Emily Climbs

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Chapter 1 Writing Herself Out

Emily Byrd Starr was alone in her room, in the old New Moon farmhouse at Blair Water, one stormy night in a February of the olden years before the world turned upside down. She was at that moment as perfectly happy as any human being is ever permitted to be. Aunt Elizabeth, in consideration of the coldness of the night, had allowed her to have a fire in her little fireplace—a rare favour. It was burning brightly and showering a red-golden light over the small, immaculate room, with its old-time furniture and deep-set, wide-silled windows, to whose frosted, blue-white panes the snowflakes clung in little wreaths. It lent depth and mystery to the mirror on the wall which reflected Emily as she sat coiled on the ottoman before the fire, writing, by the light of two tall, white candles—which were the only approved means of illumination at New Moon—in a brand-new, glossy, black "Jimmy-book" which Cousin Jimmy had given her that day. Emily had been very glad to get it, for she had filled the one he had given her the preceding autumn, and for over a week she had suffered acute pangs of suppression because she could not write in a nonexistent "diary."

Her diary had become a dominant factor in her young, vivid life. It had taken the place of certain "letters" she had written in her childhood to her dead father, in which she had been wont to "write out" her problems and worries—for even in the magic years when one is almost fourteen one has problems and worries, especially when one is under the strict and well-meant but not over-tender governance of an Aunt Elizabeth Murray. Sometimes Emily felt that if it were not for her diary she would have flown into little bits by reason of consuming her own smoke. The fat, black "Jimmy-book" seemed to her like a personal friend and a safe confidant for certain matters which burned for expression and yet were too combustible to be trusted to the ears of any living being. Now blank books of any sort were not easy to come by at New Moon, and if it had not been for Cousin Jimmy, Emily might never have had one. Certainly Aunt Elizabeth would not give her one—Aunt Elizabeth thought Emily wasted far too much time "over her scribbling nonsense" as it was—and Aunt Laura did not dare to go contrary to Aunt Elizabeth in this—more by token that Laura herself really thought Emily might be better employed. Aunt Laura was a jewel of a woman, but certain things were holden from her eyes.

Now Cousin Jimmy was never in the least frightened of Aunt Elizabeth, and when the notion occurred to him that Emily probably wanted another "blank book," that blank book materialized straightway, in defiance of Aunt Elizabeth's scornful glances. He had gone to Shrewsbury that very day, in the teeth of the rising storm, for no other reason than to get it. So Emily was happy, in her subtle and friendly firelight, while the wind howled and shrieked through the great old trees to the north of New Moon, sent huge, spectral wreaths of snow whirling across Cousin Jimmy's famous garden, drifted the sundial completely over, and whistled eerily through the Three Princesses—as Emily always called the three tall Lombardies in the corner of the garden.

"I love a storm like this at night when I don't have to go out in it," wrote Emily. "Cousin Jimmy and I had a splendid evening planning out our garden and choosing our seeds and plants in the catalogue. Just where the biggest drift is making, behind the summer-house, we are going to have a bed of pink asters, and we are going to give the Golden Ones—who are dreaming under four feet of snow—a background of flowering almond. I love to plan out summer days like this, in the midst of a storm. It makes me feel as if I were winning a victory over something ever so much bigger than myself, just because I have a brain and the storm is nothing but blind, white force—terrible, but blind. I have the same feeling when I sit here cosily by my own dear fire, and hear it raging all around me, and laugh at it. And that is just because over a hundred years ago great-great-grandfather Murray built this house and built it well. I wonder if, a hundred years from now, anybody will win a victory over anything because of something I left or did. It is an inspiring thought.

"I drew that line of italics before I thought. Mr. Carpenter says I use far too many italics. He says it is an Early Victorian obsession, and I must strive to cast it off. I concluded I would when I looked in the dictionary, for it is evidently not a nice thing to be obsessed, though it doesn't seem quite so bad as to be possessed. There I go again: but I think the italics are all right this time.

"I read the dictionary for a whole hour—till Aunt Elizabeth got suspicious and suggested that it would be much better for me to be knitting my ribbed stockings. She couldn't see exactly why it was wrong for me to be poring over the dictionary but she felt sure it must be because she never wants to do it. I love reading the dictionary. (Yes, those italics are necessary, Mr. Carpenter. An ordinary 'love' wouldn't express my feeling at all!) Words are such fascinating things. (I caught myself at the first syllable that time!) The very sound of some of them—'haunted'—'mystic'—for example, gives me the flash. (Oh, dear! But I have to italicize the flash. It isn't ordinary—it's the most extraordinary and wonderful thing in my whole life. When it comes I feel as if a door had swung open in a wall before me and given me a glimpse of—yes, of heaven. More italics! Oh, I see why Mr, Carpenter scolds! I must break myself of the habit.)

"Big words are never beautiful—'incriminating'—'obstreperous'—'international'—'unconstitutional.' They make me think of those horrible big dahlias and chrysanthemums Cousin Jimmy took me to see at the exhibition in Charlottetown last fall. We couldn't see anything lovely in them, though some people thought them wonderful. Cousin Jimmy's little yellow 'mums, like pale, fairy-like stars shining against the fir copse in the north-west corner of the garden, were ten times more beautiful. But I am wandering from my subject—also a bad habit of mine, according to Mr. Carpenter. He says I must (the italics are his this time!) learn to concentrate—another big word and a very ugly one.

"But I had a good time over that dictionary—much better than I had over the ribbed stockings. I wish I could have a pair—just one pair—of silk stockings. Ilse has three. Her father gives her everything she wants, now that he has learned to love her. But Aunt Elizabeth says silk stockings are immoral. I wonder why—any more than silk dresses.

"Speaking of silk dresses, Aunt Janey Milburn, at Derry Pond—she isn't any relation really, but everybody calls her that—has made a vow that she will never wear a silk dress until the whole heathen world is converted to Christianity. That is very fine. I wish I could be as good as that, but I couldn't—I love silk too much. It is so rich and sheeny. I would like to dress in it all the time, and if I could afford to I would—though I suppose every time I thought of dear old Aunt Janey and the unconverted heathen I would feel conscience-stricken. However, it will be years, if ever, before I can afford to buy even one silk dress, and meanwhile I give some of my egg money every month to missions. (I have five hens of my own now, all descended from the gray pullet Perry gave me on my twelfth birthday.) If ever I can buy that one silk dress I know what it is going to be like. Not black or brown or navy blue—sensible, serviceable colours, such as New Moon Murrays always wear—oh, dear, no! It is to be of shot silk, blue in one light, silver in others, like a twilight sky, glimpsed through a frosted window-pane—with a bit of lace-foam here and there, like those little feathers of snow clinging to my window-pane. Teddy says he will paint me in it and call it 'The Ice Maiden,' and Aunt Laura smiles and says, sweetly and condescendingly, in a way I hate even in dear Aunt Laura,

"'What use would such a dress be to you, Emily?'

"It mightn't be of any use, but I would feel in it as if it were a part of me—that it grew on me and wasn't just bought and put on. I want one dress like that in my life-time. And a silk petticoat underneath it—and silk stockings!

"Ilse has a silk dress now—a bright pink one. Aunt Elizabeth says Dr. Burnley dresses Ilse far too old and rich for a child. But he wants to make up for all the years he didn't dress her at all. (I don't mean she went naked, but she might have as far as Dr. Burnley was concerned. Other people had to see to her clothes.) He does everything she wants him to do now, and gives her her own way in everything. Aunt Elizabeth says it is very bad for her, but there are times when I envy Ilse a little. I know it is wicked, but I cannot help it.

"Dr. Burnley is going to send Ilse to Shrewsbury High School next fall, and after that to Montreal to study elocution. That is why I envy her—not because of the silk dress. I wish Aunt Elizabeth would let me go to Shrewsbury, but I fear she never will. She feels she can't trust me out of her sight because my mother eloped. But she need not be afraid I will ever elope. I have made up my mind that I will never marry. I shall be wedded to my art.

"Teddy wants to go to Shrewsbury next fall, but his mother won't let him go, either. Not that she is afraid of his eloping, but because she loves him so much she can't part with him. Teddy wants to be an artist, and Mr. Carpenter says he has genius and should have his chance, but everybody is afraid to say anything to Mrs. Kent. She is a little bit of a woman—no taller than I am, really, quiet and shy—and yet every one is afraid of her. I am—dreadfully afraid. I've always known she didn't like me—ever since those days long ago when Ilse and I first went up to the Tansy Patch, to play with Teddy. But now she hates me—I feel sure of it—just because Teddy likes me. She can't bear to have him like anybody or anything but her. She is even jealous of his pictures. So there is not much chance of his getting to Shrewsbury. Perry is going. He hasn't a cent, but he is going to work his way through. That is why he thinks he will go to Shrewsbury in place of Queen's Academy. He thinks it will be easier to get work to do in Shrewsbury, and board is cheaper there.

"'My old beast of an Aunt Tom has a little money,' he told me, 'but she won't give me any of it—unless—unless—'

"Then he looked at me significantly.

"I blushed because I couldn't help it, and then I was furious with myself for blushing, and with Perry—because he referred to something I didn't want to hear about—that time ever so long ago when his Aunt Tom met me in Lofty John's bush and nearly frightened me to death by demanding that I promise to marry Perry when we grew up, in which case she would educate him. I never told anybody about it—being ashamed—except Ilse, and she said,

"'The idea of old Aunt Tom aspiring to a Murray for Perry!'

"But then, Ilse is awfully hard on Perry and quarrels with him half the time, over things I only smile at. Perry never likes to be outdone by anyone in anything. When we were at Amy Moore's party last week, her uncle told us a story of some remarkable freak calf he had seen, with three legs, and Perry said,

"'Oh, that's nothing to a duck I saw once in Norway.'

"(Perry really was in Norway. He used to sail everywhere with his father when he was little. But I don't believe one word about that duck. He wasn't lying—he was just romancing. Dear Mr. Carpenter, I can't get along without italics.)

"Perry's duck had four legs, according to him—two where a proper duck's legs should be, and two sprouting from its back. And when it got tired of walking on its ordinary pair it flopped over on its back and walked on the other pair!

"Perry told this yarn with a sober face, and everybody laughed, and Amy's uncle said, 'Go up head, Perry.' But Ilse was furious and wouldn't speak to him all the way home. She said he had made a fool of himself, trying to 'show off' with a silly story like that, and that no gentleman would act so.

"Perry said: 'I'm no gentleman, yet, only a hired boy, but some day, Miss Ilse, I'll be a finer gentleman than anyone you know.'

"'Gentlemen,' said Ilse in a nasty voice, 'have to be born. They can't be made, you know.'

"Ilse has almost given up calling names, as she used to do when she quarrelled with Perry or me, and taken to saying cruel, cutting things. They hurt far worse than the names used to, but I don't really mind them—much—or long—because I know Ilse doesn't mean them and really loves me as much as I love her. But Perry says they stick in his crop. They didn't speak to each other the rest of the way home, but next day Ilse was at him again about using bad grammar and not standing up when a lady enters the room.

"'Of course you couldn't be expected to know that,' she said in her nastiest voice, 'but I am sure Mr. Carpenter has done his best to teach you grammar.'

"Perry didn't say one word to Ilse, but he turned to me.

"'Will you tell me my faults?' he said. 'I don't mind you doing it—it will be you that will have to put up with me when we're grown up, not Ilse.'

"He said that to make Ilse angry, but it made me angrier still, for it was an allusion to a forbidden topic. So we neither of us spoke to him for two days and he said it was a good rest from Ilse's slams anyway.

