little slip. Lily’s own mammi lived not ten minutes from here. She should never have implied anything bad about her mammi. “Erda shared recipes and wisdom with me, and I brought books and honey.”

He didn’t say anything immediately, as if he were mulling over what she had said, probably thinking what a wicked girl she was for saying that about her mammi. Well, he hadn’t exactly been the best example of Christian charity either. He wasn’t one to judge. “I just . . . just know that I think you’re an angel, and I want to be more like you.”

In the dimness, the light of his eyes could have burned a hole through that weird blanket of his. Lily caught her breath and held it, as an unfamiliar shiver traveled up her spine.

He’d caught her unprepared for whatever it was he was doing with her senses. She hadn’t expected out of the ordinary. Dan’s intense gaze seemed a country mile from ordinary.

Dan’s lips curled into a tenuous smile as he cleared his throat and snapped his gaze back to the road. “Almost there.”

Erda lived by herself in a tiny home right in the heart of their little town. In the last few months, one of her family members had stayed with her around the clock because she had refused to be moved from her own house. Lily smiled at the thought of petite and determined Erda Kanagy refusing to budge from that chunky lavender armchair she liked so much. Her family had rearranged their lives so Erda could be comfortable. No matter what Paul Glick thought of Daniel’s family, they had treated their mammi with exceptional grace.

Dan turned the corner, and Erda’s house came into sight. Four bright kerosene lanterns hung from the eaves of her porch, making the small cottage seem like the center of the universe. Lily counted no less than seven buggies parked on the road in front.

Her heart tripped all over itself. She shouldn’t be here. She wasn’t family. What would they think of Lily Christner barging in on such a solemn, intimate occasion? Was it too late to ask Dan to turn around and take her back?

Dan parked behind the last buggy on the street. Before she even knew what he was doing, he jumped down, slid his hands around her waist, and lifted her to the ground.

That was totally unnecessary, but nice all the same.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

She glanced toward the house with her hands clenched to hide her trembling. “I . . . maybe I should wait outside after all.” Her voice sounded weak and uncertain, just like she felt.

Dan gently cupped his hand over her elbow. “It’s going to be okay, Amtrak. Don’t you worry for one minute that you don’t belong here. Every member of the family is eager to have you come. They know how happy you made our mammi.”

The warmth and sincerity behind his low, musical voice snaked its way into her veins. She forgot her anxiety and remembered how to breathe.

Her lips curled into a half smile. “Denki. I am grateful for your kindness.”

He smiled back. She’d never seen any expression so reassuring.

It wasn’t until they walked into the house and she stood at Erda’s bedside that she realized he’d called her “Amtrak.” She hadn’t even flinched, because when he’d said it just now, she could have sworn there was some affection behind it.

The sweat trickled down Lily’s neck, tickling her skin and leaving her with the almost overpowering urge to scratch, even though it was nearly impossible to scratch when dressed for beekeeping. She bit her bottom lip and ignored the tickle. No beekeeper could afford to be itchy.

A traditional veiled helmet sat on her head with the drawstring pulled tight around the collar of her short-sleeved jacket. She wore a smooth white sweatshirt beneath the jacket and canvas gloves with cuffs that went almost to her elbows. Her jeans legs were stuffed into her boots, and she wore a pair of long socks for good measure. Her outfit provided good protection from stings, but oh, sis yuscht, it sure was hot. And today was only June first.

Dressed similarly, Aunt B and Lily’s sisters inspected the ten hives on the east side of their farm. A row of half a dozen basswood trees and a barbed-wire fence formed a border between the hives and the wide country road that ran to the east of their farm. The small pond provided a water source for the bees, and the plentiful trees and flowers they’d spent years cultivating supplied pollen and nectar for their hives.

“B?” Poppy said, sending a puff of smoke into the hive with her smoker. “I think this hive is getting ready to swarm.”

Aunt B nodded. “Let’s split it. I have three extra supers in the honey house.”

Lily stepped away from the hive and picked up the sturdy notebook she’d laid on the grass a few feet from where they were working. After peeling off her glove, she made a few notes about Poppy’s hive with date and time.

She dropped the notebook and put her glove back on. “The nectar flow has been extra gute this spring.” Good nectar meant plentiful honey. It would be a good year.

She blew a strand of hair from her eyes. Every couple of years, Aunt B would take Lily and her sisters to Walmart to buy a new pair of beekeeping jeans, which weren’t any different from regular jeans, except that the Christners only wore them for beekeeping. The bishop approved as long as the worldly trousers were never worn for other activities. Their farm and apiary were far enough from town that few neighbors wandered onto the property to discover them so outrageously dressed.

Ten hives stood here near the basswood trees. Ten were located next t. . .