"Martha, love, I am older than you, and a man," Aaron said. "Give me room to think! If the goddess-Mother is heathen as Baal, it matters not; these folk who worship her hold our future in their hands. Besides, we owe them the courtesy not to dance in their churches nor to laugh at their prayers; even the 'English' have more grace than that." Aaron pondered. "Something in the springtime is the Murnan Mother's gift, her greatest gift. What?" "Blaspheme not," Martha said. "Remember Him who _causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth_." "Wife, is the True God less, if these people call Him Mother?" Aaron demanded. "We are too far from home," the woman sighed. "Such heavy talk is wearisome; it is for bishops to discourse so, not ordinary folk like us." "If I can't find the light," Aaron said, "this farm we live on, and hoped to leave to our children, isn't worth the water in a dish of soup." He slapped his hands together and stood to pace. "Martha, hear me out," he said. "If a woman be with child, and a man takes her with lust and against her will, is not that man accursed?" "Aaron!" she said. "_Haagott_, such wicked talk you make!" "Seen with Murnan eyes, have I not done just such a cursed thing?" Aaron demanded. "The Mother-god of this world is _mit Kinndt_, fat with the bounty of springtime. So tender is the swollen belly of the earth that the people here, simple folk with no more subtle God, strip the iron from the hoofs of their horses not to bruise her. They bare their feet in her honor, treat her with the tenderness I treat my beloved Martha. And to this Goddess, swollen earth, I took the plow! Martha, we are fortunate indeed that our neighbors are gentle people, or I would be hanged now, or stoned to death like the wicked in the old days. _Ich hot iere Gotterin awgepockt_: I raped their Goddess!" * * * * * Martha burst into tears. When Aaron stepped forward to comfort her, she struck his chest with her balled fists. "Stoltz, I wed you despite your beer-drinking from cans at the Singing, though you play a worldly guitar and sing the English songs, though people told me you drove your gay Uncle Amos' black-bumpered Ford before you membered to the district; still, house-Amish pure Old Order though my people are, I married you, from love and youngness and girlish ignorance. But I do not care, even in this wilderness you've brought us to in that big English ship, to hear such vileness spoke out boldly. Leave me alone." "I'll not." "You'd best," she said. "I'm sore offended in the lad I'm wifed to."