"Perry is not the only one who gets into disgrace at New Moon. I said something silly yesterday evening which makes me blush to recall it. The Ladies' Aid met here and Aunt Elizabeth gave them a supper and the husbands of the Aid came to it. Ilse and I waited on the table, which was set in the kitchen because the dining-room table wasn't long enough. It was exciting at first and then, when every one was served, it was a little dull and I began to compose some poetry in my mind as I stood by the window looking out on the garden. It was so interesting that I soon forgot everything else until suddenly I heard Aunt Elizabeth say, 'Emily,' very sharply, and then she looked significantly at Mr. Johnson, our new minister. I was confused and I snatched up the teapot and exclaimed,

"'Oh, Mr. Cup, will you have your Johnson filled?'

"Everybody roared and Aunt Elizabeth looked disgusted and Aunt Laura ashamed, and I felt as if I would sink through the floor. I couldn't sleep half the night for thinking over it. The strange thing was that I do believe I felt worse and more ashamed than I would have felt if I had done something really wrong. This is the 'Murray pride' of course, and I suppose it is very wicked. Sometimes I am afraid Aunt Ruth Dutton is right in her opinion of me after all.

"No, she isn't!

"But it is a tradition of New Moon that its women should be equal to any situation and always be graceful and dignified. Now, there was nothing graceful or dignified in asking such a question of the new minister. I am sure he will never see me again without thinking of it and I will always writhe when I catch his eye upon me.

"But now that I have written it out in my diary I don't feel so badly over it. Nothing ever seems as big or as terrible—oh, nor as beautiful and grand, either, alas!—when it is written out, as it does when you are thinking or feeling about it. It seems to shrinkdirectly you put it into words. Even the line of poetry I had made just before I asked that absurd question won't seem half as fine when I write it down:

 

"Where the velvet feet of darkness softly go.

 

"It doesn't. Some bloom seems gone from it. And yet, while I was standing there, behind all those chattering, eating people, and saw darkness stealing so softly over the garden and the hills, like a beautiful woman robed in shadows, with stars for eyes, theflash came and I forgot everything but that I wanted to put something of the beauty I felt into the words of my poem. When that line came into my mind it didn't seem to me that I composed it at all—it seemed as if Something Else were trying to speak through me—and it was that Something Else that made the line seem wonderful—and now when it is gone the words seem flat and foolish and the picture I tried to draw in them not so wonderful after all.

"Oh, if I could only put things into words as I see them! Mr. Carpenter says, 'Strive—strive—keep on—words are your medium—make them your slaves—until they will say for you what you want them to say.' That is true—and I do try—but it seems to me there is something beyond words—any words—all words—something that always escapes you when you try to grasp it—and yet leaves something in your hand which you wouldn't have had if you hadn't reached for it.

"I remember one day last fall when Dean and I walked over the Delectable Mountain to the woods beyond it—fir woods mostly, but with one corner of splendid old pines. We sat under them and Dean read Peveril of the Peak and some of Scott's poems to me; and then he looked up into the big, plumy boughs and said,

"'The gods are talking in the pines—gods of the old northland—of the viking sagas. Star, do you know Emerson's lines?'

"And then he quoted them—I've remembered and loved them ever since.

 

"The gods talk in the breath of the wold,
They talk in the shaken pine,
And they fill the reach of the old seashore
With dialogue divine;
And the poet who overhears
One random word they say
Is the fated man of men
Whom the ages must obey.

 

"Oh, that 'random word'—that is the Something that escapes me. I'm always listening for it—I know I can never hear it—my ear isn't attuned to it—but I am sure I hear at times a little, faint, far-off echo of it—and it makes me feel a delight that is like pain and a despair of ever being able to translate its beauty into any words I know.

"Still, it is a pity I made such a goose of myself immediately after that wonderful experience.

"If I had just floated up behind Mr. Johnson, as velvet-footedly as darkness herself, and poured his tea gracefully from Great-grandmother Murray's silver teapot, like my shadow-woman pouring night into the white cup of Blair Valley, Aunt Elizabeth would be far better pleased with me than if I could write the most wonderful poem in the world.

"Cousin Jimmy is so different. I recited my poem to him this evening after we had finished with the catalogue and he thought it was beautiful. (He couldn't know how far it fell short of what I had seen in my mind.) Cousin Jimmy composes poetry himself. He is very clever in spots. And in other spots, where his brain was hurt when Aunt Elizabeth pushed him into our New Moon well, he isn't anything. There's just blankness there. So people call him simple, and Aunt Ruth dares to say he hasn't sense enough to shoo a cat from cream. And yet if you put all his clever spots together there isn't anybody in Blair Water has half as much real cleverness as he has—not even Mr. Carpenter. The trouble is you can't put his clever spots together—there are always those gaps between. But I love Cousin Jimmy and I'm never in the least afraid of him when his queer spells come on him. Everybody else is—even Aunt Elizabeth, though perhaps it is remorse with her, instead of fear—except Perry. Perry always brags that he is never afraid of anything—doesn't know what fear is. I think that is very wonderful. I wish I could be so fearless. Mr. Carpenter says fear is a vile thing, and is at the bottom of almost every wrong and hatred of the world.

"'Cast it out, Jade,' he says—'cast it out of your heart. Fear is a confession of weakness. What you fear is stronger than you, or you think it is, else you wouldn't be afraid of it. Remember your Emerson—"always do what you are afraid to do."'

"But that is a counsel of perfection, as Dean says, and I don't believe I'll ever be able to attain to it. To be honest, I am afraid of a good many things, but there are only two people in the world I'm truly afraid of. One is Mrs. Kent, and the other is Mad Mr. Morrison. I'm terribly afraid of him and I think almost every one is. His home is in Derry Pond, but he hardly ever stays there—he roams over the country looking for his lost bride. He was married only a few weeks when his young wife died, many years ago, and he has never been right in his mind since. He insists she is not dead, only lost, and that he will find her some time. He has grown old and bent, looking for her, but to him she is still young and fair.

"He was here one day last summer, but would not come in—just peered into the kitchen wistfully and said, 'Is Annie here?' He was quite gentle that day, but sometimes he is very wild and violent. He declares he always hears Annie calling to him—that her voice flits on before him—always before him, like my random word. His face is wrinkled and shrivelled and he looks like an old, old monkey. But the thing I hate most about him is his right hand—it is a deep blood-red all over—birth-marked. I can't tell why, but that hand fills me with horror. I could not bear to touch it. And sometimes he laughs to himself very horribly. The only living thing he seems to care for is his old black dog that always is with him. They say he will never ask for a bite of food for himself. If people do not offer it to him he goes hungry, but he will beg for his dog.

"Oh, I am terribly afraid of him, and I was so glad he didn't come into the house that day. Aunt Elizabeth looked after him, as he went away with his long, gray hair streaming in the wind, and said,

"'Fairfax Morrison was once a fine, clever, young man, with excellent prospects. Well, God's ways are very mysterious.'

"'That is why they are interesting,' I said.

"But Aunt Elizabeth frowned and told me not to be irreverent, as she always does when I say anything about God. I wonder why. She won't let Perry and me talk about Him, either, though Perry is really very much interested in Him and wants to find out all about Him. Aunt Elizabeth overheard me telling Perry one Sunday afternoon what I thought God was like, and she said it was scandalous.

"It wasn't! The trouble is, Aunt Elizabeth and I have different Gods, that is all. Everybody has a different God, I think. Aunt Ruth's, for instance, is one that punishes her enemies—sends 'judgments' on them. That seems to me to be about all the use He really is to her. Jim Cosgrain uses his to swear by. But Aunt Janey Milburn walks in the light of her God's countenance, every day, and shines with it.

"I have written myself out for to-night, and am going to bed. I know I have 'wasted words' in this diary—another of my literary faults, according to Mr. Carpenter.

"'You waste words, Jade—you spill them about too lavishly. Economy and restraint—that's what you need.

"He's right, of course, and in my essays and stories I try to practise what he preaches. But in my diary, which nobody sees but myself, or ever will see until after I'm dead, I like just to let myself go."

********

Emily looked at her candle—it, too, was almost burned out. She knew she could not have another that night—Aunt Elizabeth's rules were as those of Mede and Persian: she put away her diary in the little right-hand cupboard above the mantel, covered her dying fire, undressed and blew out her candle. The room slowly filled with the faint, ghostly snow-light of a night when a full moon is behind the driving storm-clouds. And just as Emily was ready to slip into her high black bedstead a sudden inspiration came—a splendid new idea for a story. For a minute she shivered reluctantly: the room was getting cold. But the idea would not be denied. Emily slipped her hand between the feather tick of her bed and the chaff mattress and produced a half-burned candle, secreted there for just such an emergency.

It was not, of course, a proper thing to do. But then I have never pretended, nor ever will pretend, that Emily was a proper child. Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dull nobody would read them.

She lighted her candle, put on her stockings and a heavy coat, got out another half-filled Jimmy-book, and began to write by the single, uncertain candle which made a pale oasis of light in the shadows of the room. In that oasis Emily wrote, her black head bent over her book, as the hours of night crept away and the other occupants of New Moon slumbered soundly; she grew chill and cramped, but she was quite unconscious of it. Her eyes burned—her cheeks glowed—words came like troops of obedient genii to the call of her pen. When at last her candle went out with a splutter and a hiss in its little pool of melted tallow, she came back to reality with a sigh and a shiver. It was two, by the clock, and she was very tired and very cold; but she had finished her story and it was the best she had ever written. She crept into her cold nest with a sense of completion and victory, born of the working out of her creative impulse, and fell asleep to the lullaby of the waning storm.

Chapter 2 Salad Days

This book is not going to be wholly, or even mainly, made up of extracts from Emily's diary; but, by way of linking up matters unimportant enough for a chapter in themselves, and yet necessary for a proper understanding of her personality and environment, I am going to include some more of them. Besides, when one has material ready to hand, why not use it? Emily's "diary," with all its youthful crudities and italics, really gives a better interpretation of her and of her imaginative and introspective mind, in that, her fourteenth spring, than any biographer, however sympathetic, could do. So let us take another peep into the yellowed pages of that old "Jimmy-book," written long ago in the "look-out" of New Moon.

********

"February 15, 19—

"I have decided that I will write down, in this journal, every day, all my good deeds and all my bad ones. I got the idea out of a book, and it appeals to me. I mean to be as honest about it as I can. It will be easy, of course, to write down the good deeds, but not so easy to record the bad ones.

"I did only one bad thing to-day—only one thing I think bad, that is. I was impertinent to Aunt Elizabeth. She thought I took too long washing the dishes. I didn't suppose there was any hurry and I was composing a story called The Secret of the Mill.Aunt Elizabeth looked at me and then at the clock, and said in her most disagreeable way,

"'Is the snail your sister, Emily?'

"'No! Snails are no relation to me,' I said haughtily.

"It was not what I said, but the way I said it that was impertinent. And I meant it to be. I was very angry—sarcastic speeches always aggravate me. Afterwards I was very sorry that I had been in a temper—but I was sorry because it was foolish andundignified, not because it was wicked. So I suppose that was not true repentance.

"As for my good deeds, I did two to-day. I saved two little lives. Saucy Sal had caught a poor snowbird and I took it from her. It flew off quite briskly, and I am sure it felt wonderfully happy. Later on I went down to the cellar cupboard and found a mouse caught in a trap by its foot. The poor thing lay there, almost exhausted from struggling, with such a look in its black eyes. I couldn't endure it so I set it free, and it managed to get away quite smartly in spite of its foot. I do not feel sure about thisdeed. I know it was a good one from the mouse's point of view, but what about Aunt Elizabeth's?

"This evening Aunt Laura and Aunt Elizabeth read and burned a boxful of old letters. They read them aloud and commented on them, while I sat in a corner and knitted my stockings. The letters were very interesting and I learned a great deal about the Murrays I had never known before. I feel that it is quite wonderful to belong to a family like this. No wonder the Blair Water folks call us 'the Chosen People'—though they don't mean it as a compliment. I feel that I must live up to the traditions of my family.

"I had a long letter from Dean Priest to-day. He is spending the winter in Algiers. He says he is coming home in April and is going to take rooms with his sister, Mrs. Fred Evans, for the summer. I am so glad. It will be splendid to have him in Blair Water all summer. Nobody ever talks to me as Dean does. He is the nicest and most interesting old person I know. Aunt Elizabeth says he is selfish, as all the Priests are. But then she does not like the Priests. And she always calls him Jarback, which somehow sets my teeth on edge. One of Dean's shoulders is a little higher than the other, but that is not his fault. I told Aunt Elizabeth once that I wished she would not call my friend that, but she only said,

"'I did not nickname your friend, Emily. His own clan have always called him Jarback. The Priests are not noted for delicacy!"

"Teddy had a letter from Dean, too, and a book—The Lives of Great Artists—Michael Angelo, Raphael, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Titian. He says he dare not let his mother see him reading it—she would burn it. I am sure if Teddy could only have his chance he would be as great an artist as any of them.

********

"February 18, 19—

"I had a lovely time with myself this evening, after school, walking on the brook road in Lofty John's bush. The sun was low and creamy and the snow so white and the shadows so slender and blue. I think there is nothing so beautiful as tree shadows. And when I came out into the garden my own shadow looked so funny—so long that it stretched right across the garden. I immediately made a poem of which two lines were,

 

"If we were as tall as our shadows
How tall our shadows would be.

 

"I think there is a good deal of philosophy in that.

"To-night I wrote a story and Aunt Elizabeth knew what I was doing and was very much annoyed. She scolded me for wasting time. But it wasn't wasted time. I grew in it—I know I did. And there was something about some of the sentences I liked. 'Iam afraid of the grey wood'—that pleased me very much. And—'white and stately she walked the dark wood like a moonbeam.' I think that is rather fine. Yet Mr. Carpenter tells me that whenever I think a thing especially fine I am to cut it out. But oh, Ican't cut that out—not yet, at least. The strange part is that about three months after Mr. Carpenter tells me to cut a thing out I come round to his point of view and feel ashamed of it. Mr. Carpenter was quite merciless over my essay to-day. Nothing about it suited him.

"'Three alas's in one paragraph, Emily. One would have been too many in this year of grace!' 'More irresistible—Emily, for heaven's sake, write English! That is unpardonable.'

"It was, too. I saw it for myself and I felt shame going all over me from head to foot like a red wave. Then, after Mr. Carpenter had blue-pencilled almost every sentence and sneered at all my fine phrases and found fault with most of my constructions and told me I was too fond of putting 'cleverisms' into everything I wrote, he flung my exercise book down, tore at his hair and said,

"'You write! Jade, get a spoon and learn to cook!'

"Then he strode off, muttering maledictions 'not loud but deep.' I picked up my poor essay and didn't feel very badly. I can cook already, and I have learned a thing or two about Mr. Carpenter. The better my essays are the more he rages over them. This one must have been quite good. But it makes him so angry and impatient to see where I might have made it still better and didn't—through carelessness or laziness or indifference—as he thinks. And he can't tolerate a person who could do better and doesn't. And he wouldn't bother with me at all if he didn't think I may amount to something by and by.

"Aunt Elizabeth does not approve of Mr. Johnson. She thinks his theology is not sound. He said in his sermon last Sunday that there was some good in Buddhism.

"'He will be saying that there is some good in Popery next,' said Aunt Elizabeth indignantly at the dinner-table.

"There may be some good in Buddhism. I must ask Dean about it when he comes home.

********

"March 2, 19—

"We were all at a funeral to-day—old Mrs. Sarah Paul. I have always liked going to funerals. When I said that, Aunt Elizabeth looked shocked and Aunt Laura said, 'Oh, Emily dear!' I rather like to shock Aunt Elizabeth, but I never feel comfortable if I worry Aunt Laura—she's such a darling—so I explained—or tried to. It is sometimes very hard to explain things to Aunt Elizabeth.

"'Funerals are interesting,' I said. 'And humorous, too.'

"I think I only made matters worse by saying that. And yet Aunt Elizabeth knew as well as I did that it was funny to see some of those relatives of Mrs. Paul, who have fought with and hated her for years—she wasn't amiable, if she is dead!—sitting there, holding their handkerchiefs to their faces and pretending to cry. I knew quite well what each and every one was thinking in his heart. Jake Paul was wondering if the old harridan had by any chance left him anything in her will—and Alice Paul, who knewshe wouldn't get anything, was hoping Jake Paul wouldn't either. That would satisfy her. And Mrs. Charles Paul was wondering how soon it would be decent to do the house over the way she had always wanted it and Mrs. Paul hadn't. And Aunty Min was worrying for fear there wouldn't be enough baked meats for such a mob of fourth cousins that they'd never expected and didn't want, and Lisette Paul was counting the people and feeling vexed because there wasn't as large an attendance as there was at Mrs. Henry Lister's funeral last week. When I told Aunt Laura this, she said gravely,

"'All this may be true, Emily'—(she knew it was!)—'but somehow it doesn't seem quite right for so young a girl as you, to—to—to be able to see these things, in short.'

"However, I can't help seeing them. Darling Aunt Laura is always so sorry for people that she can't see their humorous side. But I saw other things too. I saw that little Zack Fritz, whom Mrs. Paul adopted and was very kind to, was almost broken-hearted, and I saw that Martha Paul was feeling sorry and ashamed to think of her bitter old quarrel with Mrs. Paul—and I saw that Mrs. Paul's face, that looked so discontented and thwarted in life, looked peaceful and majestic and even beautiful—as if Death had satisfied her at last.

"Yes, funerals are interesting.

********

"March 5, 19—

"It is snowing a little to-night. I love to see the snow coming down in slanting lines against the dark trees.

"I think I did a good deed to-day. Jason Merrowby was here helping Cousin Jimmy saw wood—and I saw him sneak into the pighouse, and take a swig from a whisky bottle. But I did not say one word about it to anyone—that is my good deed.

"Perhaps I ought to tell Aunt Elizabeth, but if I did she would never have him again, and he needs all the work he can get, for his poor wife's and children's sakes. I find it is not always easy to be sure whether your deeds are good or bad.

********

"March 20, 19—

"Yesterday Aunt Elizabeth was very angry because I would not write an 'obituary poem' for old Peter DeGeer who died last week. Mrs. DeGeer came here and asked me to do it. I wouldn't—I felt very indignant at such a request. I felt it would be a desecration of my art to do such a thing—though of course I didn't say that to Mrs. DeGeer. For one thing it would have hurt her feelings, and for another she wouldn't have had the faintest idea what I meant. Even Aunt Elizabeth hadn't when I told her my reasons for refusing, after Mrs. DeGeer had gone.

"'You are always writing yards of trash that nobody wants,' she said. 'I think you might write something that is wanted. It would have pleased poor old Mary DeGeer. "Desecration of your art" indeed. If you must talk, Emily, why not talk sense?'

"I proceeded to talk sense.

"'Aunt Elizabeth,' I said seriously, 'how could I write that obituary poem for her? I couldn't write an untruthful one to please anybody. And you know yourself that nothing good and truthful could be said about old Peter DeGeer!'

"Aunt Elizabeth did know it, and it posed her, but she was all the more displeased with me for that. She vexed me so much that I came up to my room and wrote an 'obituary poem' about Peter, just for my own satisfaction. It is certainly great fun to write a truthful obituary of some one you don't like. Not that I disliked Peter DeGeer; I just despised him as everybody did. But Aunt Elizabeth had annoyed me, and when I am annoyed I can write very sarcastically. And again I felt that Something was writing through me—but a very different Something from the usual one—a malicious, mocking Something that enjoyed making fun of poor, lazy, shiftless, lying, silly, hypocritical, old Peter DeGeer. Ideas—words—rhymes—all seemed to drop into place while that Something chuckled.

"I thought the poem was so clever that I couldn't resist the temptation to take it to school to-day and show it to Mr Carpenter. I thought he would enjoy it—and I think he did, too, in a way, but after he had read it he laid it down and looked at me.

"'I suppose there is a pleasure in satirizing a failure,' he said. 'Poor old Peter was a failure—and he is dead—and His Maker may be merciful to him, but his fellow creatures will not. When I am dead, Emily, will you write like this about me? You have the power—oh, yes, it's all here—this is very clever. You can paint the weakness and foolishness and wickedness of a character in a way that is positively uncanny, in a girl of your age. But—is it worth while, Emily?'

"'No—no,' I said. I was so ashamed and sorry that I wanted to get away and cry. It was terrible to think Mr. Carpenter imagined I would ever write so about him, after all he has done for me.

"'It isn't,' said Mr. Carpenter. 'There is a place for satire—there are gangrenes that can only be burned out—but leave the burning to the great geniuses. It's better to heal than hurt. We failures know that.'

"'Oh, Mr. Carpenter!' I began. I wanted to say he wasn't a failure—I wanted to say a hundred things—but he wouldn't let me.

"'There—there, we won't talk of it, Emily. When I am dead say, "He was a failure, and none knew it more truly or felt it more bitterly than himself." Be merciful to the failures, Emily. Satirize wickedness if you must—but pity weakness.'

"He stalked off then, and called school in. I've felt wretched ever since and I won't sleep to-night. But here and now I record this vow, most solemnly, in my diary, My pen shall heal, not hurt. And I write it in italics, Early Victorian or not, because I am tremendously in earnest.

"I didn't tear that poem up, though—I couldn't—it really was too good to destroy. I put it away in my literary cupboard to read over once in a while for my own enjoyment, but I will never show it to anybody.

"Oh, how I wish I hadn't hurt Mr. Carpenter!

********

"April 1, 19—

"Something I heard a visitor in Blair Water say today annoyed me very much. Mr. and Mrs. Alec Sawyer, who live in Charlottetown, were in the post office when I was there. Mrs. Sawyer is very handsome and fashionable and condescending. I heard her say to her husband, 'How do the natives of this sleepy place continue to live here year in and year out? I should go mad. Nothing ever happens here.'

"I would dearly have liked to tell her a few things about Blair Water. I could have been sarcastic with a vengeance. But, of course, New Moon people do not make scenes in public. So I contented myself with bowing very coldly when she spoke to me and sweeping past her. I heard Mr. Sawyer say, 'Who is that girl?' and Mrs. Sawyer said, 'She must be that Starr puss—she has the Murray trick of holding her head, all right.'

"The idea of saying 'nothing ever happens here'! Why, things are happening right along—thrilling things. I think life here is extremely wonderful. We have always so much to laugh and cry and talk about.

"Look at all the things that have happened in Blair Water in just the last three weeks—comedy and tragedy all mixed up together. James Baxter has suddenly stopped speaking to his wife and nobody knows why. She doesn't, poor soul, and she is breaking her heart about it. Old Adam Gillian, who hated pretence of any sort, died two weeks ago and his last words were, 'See that there isn't any howling and sniffling at my funeral.' So nobody howled or sniffled. Nobody wanted to, and since he had forbidden it nobody pretended to. There never was such a cheerful funeral in Blair Water. I've seen weddings that were more melancholy—Ella Brice's, for instance. What cast a cloud over hers was that she forgot to put on her white slippers when she dressed, and went down to the parlour in a pair of old, faded, bedroom shoes with holes in the toes. Really, people couldn't have talked more about it if she had gone down without anything on. Poor Ella cried all through the wedding-supper about it.

"Old Robert Scobie and his half-sister have quarrelled, after living together for thirty years without a fuss, although she is said to be a very aggravating woman. Nothing she did or said ever provoked Robert into an outburst, but it seems that there was just one doughnut left from supper one evening recently, and Robert is very fond of doughnuts. He put it away in the pantry for a bedtime snack, and when he went to get it he found that Matilda had eaten it. He went into a terrible rage, pulled her nose, called her a she-deviless, and ordered her out of his house. She has gone to live with her sister at Derry Pond, and Robert is going to bach it. Neither of them will ever forgive the other, Scobie-like, and neither will ever be happy or contented again.

"George Lake was walking home from Derry Pond one moonlit evening two weeks ago, and all at once he saw another very black shadow going along beside his, on the moonlit snow.

"And there was nothing to cast that shadow.

He rushed to the nearest house, nearly dead with fright, and they say he will never be the same man again.

"This is the most dramatic thing that has happened. It makes me shiver as I write of it. Of course George must have been mistaken. But he is a truthful man, and he doesn't drink. I don't know what to think of it.

"Arminius Scobie is a very mean man and always buys his wife's hats for her, lest she pay too much for them. They know this in the Shrewsbury stores, and laugh at him. One day last week he was in Jones and McCallum's, buying her a hat, and Mr. Jones told him that if he would wear the hat from the store to the station he would let him have it for nothing. Arminius did. It was a quarter of a mile to the station and all the small boys in Shrewsbury ran after him and hooted him. But Arminus didn't care. He had saved three dollars and forty-nine cents.

"And, one evening, right here at New Moon, I dropped a soft-boiled egg on Aunt Elizabeth's second-best cashmere dress. That was a happening. A kingdom might have been upset in Europe, and it wouldn't have made such a commotion at New Moon.

"So, Mistress Sawyer, you are vastly mistaken. Besides, apart from all happenings, the folks here are interesting in themselves. I don't like every one but I find every one interesting—Miss Matty Small, who is forty and wears outrageous colours—she wore an old-rose dress and a scarlet hat to church all last summer—old Uncle Reuben Bascom, who is so lazy that he held an umbrella over himself all one rainy night in bed, when the roof began to leak, rather than get out and move the bed—Elder McCloskey, who thought it wouldn't do to say 'pants' in a story he was telling about a missionary, at prayer-meeting, so always said politely 'the clothes of his lower parts'—Amasa Derry, who carried off four prizes at the Exhibition last fall, with vegetables he stole from Ronnie Bascom's field, while Ronnie didn't get one prize—Jimmy Joe Belle, who came here from Derry Pond yesterday to get some lumber 'to beeld a henhouse for my leetle dog'—old Luke Elliott, who is such a systematic fiend that he even draws up a schedule of the year on New Year's day, and charts down all the days he means to get drunk on—and sticks to it:—they're all interesting and amusing and delightful.

"There, I've proved Mrs. Alex Sawyer to be so completely wrong that I feel quite kindly towards her, even though she did call me a puss.

"Why don't I like being called a puss, when cats are such nice things? And I like being called pussy.

********

"April 28, 19—

"Two weeks ago I sent my very best poem, Wind Song, to a magazine in New York, and to-day it came back with just a little printed slip saying, 'We regret we cannot use this contribution.'

"I feel dreadfully. I suppose I can't really write anything that is any good.

"I can. That magazine will be glad to print my pieces some day!

"I didn't tell Mr. Carpenter I sent it. I wouldn't get any sympathy from him. He says that five years from now will be time enough to begin pestering editors. But I know that some poems I've read in that very magazine were not a bit better than Wind Song.

"I feel more like writing poetry in spring than at any other time. Mr. Carpenter tells me to fight against the impulse. He says spring has been responsible for more trash than anything else in the universe of God.

"Mr. Carpenter's way of talking has a tang to it.

********

"May 1, 19—

"Dean is home. He came to his sister's yesterday and this evening he was here and we walked in the garden, up and down the sundial walk, and talked. It was splendid to have him back, with his mysterious green eyes and his nice mouth.

"We had a long conversation. We talked of Algiers and the transmigration of souls and of being cremated and of profiles—Dean says I have a good profile—'pure Greek.' I always like Dean's compliments.

"'Star o' Morning, how you have grown!' he said. 'I left a child last autumn—and I find a woman!'

"(I will be fourteen in three weeks, and I am tall for my age. Dean seems to be glad of this—quite unlike Aunt Laura who always sighs when she lengthens my dresses, and thinks children grow up too fast.)

"'So goes time by,' I said, quoting the motto on the sundial, and feeling quite sophisticated.

"'You are almost as tall as I am,' he said; and then added bitterly, 'to be sure Jarback Priest is of no very stately height.'

"I have always shrunk from referring to his shoulder in any way, but now I said,

"'Dean, please don't sneer at yourself like that—not with me, at least. I never think of you as Jarback.'

"Dean took my hand and looked right into my eyes as if he were trying to read my very soul.

"'Are you sure of that, Emily? Don't you often wish that I wasn't lame—and crooked?'

"'For your sake I do,' I answered, 'but as far as I am concerned it doesn't make a bit of difference—and never will.'

"'And never will!' Dean repeated the words emphatically. 'If I were sure of that, Emily—if I were only sure of that.'

"'You can be sure of it,' I declared quite warmly. I was vexed because he seemed to doubt it—and yet something in his expression made me feel a little uncomfortable. It suddenly made me think of the time he rescued me from the cliff on Malvern Bay and told me my life belonged to him since he had saved it. I don't like the thought of my life belonging to any one but myself—not any one, even Dean, much as I like him. And in some ways I like Dean better than any one in the world.

"When it got darker the stars came out and we studied them through Dean's splendid new field-glasses. It was very fascinating. Dean knows all about the stars—it seems to me he knows all about everything. But when I said so, he said,

"'There is one secret I do not know—I would give everything else I do know for it—one secret—perhaps I shall never know it. The way to win—the way to win—'

"'What?' I asked curiously.

"'My heart's desire,' said Dean dreamily, looking at a shimmering star that seemed to be hung on the very tip of one of the Three Princesses. 'It seems now as desirable and unobtainable as that gem-like star, Emily. But—who knows?'

"I wonder what it is Dean wants so much.

********

"May 4, 19—

"Dean brought me a lovely portfolio from Paris, and I have copied my favourite verse from The Fringed Gentian on the inside of the cover. I will read it over every day and remember my vow to 'climb the Alpine Path.' I begin to see that I will have to do a good bit of scrambling, though I once expected, I think, to soar right up to 'that far-off goal' on shining wings. Mr. Carpenter has banished that fond dream.

"'Dig in your toes and hang on with your teeth—that's the only way,' he says.

"Last night in bed I thought out some lovely titles for the books I'm going to write in the future—A Lady of High Degree, True to Faith and Vow, Oh, Rare Pale Margaret (I got that from Tennyson), The Caste of Vere de Vere (ditto) and A Kingdom by the Sea.

"Now, if I can only get ideas to match the titles!

"I am writing a story called The House Among the Rowans—also a very good title, I think. But the love talk still bothers me. Everything of the kind I write seems so stiff and silly the minute I write it down that it infuriates me. I asked Dean if he could teach me how to write it properly because he promised long ago that he would, but he said I was too young yet—said it in that mysterious way of his which always seems to convey the idea that there is so much more in his words than the mere sound of them expresses. I wish I could speak so significantly, because it makes you very interesting.

"This evening after school Dean and I began to read The Alhambra over again, sitting on the stone bench in the garden. That book always makes me feel as if I had opened a little door and stepped straight into fairyland.

"'How I would love to see the Alhambra!' I said.

"'We will go to see it sometime—together,' said Dean.

"'Oh, that would be lovely,' I cried. 'Do you think we can ever manage it, Dean?'

"Before Dean could answer I heard Teddy's whistle in Lofty John's bush—the dear little whistle of two short high notes and one long low one, that is our signal.

"'Excuse me—I must go—Teddy's calling me,' I said.

"'Must you always go when Teddy calls?' asked Dean.

"I nodded and explained,

"'He only calls like that when he wants me especially and I have promised I will always go if I possibly can.'

"'I want you especially!' said Dean. 'I came up this evening on purpose to read The Alhambra with you.'

"Suddenly I felt very unhappy. I wanted to stay with Dean dreadfully, and yet I felt as if I must go to Teddy. Dean looked at me piercingly. Then he shut up The Alhambra.

"'Go,' he said.

"I went—but things seemed spoiled, somehow.

********

"May 10, 19—

"I have been reading three books Dean lent me this week. One was like a rose garden—very pleasant, but just a little too sweet. And one was like a pine wood on a mountain—full of balsam and tang—I loved it, and yet it filled me with a sort of despair. It was written so beautifully—I can never write like that, I feel sure. And one—it was just like a pigsty. Dean gave me that one by mistake. He was very angry with himself when he found it out—angry and distressed.

"'Star—Star—I would never have given you a book like that—my confounded carelessness—forgive me. That book is a faithful picture of one world—but not your world, thank God—nor any world you will ever be a citizen of. Star, promise me you will forget that book.'

"'I'll forget it if I can,' I said.

"But I don't know if I can. It was so ugly. I have not been so happy since I read it. I feel as if my hands were soiled somehow and I couldn't wash them clean. And I have another queer feeling, as if some gate had been shut behind me, shutting me into a new world I don't quite understand or like, but through which I must travel.

"To-night I tried to write a description of Dean in my Jimmy-book of character sketches. But I didn't succeed. What I wrote seemed like a photograph—not a portrait. There is something in Dean that is beyond me.

"Dean took a picture of me the other day with his new camera, but he wasn't pleased with it.

"'It doesn't look like you,' he said, 'but of course one can never photograph starlight.'

"Then he added, quite sharply, I thought,

"'Tell that young imp of a Teddy Kent to keep your face out of his pictures. He has no business to put you into every one he draws.'

"'He doesn't!' I cried. 'Why, Teddy never made but the one picture of me—the one Aunt Nancy stole.'

"I said it quite viciously and unashamed, for I've never forgiven Aunt Nancy for keeping that picture.

"'He's got something of you in every picture,' said Dean stubbornly—'your eyes—the curve of your neck—the tilt of your head—your personality. That's the worst—I don't mind your eyes and curves so much, but I won't have that cub putting a bit of your soul into everything he draws. Probably he doesn't know he's doing it—which makes it all the worse.'

"'I don't understand you,' I said, quite haughtily. 'But Teddy is wonderful—Mr. Carpenter says so.'

"'And Emily of New Moon echoes it! Oh, the kid has talent—he'll do something some day if his morbid mother doesn't ruin his life. But let him keep his pencil and brush off my property.'

"Dean laughed as he said it. But I held my head high. I am not anybody's 'property,' not even in fun. And I never will be.

********

"May 12, 19—

"Aunt Ruth and Uncle Wallace and Uncle Oliver were all here this afternoon. I like Uncle Oliver, but I am not much fonder of Aunt Ruth and Uncle Wallace than I ever was. They held some kind of family conclave in the parlour with Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Laura. Cousin Jimmy was allowed in but I was excluded, although I feel perfectly certain that it had something to do with me. I think Aunt Ruth didn't get her own way, either, for she snubbed me continually all through supper, and said I was growing weedy! Aunt Ruth generally snubs me and Uncle Wallace patronizes me. I prefer Aunt Ruth's snubs because I don't have to look as if I liked them. I endured them to a certain point, and then the lid flew off. Aunt Ruth said to me,

"'Em'ly, don't contradict,' just as she might have spoken to a mere child. I looked her right in the eyes and said coldly,

"'Aunt Ruth, I think I am too old to be spoken to in that fashion now.'

"'You are not too old to be very rude and impertinent,' said Aunt Ruth, with a sniff, 'and if I were in Elizabeth's place I would give you a sound box on the ear, Miss.'

"I hate to be Em'ly'd and Miss'd and sniffed at! It seems to me that Aunt Ruth has all the Murray faults, and none of their virtues.

"Uncle Oliver's son Andrew came with him and is going to stay for a week. He is four years older than I am.

********

"May 19, 19—

"This is my birthday. I am fourteen years old today. I wrote a letter 'From myself at fourteen to myself at twenty-four,' sealed it up and put it away in my cupboard, to be opened on my twenty-fourth birthday. I made some predictions in it. I wonder if they will have come to pass when I open it.

"Aunt Elizabeth gave me back all Father's books today. I was so glad. It seems to me that a part of Father is in those books. His name is in each one in his own handwriting, and the notes he made on the margins. They seem like little bits of letters from him. I have been looking over them all the evening, and Father seems so near to me again, and I feel both happy and sad.

"One thing spoiled the day for me. In school, when I went up to the blackboard to work a problem, everybody suddenly began to titter. I could not imagine why. Then I discovered that some one had pinned a sheet of foolscap to my back, on which was printed in big, black letters: 'Emily Byrd Starr, Authoress of The Four-Legged Duck.' They laughed more than ever when I snatched it off and threw it in the coal-scuttle. It infuriates me when anyone ridicules my ambitions like that. I came home angry and sore. But when I had sat on the steps of the summer-house and looked at one of Cousin Jimmy's big purple pansies for five minutes all my anger went away. Nobody can keep on being angry if she looks into the heart of a pansy for a little while.

"Besides, the time will come when they will not laugh at me!

"Andrew went home yesterday. Aunt Elizabeth asked me how I liked him. She never asked me how I liked anyone before—my likings were not important enough. I suppose she is beginning to realize that I am no longer a child.

"I said I thought he was good and kind and stupid and uninteresting.

"Aunt Elizabeth was so annoyed she would not speak to me the whole evening. Why? I had to tell the truth. And Andrew is.

********

"May 21, 19—

"Old Kelly was here to-day for the first time this spring, with a load of shining new tins. He brought me a bag of candies as usual—and teased me about getting married, also as usual. But he seemed to have something on his mind, and when I went to the dairy to get him the drink of milk he had asked for, he followed me.

"'Gurrl dear,' he said mysteriously. 'I met Jarback Praste in the lane. Does he be coming here much?'

"I cocked my head at the Murray angle.

"'If you mean Mr. Dean Priest,' I said, 'he comes often. He is a particular friend of mine.'

"Old Kelly shook his head.

"'Gurrl dear—I warned ye—niver be after saying I didn't warn ye. I towld ye the day I took ye to Praste Pond niver to marry a Praste. Didn't I now?'

"'Mr. Kelly, you're too ridiculous,' I said—angry and yet feeling it was absurd to be angry with Old Jock Kelly. 'I'm not going to marry anybody. Mr. Priest is old enough to be my father, and I am just a little girl he helps in her studies.'

"Old Kelly gave his head another shake.

"'I know the Prastes, gurrl dear—and when they do be after setting their minds on a thing ye might as well try to turn the wind. This Jarback now—they tell me he's had his eye on ye iver since he fished ye up from the Malvern rocks—he's just biding his time till ye get old enough for coorting. They tell me he's an infidel, and it's well known that whin he was being christened he rached up and clawed the spectacles off av the minister. So what wud ye ixpect? I nadn't be telling ye he's lame and crooked—ye can see that for yerself. Take foolish Ould Kelly's advice and cut loose while there's time. Now, don't be looking at me like the Murrays, gurrl dear. Shure, and it's for your own good I do be spaking.'

"I walked off and left him. One couldn't argue with him over such a thing. I wish people wouldn't put such ideas into my mind. They stick there like burrs. I won't feel as comfortable with Dean for weeks now, though I know perfectly well every word Old Kelly said was nonsense.

"After Old Kelly went away I came up to my room and wrote a full description of him in a Jimmy-book.

"Ilse has got a new hat trimmed with clouds of blue tulle, and red cherries, with big blue tulle bows under the chin. I did not like it and told her so. She was furious and said I was jealous and hasn't spoken to me for two days. I thought it all over. I knew I was not jealous, but I concluded I had made a mistake. I will never again tell anyone a thing like that. It was true but it was not tactful.

"I hope Ilse will have forgiven me by to-morrow. I miss her horribly when she is offended with me. She's such a dear thing and so jolly, and splendid, when she isn't vexed.

"Teddy is a little squiffy with me, too, just now. I think it is because Geoff North walked home with me from prayer-meeting last Wednesday night. I hope that is the reason. I like to feel that I have that much power over Teddy.

"I wonder if I ought to have written that down. But it's true.

"If Teddy only knew it, I have been very unhappy and ashamed over that affair. At first, when Geoff singled me out from all the girls, I was quite proud of it. It was the very first time I had had an escort home, and Geoff is a town boy, very handsome and polished, and all the older girls in Blair Water are quite foolish about him. So I sailed away from the church door with him, feeling as if I had grown up all at once. But we hadn't gone far before I was hating him. He was so condescending. He seemed to think I was a simple little country girl who must be quite overwhelmed with the honour of his company.

"And that was true at first! That was what stung me. To think I had been such a little fool!

"He kept saying, 'Really, you surprise me,' in an affected, drawling kind of way, whenever I made a remark. And he bored me. He couldn't talk sensibly about anything. Or else he wouldn't try to with me. I was quite savage by the time we got to New Moon. And then that insufferable creature asked me to kiss him!

"I drew myself up—oh, I was Murray clear through at that moment, all right. I felt I was looking exactly like Aunt Elizabeth.

"'I do not kiss young men,' I said disdainfully.

"Geoff laughed and caught my hand.

"'Why, you little goose, what do you suppose I came home with you for?' he said.

"I pulled my hand away from him, and walked into the house. But before I did that, I did something else.

"I slapped his face!

"Then I came up to my room and cried with shame over being insulted, and having been so undignified in resenting it. Dignity is a tradition of New Moon, and I felt that I had been false to it.

"But I think I 'surprised' Geoff North in right good earnest!

********

"May 24, 19—

"Jennie Strang told me to-day that Geoff North told her brother that I was 'a regular spitfire' and he had had enough of me.

"Aunt Elizabeth has found out that Geoff came home with me, and told me to-day that I would not be 'trusted' to go alone to prayer-meeting again.

********

"May 25, 19—

"I am sitting here in my room at twilight. The window is open and the frogs are singing of something that happened very long ago. All along the middle garden walk the Gay Folk are holding up great fluted cups of ruby and gold and pearl. It is not raining now, but it rained all day—a rain scented with lilacs. I like all kinds of weather and I like rainy days—soft, misty, rainy days when the Wind Woman just shakes the tops of the spruces gently; and wild, tempestuous, streaming rainy days. I like being shut in by the rain—I like to hear it thudding on the roof, and beating on the panes and pouring off the eaves, while the Wind Woman skirls like a mad old witch in the woods, and through the garden.

"Still, if it rains when I want to go anywhere I growl just as much as anybody!

"An evening like this always makes me think of that spring Father died, three years ago, and that dear little, old house down at Maywood. I've never been back since. I wonder if anyone is living in it now. And if Adam-and-Eve and the Rooster Pine and the Praying Tree are just the same. And who is sleeping in my old room there, and if anyone is loving the little birches and playing with the Wind Woman in the spruce barrens. Just as I wrote the words 'spruce barrens' an old memory came back to me. One spring evening, when I was eight years old, I was running about the barrens playing hide-and-seek with the Wind Woman, and I found a little hollow between two spruces that was just carpeted with tiny, bright-green leaves, when everything else was still brown and faded. They were so beautiful that the flash came as I looked at them—it was the very first time it ever came to me. I suppose that is why I remember those little green leaves so distinctly. No one else remembers them—perhaps no one else ever saw them. I have forgotten other leaves, but I remember them every spring and with each remembrance I feel again the wonder-moment they gave me."

Chapter 3 In the Watches of the Night

Some of us can recall the exact time in which we reached certain milestones on life's road—the wonderful hour when we passed from childhood to girlhood—the enchanted, beautiful—or perhaps the shattering and horrible—hour when girlhood was suddenly womanhood—the chilling hour when we faced the fact that youth was definitely behind us—the peaceful, sorrowful hour of the realization of age. Emily Starr never forgot the night when she passed the first milestone, and left childhood behind her for ever.

Every experience enriches life and the deeper such an experience, the greater the richness it brings. That night of horror and mystery and strange delight ripened her mind and heart like the passage of years.

It was a night early in July. The day had been one of intense heat. Aunt Elizabeth had suffered so much from it that she decided she would not go to prayer-meeting. Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy and Emily went. Before leaving Emily asked and obtained Aunt Elizabeth's permission to go home with Ilse Burnley after meeting, and spend the night. This was a rare treat. Aunt Elizabeth did not approve of all-night absences as a general thing.

But Dr. Burnley had to be away, and his housekeeper was temporarily laid up with a broken ankle. Ilse had asked Emily to come over for the night, and Emily was to be permitted to go. Ilse did not know this—hardly hoped for it, in fact—but was to be informed at prayer-meeting. If Ilse had not been late Emily would have told her before meeting "went in," and the mischances of the night would probably have been averted; but Ilse, as usual, was late, and everything else followed in course.

Emily sat in the Murray pew, near the top of the church by the window that looked out into the grove of fir and maple that surrounded the little white church. This prayer-meeting was not the ordinary weekly sprinkling of a faithful few. It was a "special meeting," held in view of the approaching communion Sunday, and the speaker was not young, earnest Mr. Johnson, to whom Emily always liked to listen, in spite of her blunder at the Ladies' Aid Supper but an itinerant evangelist lent by Shrewsbury for one night. His fame brought out a churchful of people, but most of the audience declared afterwards that they would much rather have heard their own Mr. Johnson. Emily looked at him with her level, critical gaze, and decided that he was oily and unspiritual. She heard him through a prayer, and thought,

"Giving God good advice, and abusing the devil isn't praying."

She listened to his discourse for a few minutes and made up her mind that he was blatant and illogical and sensational, and then proceeded, coolly, to shut mind and ears to him and disappear into dreamland—something which she could generally do at will when anxious to escape from discordant realities.

Outside, moonlight was still sifting in a rain of silver through the firs and maples, though an ominous bank of cloud was making up in the north-west, and repeated rumblings of thunder came on the silent air of the hot summer night—a windless night for the most part, though occasionally a sudden breath that seemed more like a sigh than a breeze brushed through the trees, and set their shadows dancing in weird companies. There was something strange about the night in its mingling of placid, accustomed beauty with the omens of rising storm, that intrigued Emily, and she spent half the time of the evangelist's address in composing a mental description of it for her Jimmy-book. The rest of the time she studied such of the audience as were within her range of vision.

This was something that Emily never wearied of, in public assemblages, and the older she grew the more she liked it. It was fascinating to study those varied faces, and speculate on the histories written in mysterious hieroglyphics over them. They had all their inner, secret lives, those men and women, known to no one but themselves and God. Others could only guess at them, and Emily loved this game of guessing. At times it seemed veritably to her that it was more than guessing—that in some intense moments she could pass into their souls and read therein hidden motives and passions that were, perhaps, a mystery even to their possessors. It was never easy for Emily to resist the temptation to do this when the power came, although she never yielded to it without an uneasy feeling that she was committing trespass. It was quite a different thing from soaring on the wings of fancy into an ideal world of creation—quite different from the exquisite, unearthly beauty of "the flash;" neither of these gave her any moments of pause or doubt. But to slip on tiptoe through some momentarily unlatched door, as it were, and catch a glimpse of masked, unuttered, unutterable things in the hearts and souls of others, was something that always brought, along with its sense of power, a sense of the forbidden—a sense even of sacrilege. Yet Emily did not know if she would ever be able to resist the allure of it—she had always peered through the door and seen the things before she realized that she was doing it. They were nearly always terrible things. Secrets are generally terrible. Beauty is not often hidden—only ugliness and deformity.

"Elder Forsyth would have been a persecutor in old times," she thought. "He has the face of one. This very minute he is loving the preacher because he is describing hell, and Elder Forsyth thinks all his enemies will go there. Yes, that is why he is looking pleased. I think Mrs. Bowes flies off on a broomstick o' nights. She looks it. Four hundred years ago she would have been a witch, and Elder Forsyth would have burned her at the stake. She hates everybody—it must be terrible to hate everybody—to have your soul full of hatred. I must try to describe such a person in my Jimmy-book. I wonder if hate has driven all love out of her soul, or if there is a little bit left in it for any one or any thing. If there is it might save her. That would be a good idea for a story. I must jot it down before I go to bed—I'll borrow a bit of paper from Ilse. No—here's a bit in my hymn-book. I'll write it now.

"I wonder what all these people would say if they were suddenly asked what they wanted most, and had to answer truthfully. I wonder how many of these husbands and wives would like a change? Chris Farrar and Mrs. Chris would—everybody knows that. I can't think why I feel so sure that James Beatty and his wife would, too. They seem to be quite contented with each other—but once I saw her look at him when she did not know anyone was watching—oh, it seemed to me I saw right into her soul, through her eyes, and she hated him—and feared him. She is sitting there now, beside him, little and thin and dowdy, and her face is grey and her hair is faded—but she, herself, is one red flame of rebellion. What she wants most is to be free from him—or just to strike back once. That would satisfy her.

"There's Dean—I wonder what brought him to prayer-meeting? His face is very solemn, but his eyes are mocking Mr. Sampson—what's that Mr. Sampson's saying?—oh, something about the wise virgins. I hate the wise virgins—I think they were horribly selfish. They might have given the poor foolish ones a little oil. I don't believe Jesus meant to praise them any more than He meant to praise the unjust steward—I think he was just trying to warn foolish people that they must not be careless, and foolish, because if they were, prudent, selfish folks would never help them out. I wonder if it's very wicked to feel that I'd rather be outside with the foolish ones trying to help and comfort them, than inside feasting with the wise ones. It would be more interesting, too.

"There's Mrs. Kent and Teddy. Oh, she wants something terribly—I don't know what it is but it's something she can never get, and the hunger for it goads her night and day. That is why she holds Teddy so closely—I know. But I don't know what it is that makes her so different from other women. I can never get a peep into her soul—she shuts every one out—the door is never unlatched.

"What do I want most? It is to climb the Alpine Path to the very top,

 

"And write upon its shining scroll
A woman's humble name.

 

"We're all hungry. We all want some bread of life—but Mr. Sampson can't give it to us. I wonder what he wants most? His soul is so muggy I can't see into it. He has a lot of sordid wants—he doesn't want anything enough to dominate him. Mr. Johnson wants to help people and preach truth—he really does. And Aunt Janey wants most of all to see the whole heathen world Christianized. Her soul hasn't any dark wishes in it. I know what Mr. Carpenter wants—his one lost chance again. Katherine Morris wants her youth back—she hates us younger girls because we are young. Old Malcolm Strang just wants to live—just one more year—always just one more year—just to live—just not to die. It must be horrible to have nothing to live for except just to escape dying. Yet he believes in heaven—he thinks he will go there. If he could see my flash just once he wouldn't hate the thought of dying so, poor old man. And Mary Strang wants to die—before something terrible she is afraid of tortures her to death. They say it's cancer. There's Mad Mr. Morrison up in the gallery—we all know what he wants—to find his Annie. Tom Sibley wants the moon, I think—and knows he can never get it—that's why people say he's not all there. Amy Crabbe wants Max Terry to come back to her—nothing else matters to her.

"I must write all these things down in my Jimmy-book to-morrow. They are fascinating—but, after all, I like writing of beautiful things better. Only—these things have a tang beautiful things don't have some way. Those woods out there—how wonderful they are in their silver and shadow. The moonlight is doing strange things to the tombstones—it makes even the ugly ones beautiful. But it's terribly hot—it is smothering here—and those thunder-growls are coming nearer. I hope Ilse and I will get home before the storm breaks. Oh, Mr. Sampson, Mr. Sampson, God isn't an angry God—you don't know anything about Him if you say that—He's sorrowful, I'm sure, when we're foolish and wicked, but He doesn't fly into tantrums. Your God and Ellen Greene's God are exactly alike. I'd like to get up and tell you so, but it isn't a Murray tradition to sass back in church. You make God ugly—and He's beautiful. I hate you for making God ugly, you fat little man."

Whereupon Mr. Sampson, who had several times noted Emily's intent, probing gaze, and thought he was impressing her tremendously with a sense of her unsaved condition, finished with a final urgent whoop of entreaty, and sat down. The audience in the close, oppressive atmosphere of the crowded, lamplit church gave an audible sigh of relief, and scarcely waited for the hymn and benediction before crowding out to purer air. Emily, caught in the current, and parted from Aunt Laura, was swept out by way of the choir door to the left of the pulpit. It was some time before she could disentangle herself from the throng and hurry around to the front where she expected to meet Ilse. Here was another dense, though rapidly thinning crowd, in which she found no trace of Ilse. Suddenly Emily noticed that she did not have her hymn-book. Hastily she dashed back to the choir door. She must have left her hymn-book in the pew—and it would never do to leave it there. In it she had placed for safe-keeping a slip of paper on which she had furtively jotted down some fragmentary notes during the last hymn—a rather biting description of scrawny Miss Potter in the choir—a couple of satiric sentences regarding Mr. Sampson himself—and a few random fancies which she desired most of all to hide because there was in them something of dream and vision which would have made the reading of them by alien eyes a sacrilege.

Old Jacob Banks, the sexton, a little blind and more than a little deaf, was turning out the lamps as she went in. He had reached the two on the wall behind the pulpit. Emily caught her hymn-book from the rack—her slip of paper was not in it. By the faint gleam of light, as Jacob Banks turned out the last lamp, she saw it on the floor, under the seat of the pew in front. She kneeled down and reached after it. As she did so Jacob went out and locked the choir door. Emily did not notice his going—the church was still faintly illuminated by the moon that as yet outrode the rapidly climbing thunder-heads. That was not the right slip of paper after all—where could it be?—oh, here, at last. She caught it up and ran to the door which would not open.

For the first time Emily realized that Jacob Banks had gone—that she was alone in the church. She wasted time trying to open the door—then in calling Mr. Banks. Finally she ran down the aisle into the front porch. As she did so she heard the last buggy turn gridingly at the gate and drive away: at the same time the moon was suddenly swallowed up by the black clouds and the church was engulfed in darkness—close, hot, smothering, almost tangible darkness. Emily screamed in sudden panic—beat on the door—frantically twisted the handle—screamed again. Oh, everybody could not have gone—surely somebody would hear her! "Aunt Laura"—"Cousin Jimmy"—"Ilse"—then finally in a wail of despair—"Oh, Teddy—Teddy!"

A blue-white stream of lightning swept the porch, followed by a crash of thunder. One of the worst storms in Blair Water annals had begun—and Emily Starr was locked alone in the dark church in the maple woods—she, who had always been afraid of thunderstorms with a reasonless, instinctive fear which she could never banish and only partially control.

She sank, quivering, on a step of the gallery stairs, and huddled there in a heap. Surely some one would come back when it was discovered she was missing. But would it be discovered? Who would miss her? Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy would suppose she was with Ilse, as had been arranged. Ilse, who had evidently gone, believing that Emily was not coming with her, would suppose she had gone home to New Moon. Nobody knew where she was—nobody would come back for her. She must stay here in this horrible, lonely, black, echoing place—for now the church she knew so well and loved for its old associations of Sunday-school and song and homely faces of dear friends had become a ghostly, alien place full of haunting terrors. There was no escape. The windows could not be opened. The church was ventilated by transom-like panes near the top of them, which were opened and shut by pulling a wire. She could not get up to them, and she could not have got through them if she had.

She cowered down on the step, shuddering from head to foot. By now the thunder and lightning were almost incessant: rain blew against the windows, not in drops but sheets, and intermittent volleys of hail bombarded them. The wind had risen suddenly with the storm and shrieked around the church. It was not her old dear friend of childhood, the bat-winged, misty "Wind Woman," but a legion of yelling witches. "The Prince of the Power of the Air rules the wind," she had heard Mad Mr. Morrison say once. Why should she think of Mad Mr. Morrison now? How the windows rattled as if demon riders of the storm were shaking them! She had heard a wild tale of some one hearing the organ play in the empty church one night several years ago. Suppose it began playing now! No fancy seemed too grotesque or horrible to come true. Didn't the stairs creak? The blackness between the lightnings was so intense that it looked thick. Emily was frightened of it touching her and buried her face in her lap.

Presently, however, she got a grip on herself and began to reflect that she was not living up to Murray traditions. Murrays were not supposed to go to pieces like this. Murrays were not foolishly panicky in thunder-storms. Those old Murrays sleeping in the private graveyard across the pond would have scorned her as a degenerate descendant. Aunt Elizabeth would have said that it was the Starr coming out in her. She must be brave: after all, she had lived through worse hours than this—the night she had eaten of Lofty John's poisoned apple*—the afternoon she had fallen over the rocks of Malvern Bay. This had come so suddenly on her that she had been in the throes of terror before she could brace herself against it. She must pick up. Nothing dreadful was going to happen to her—nothing worse than staying all night in the church. In the morning she could attract the attention of some one passing. She had been here over an hour now, and nothing had happened to her—unless indeed her hair had turned white, as she understood hair sometimes did. There had been such a funny, crinkly, crawly feeling at the roots of it at times. Emily held out her long braid, ready for the next flash. When it came she saw that her hair was still black. She sighed with relief and began to chirk up. The storm was passing. The thunder-peals were growing fainter and fewer, though the rain continued to fall and the wind to drive and shriek around the church, whining through the big keyhole eerily.

 

* See Emily of New Moon.

 

Emily straightened her shoulders and cautiously let down her feet to a lower step. She thought she had better try to get back into the church. If another cloud came up, the steeple might be struck—steeples were always getting struck, she remembered: it might come crashing down on the, porch right over her. She would go in and sit down in the Murray pew: she would be cool and sensible and collected: she was ashamed of her panic—but it had been terrible.

All around her now was a soft, heavy darkness, still with that same eerie sensation of something you could touch, born perhaps of the heat and humidity of the July night. The porch was so small and narrow—she would not feel so smothered and oppressed in the church.

She put out her hand to grasp a stair rail and pull herself to her cramped feet. Her hand touched—not the stair rail—merciful heavens, what was it?—something hairy—Emily's shriek of horror froze on her lips—padding footsteps passed down the steps beside her; a flash of lightning came and at the bottom of the steps was a huge black dog, which had turned and was looking up at her before he was blotted out in the returning darkness. Even then for a moment she saw his eyes blazing redly at her, like a fiend's.

Emily's hair roots began to crawl and crinkle again—a very large, very cold caterpillar began to creep slowly up her spine. She could not have moved a muscle had life depended on it. She could not even cry out. The only thing she could think of at first was the horrible demon hound of the Manx Castle in Peveril of the Peak. For a few minutes her terror was so great that it turned her physically sick. Then, with an effort which was unchild-like in its determination—I think it was at that moment Emily wholly ceased to be a child—she recovered her self-control. She would not yield to fear—she set her teeth and clenched her trembling hands; she would be brave—sensible. That was only a commonplace Blair Water dog which had followed its owner—some rapscallion boy—into the gallery, and got itself left behind. The thing had happened before. A flash of lightning showed her that the porch was empty. Evidently the dog had gone into the church. Emily decided that she would stay where she was. She had recovered from her panic, but she did not want to feel the sudden touch of a cold nose or a hairy flank in the darkness. She could never forget the awfulness of the moment when she had touched the creature.

It must be all of twelve o'clock now—it had been ten when the meeting came out. The noise of the storm had for the most part died away. The drive and shriek of the wind came occasionally, but between its gusts there was a silence, broken only by the diminishing raindrops. Thunder still muttered faintly and lightning came at frequent intervals, but of a paler, gentler flame—not the rending glare that had seemed to wrap the very building in intolerable blue radiance, and scorch her eye. Gradually her heart began to beat normally. The power of rational thought returned. She did not like her predicament, but she began to find dramatic possibilities in it. Oh, what a chapter for her diary—or her Jimmy-book—and, beyond it, for that novel she would write some day! It was a situation expressly shaped for the heroine—who must, of course, be rescued by the hero. Emily began constructing the scene—adding to it—intensifying it—hunting for words to express it. This was rather—interesting—after all. Only she wished she knew just where the dog was. How weirdly the pale lightning gleamed on the gravestones which she could see through the porch window opposite her! How strange the familiar valley beyond looked in the recurrent illuminations! How the wind moaned and sighed and complained—but it was her own Wind Woman again. The Wind Woman was one of her childish fancies that she had carried over into maturity, and it comforted her now, with a sense of ancient companionship. The wild riders of the storm were gone—her fairy friend had come back. Emily gave a sigh that was almost of contentment. The worst was over—and really, hadn't she behaved pretty well? She began to feel quite self-respecting again.

All at once Emily knew she was not alone!

How she knew it she could not have told. She had heard nothing—seen nothing—felt nothing: and yet she knew, beyond all doubt or dispute, that there was a Presence in the darkness above her on the stairs.

She turned and looked up. It was horrible to look, but it was less horrible to feel that—Something—was in front of you than that it was behind you. She stared with wildly dilated eyes into the darkness, but she could see nothing. Then—she heard a low laugh above her—a laugh that almost made her heart stop beating—the very dreadful, inhuman laughter of the unsound in mind. She did not need the lightning flash that came then to tell her that Mad Mr. Morrison was somewhere on the stairs above her. But it came—she saw him—she felt as if she were sinking in some icy gulf of coldness—she could not even scream.

The picture of him, etched on her brain by the lightning, never left her. He was crouched five steps above her, with his gray head thrust forward. She saw the frenzied gleam of his eyes—the fang-like yellow teeth exposed in a horrible smile—the long, thin, blood-red hand outstretched towards her, almost touching her shoulder.

Sheer panic shattered Emily's trance. She bounded to her feet with a piercing scream of terror.

"Teddy! Teddy! Save me!" she shrieked madly.

She did not know why she called for Teddy—she did not even realize that she had called him—she only remembered it afterwards, as one might recall the waking shriek in a nightmare—she only knew that she must have help—that she would die if that awful hand touched her. It must not touch her.

She made a mad spring down the steps, rushed into the church, and up the aisle. She must hide before the next flash came—but not in the Murray pew. He might look for her there. She dived into one of the middle pews and crouched down in its corner on the floor. Her body was bathed in an ice-cold perspiration. She was wholly in the grip of uncontrollable terror. All she could think of was that it must not touch her—that blood-red hand of the mad old man.

Moments passed that seemed like years. Presently she heard footsteps—footsteps that came and went yet seemed to approach her slowly. Suddenly she knew what he was doing. He was going into every pew, not waiting for the lightning, to feel about for her. He was looking for her, then—she had heard that sometimes he followed young girls, thinking they were Annie. If he caught them he held them with one hand and stroked their hair and faces fondly with the other, mumbling foolish, senile endearments. He had never harmed anyone, but he had never let anyone go until she was rescued by some other person. It was said that Mary Paxton of Derry Pond had never been quite the same again; her nerves never recovered from the shock.

Emily knew that it was only a question of time before he would reach the pew where she crouched—feeling about with those hands! All that kept her senses in her frozen body was the thought that if she lost consciousness those hands would touch her—hold her—caress her. The next lightning flash showed him entering the adjoining pew. Emily sprang up and out and rushed to the other side of the church. She hid again: he would search her out, but she could again elude him: this might go on all night: a madman's strength would outlast hers: at last she might fall exhausted and he would pounce on her.

For what seemed hours to Emily, this mad game of hide-and-seek lasted. It was in reality about half an hour. She was hardly a rational creature at all, any more than her demented pursuer. She was merely a crouching, springing, shrieking thing of horror. Time after time he hunted her out with his cunning, implacable patience. The last time she was near one of the porch doors, and in desperation she sprang through it and slammed it in his face. With the last ounce of her strength she tried to hold the knob from turning in his grasp. And as she strove she heard—was she dreaming?—Teddy's voice calling to her from the steps outside the outer door.

"Emily—Emily—are you there?"

She did not know how he had come—she did not wonder—she only knew he was there!

"Teddy, I'm locked in the church!" she shrieked—"and Mad Mr. Morrison is here—oh—quick—quick—save me—save me!"

"The key of the door is hanging up in there on a nail at the right side!" shouted Teddy. "Can you get it and unlock the door? If you can't I'll smash the porch window."

The clouds broke at that moment and the porch was filled with moonlight. In it she saw plainly the big key, hanging high on the wall beside the front door. She dashed at it and caught it as Mad Mr. Morrison wrenched upon the door and sprang into the porch, his dog behind him. Emily unlocked the outer door and stumbled out into Teddy's arms just in time to elude that outstretched, blood-red hand. She heard Mad Mr. Morrison give a wild, eerie shriek of despair as she escaped him.

Sobbing, shaking, she clung to Teddy.

"Oh, Teddy, take me away—take me quick—oh, don't let him touch me, Teddy—don't let him touch me!"

Teddy swung her behind him and faced Mad Mr. Morrison on the stone step.

"How dare you frighten her so?" he demanded angrily.

Mad Mr. Morrison smiled deprecatingly in the moonlight. All at once he was not wild or violent—only a heart-broken old man who sought his own.

"I want Annie," he mumbled. "Where is Annie? I thought I had found her in there. I only wanted to find my beautiful Annie."

"Annie isn't here," said Teddy, tightening his hold on Emily's cold little hand.

"Can you tell me where Annie is?" entreated Mad Mr. Morrison, wistfully. "Can you tell me where my dark-haired Annie is?"

Teddy was furious with Mad Mr. Morrison for frightening Emily, but the old man's piteous entreaty touched him—and the artist in him responded to the values of the picture presented against the background of the white, moonlit church. He thought he would like to paint Mad Mr. Morrison as he stood there, tall and gaunt, in his gray "duster" coat, with his long white hair and beard, and the ageless quest in his hollow, sunken eyes.

"No—no—I don't know where she is," he said gently, "but I think you will find her sometime."

Mad Mr. Morrison sighed.

"Oh, yes. Sometime I will overtake her. Come, my dog, we will seek her."

Followed by his old black dog he went down the steps, across the green and down the long, wet, tree-shadowed road. So going, he passed out of Emily's life. She never saw Mad Mr. Morrison again. But she looked after him understandingly, and forgave him. To himself he was not the repulsive old man he seemed to her; he was a gallant young lover seeking his lost and lovely bride. The pitiful beauty of his quest intrigued her, even in the shaking reaction from her hour of agony.

"Poor Mr. Morrison," she sobbed, as Teddy half led, half carried her to one of the old flat gravestones at the side of the church.

They sat there until Emily recovered composure and managed to tell her tale—or the outlines of it. She felt she could never tell—perhaps not even write in a Jimmy-book—the whole of its racking horror. That was beyond words.

"And to think," she sobbed, "that the key was there all the time. I never knew it."

"Old Jacob Banks always locks the front door with its big key on the inside, and then hangs it up on that nail," said Teddy. "He locks the choir door with a little key, which he takes home. He has always done that since the time, three years ago, when he lost the big key and was weeks before he found it."

Suddenly Emily awoke to the strangeness of Teddy's coming.

"How did you happen to come, Teddy?"

"Why, I heard you call me," he said. "You did call me, didn't you?"

"Yes," said Emily, slowly, "I called for you when I saw Mad Mr. Morrison first. But, Teddy, you couldn't have heard me—you couldn't. The Tansy Patch is a mile from here."

"I did hear you," said Teddy, stubbornly. "I was asleep and it woke me up. You called 'Teddy, Teddy, save me'—it was your voice as plain as I ever heard it in my life. I got right up and hurried on my clothes and came here as fast as I could."

"How did you know I was here?"

"Why—I don't know," said Teddy confusedly. "I didn't stop to think—I just seemed to know you were in the church when I heard you calling me, and I must get here as quick as I could. It's—it's all—funny," he concluded lamely.

"It's—it's—it frightens me a little." Emily shivered. "Aunt Elizabeth says I have second sight—you remember Ilse's mother? Mr. Carpenter says I'm psychic—I don't know just what that means, but think I'd rather not be it."

She shivered again. Teddy thought she was cold and, having nothing else to put around her, put his arm—somewhat tentatively, since Murray pride and Murray dignity might be outraged. Emily was not cold in body, but a little chill had blown over her soul. Something supernatural—some mystery she could not understand—had brushed too near her in that strange summoning. Involuntarily she nestled a little closer to Teddy, acutely conscious of the boyish tenderness she sensed behind the aloofness of his boyish shyness. Suddenly she knew that she liked Teddy better than anybody—better even than Aunt Laura or Ilse or Dean.

Teddy's arm tightened a little.

"Anyhow, I'm glad I got here in time," he said. "If I hadn't that crazy old man might have frightened you to death."

They sat so for a few minutes in silence. Everything seemed very wonderful and beautiful—and a little unreal. Emily thought she must be in a dream, or in one of her own wonder tales. The storm had passed, and the moon was shining clearly once more. The cool fresh air was threaded with beguiling voices—the fitful voice of raindrops falling from the shaken boughs of the maple woods behind them—the freakish voice of the Wind Woman around the white church—the far-off, intriguing voice of the sea—and, still finer and rarer, the little, remote, detached voices of the night. Emily heard them all, more with the ears of her soul than of her body, it seemed, as she had never heard them before. Beyond were fields and groves and roads, pleasantly suggestive and elusive, as if brooding over elfish secrets in the moonlight. Silver-white daisies were nodding and swaying all over the graveyard above graves remembered and graves forgotten. An owl laughed delightfully to itself in the old pine. At the magical sound Emily's mystic flash swept over her, swaying her like a strong wind. She felt as if she and Teddy were all alone in a wonderful new world, created for themselves only out of youth and mystery and delight. They seemed, themselves, to be part of the faint, cool fragrance of the night, of the owl's laughter, of the daisies blowing in the shadowy air.

As for Teddy, he was thinking that Emily looked very sweet in the pale moonshine, with her fringed, mysterious eyes and the little dark love-curls clinging to her ivory neck. He tightened his arm a little more—and still Murray pride and Murray dignity made not a particle of protest.

"Emily," whispered Teddy, "you're the sweetest girl in the world."

The words have been said so often by so many millions of lads to so many millions of lasses, that they ought to be worn to tatters. But when you hear them for the first time, in some magic hour of your teens, they are as new and fresh and wondrous as if they had just drifted over the hedges of Eden. Madam, whoever you are, and however old you are, be honest, and admit that the first time you heard those words on the lips of some shy sweetheart, was the great moment of your life. Emily thrilled, from the crown of her head to the toes of her slippered feet, with a sensation of hitherto unknown and almost terrifying sweetness—a sensation that was to sense what her "flash" was to spirit. It is quite conceivable and not totally reprehensible that the next thing that happened might have been a kiss. Emily thought Teddy was going to kiss her: Teddy knew he was: and the odds are that he wouldn't have had his face slapped as Geoff North had had.

But it was not to be. A shadow that had slipped in at the gate and drifted across the wet grass, halted beside them, and touched Teddy's shoulder, just as he bent his glossy black head. He looked up, startled. Emily looked up. Mrs. Kent was standing there, bareheaded, her scarred face clear in the moonlight, looking at them tragically.

Emily and Teddy both stood up so suddenly that they seemed veritably to have been jerked to their feet. Emily's fairy world vanished like a dissolving bubble. She was in a different world altogether—an absurd, ridiculous one. Yes, ridiculous. Everything had suddenly become ridiculous. Could anything be more ridiculous than to be caught here with Teddy, by his mother, at two o'clock at night—what was that horrid word she had lately heard for the first time?—oh, yes, spooning—that was it—spooning on George Horton's eighty-year-old tombstone? That was how other people would look at it. How could a thing be so beautiful one moment and so absurd the next? She was one horrible scorch of shame from head to feet. And Teddy—she knew Teddy was feeling like a fool.

To Mrs. Kent it was not ridiculous—it was dreadful. To her abnormal jealousy the incident had the most sinister significance. She looked at Emily with her hollow, hungry eyes.

"So you are trying to steal my son from me," she said. "He is all I have and you are trying to steal him."

"Oh, Mother, for goodness' sake, be sensible!" muttered Teddy.

"He—he tells me to be sensible," Mrs. Kent echoed tragically to the moon. "Sensible!"

"Yes, sensible," said Teddy angrily. "There's nothing to make such a fuss about. Emily was locked in the church by accident and Mad Mr. Morrison was there, too, and nearly frightened her to death. I came to let her out and we were sitting here for a few minutes until she got over her fright and was able to walk home. That's all."

"How did you know she was here?" demanded Mrs. Kent.

How indeed! This was a hard question to answer. The truth sounded like a silly, stupid invention. Nevertheless, Teddy told it.

"She called me," he said bluntly.

"And you heard her—a mile away. Do you expect me to believe that?" said Mrs. Kent, laughing wildly.

Emily had by this time recovered her poise. At no time in her life was Emily Byrd Starr ever disconcerted for long. She drew herself up proudly and in the dim light, in spite of her Starr features, she looked much as Elizabeth Murray must have looked thirty years before.

"Whether you believe it or not it is true, Mrs. Kent," she said haughtily. "I am not stealing your son—I do not want him—he can go."

"I'm going to take you home first, Emily," said Teddy. He folded his arms and threw back his head and tried to look as stately as Emily. He felt that he was a dismal failure at it, but it imposed on Mrs. Kent. She began to cry.

"Go—go," she said. "Go to her—desert me."

Emily was thoroughly angry now. If this irrational woman persisted in making a scene, very well: a scene she should have.

"I won't let him take me home," she said, freezingly. "Teddy, go with your mother."

"Oh, you command him, do you? He must do as you tell him, must he?" cried Mrs. Kent, who now seemed to lose all control of herself. Her tiny form was shaken with violent sobs. She wrung her hands.

"He shall choose for himself," she cried. "He shall go with you—or come with me. Choose, Teddy, for yourself. You shall not do her bidding. Choose!"

She was fiercely dramatic again, as she lifted her hand and pointed it at poor Teddy.

Teddy was feeling as miserable and impotently angry as any male creature does when two women are quarrelling about him in his presence. He wished himself a thousand miles away. What a mess to be in—and to be made ridiculous like this before Emily! Why on earth couldn't his mother behave like other boys' mothers? Why must she be so intense and exacting? He knew Blair Water gossip said she was "a little touched." He did not believe that. But—but—well, in short here was a mess. You came back to that every time. What on earth was he to do? If he took Emily home he knew his mother would cry and pray for days. On the other hand to desert Emily after her dreadful experience in the church, and leave her to traverse that lonely road alone was unthinkable. But Emily now dominated the situation. She was very angry, with the icy anger of old Hugh Murray that did not dissipate itself in idle bluster, but went straight to the point.

"You are a foolish, selfish woman," she said, "and you will make your son hate you."

"Selfish! You call me selfish," sobbed Mrs. Kent. "I live only for Teddy—he is all I have to live for."

"You are selfish." Emily was standing straight: her eyes had gone black: her voice was cutting: "the Murray look" was on her face, and in the pale moonlight it was a rather fearsome thing. She wondered, as she spoke, how she knew certain things. But shedid know them. "You think you love him—it is only yourself you love. You are determined to spoil his life. You won't let him go to Shrewsbury because it will hurt you to let him go away from you. You have let your jealousy of everything he cares for eat your heart out, and master you. You won't bear a little pain for his sake. You are not a mother at all. Teddy has a great talent—every one says so. You ought to be proud of him—you ought to give him his chance. But you won't—and some day he will hate you for it—yes, he will."

"Oh, no, no," moaned Mrs. Kent. She held up her hands as if to ward off a blow and shrank back against Teddy. "Oh, you are cruel—cruel. You don't know what I've suffered—you don't know what ache is always at my heart. He is all I have—all. I have nothing else—not even a memory. You don't understand. I can't—I can't give him up."

"If you let your jealousy ruin his life you will lose him," said Emily inexorably. She had always been afraid of Mrs. Kent. Now she was suddenly no longer afraid of her—she knew she would never be afraid of her again. "You hate everything he cares for—you hate his friends and his dog and his drawing. You know you do. But you can't keep him that way, Mrs. Kent. And you will find out when it is too late. Good night, Teddy. Thank you again for coming to my rescue. Good night, Mrs. Kent."

Emily's good night was very final. She turned and stalked across the green without another glance, holding her head high. Down the wet road she marched—at first very angry—then, as anger ebbed, very tired—oh, horribly tired. She discovered that she was fairly shaking with weariness. The emotions of the night had exhausted her, and now—what to do? She did not like the idea of going home to New Moon. Emily felt that she could never face outraged Aunt Elizabeth if the various scandalous doings of this night should be discovered. She turned in at the gate of Dr. Burnley's house. His doors were never locked. Emily slipped into the front hall as the dawn began to whiten in the sky and curled up on the lounge behind the staircase. There was no use in waking Ilse. She would tell her the whole story in the morning and bind her to secrecy—all, at least, except one thing Teddy had said, and the episode of Mrs. Kent. One was too beautiful, and the other too disagreeable to be talked about. Of course, Mrs. Kent wasn't like other women and there was no use in feeling too badly about it. Nevertheless, she had wrecked and spoiled a frail, beautiful something—she had blotched with absurdity a moment that should have been eternally lovely. And she had, of course, made poor Teddy feel like an ass. That, in the last analysis, was what Emily really could not forgive.

As she drifted off to sleep she recalled drowsily the events of that bewildering night—her imprisonment in the lonely church—the horror of touching the dog—the worse horror of Mad Mr. Morrison's pursuit—her rapture of relief at Teddy's voice—the brief little moonlit idyll in the graveyard—of all places for an idyll!—the tragi-comic advent of poor morbid, jealous Mrs. Kent.

"I hope I wasn't too hard on her," thought Emily as she drifted into slumber. "If I was I'm sorry. I'll have to write it down as a bad deed in my diary. I feel somehow as if I'd grown up all at once tonight—yesterday seems years away. But what a chapter it will make for my diary. I'll write it all down—all but Teddy's saying I was the sweetest girl in the world. That's too—dear—to write. I'll—just—remember it."

Chapter 4 "As Ithers See Us"

Emily had finished mopping up the kitchen floor at New Moon and was absorbed in sanding it in the beautiful and complicated "herring-bone pattern" which was one of the New Moon traditions, having been invented, so it was said, by great-great-grandmother of "Here I stay" fame. Aunt Laura had taught Emily how to do it and Emily was proud of her skill. Even Aunt Elizabeth had condescended to say that Emily sanded the famous pattern very well, and when Aunt Elizabeth praised, further comment was superfluous. New Moon was the only place in Blair Water where the old custom of sanding the floor was kept up; other housewives had long ago begun to use "new-fangled" devices and patent cleaners for making their floors white. But Dame Elizabeth Murray would none of such; as long as she reigned at New Moon so long should candles burn and sanded floors gleam whitely. Aunt Elizabeth had exasperated Emily somewhat by insisting that the latter should put on Aunt Laura's old "Mother Hubbard" while she was scrubbing the floor. A "Mother Hubbard," it may be necessary to explain to those of this generation, was a loose and shapeless garment which served principally as a sort of morning gown and was liked in its day because it was cool and easily put on. Aunt Elizabeth, it is quite unnecessary to say, disapproved entirely of Mother Hubbards. She considered them the last word in slovenliness, and Laura was never permitted to have another one. But the old one, though its original pretty lilac tint had faded to a dingy white, was still too "good" to be banished to the rag bag; and it was this which Emily had been told to put on.

Emily detested Mother Hubbards as heartily as Aunt Elizabeth herself did. They were worse, she considered, even than the hated "baby aprons" of her first summer at New Moon. She knew she looked ridiculous in Aunt Laura's Mother Hubbard, which came to her feet, and hung in loose, unbeautiful lines from her thin young shoulders; and Emily had a horror of being "ridiculous." She had once shocked Aunt Elizabeth by coolly telling her that she would "rather be bad than ridiculous." Emily had scrubbed and sanded with one eye on the door, ready to run if any stranger loomed up while she had on that hideous wrapper.

It was not, as Emily very well knew, a Murray tradition to "run." At New Moon you stood your ground, no matter what you had on—the presupposition being that you were always neatly and properly habited for the occupation of the moment. Emily recognized the propriety of this, yet was, nevertheless, foolish and young enough to feel that she would die of shame if seen by anyone in Aunt Laura's Mother Hubbard. It was neat—it was clean—but it was "ridiculous." There you were!

Just as Emily finished sanding and turned to place her can of sand in the niche under the kitchen mantel, where it had been kept from time immemorial, she heard strange voices in the kitchen yard. A hasty glimpse through the window revealed to her the owners of the voices—Miss Beulah Potter, and Mrs. Ann Cyrilla Potter, calling, no doubt, in regard to the projected Ladies' Aid Social. They were coming to the back door as was the Blair Water custom when running in to see your neighbours, informally or on business; they were already past the gay platoons of hollyhocks with which Cousin Jimmy had flanked the stone path to the dairy, and of all the people in Blair Water and out of it they were the two whom Emily would least want to see her in any ridiculous plight whatever. Without stopping to think, she darted into the boot closet and shut the door.

Mrs. Ann Cyrilla knocked twice at the kitchen door, but Emily did not budge. She knew Aunt Laura was weaving in the garret—she could hear the dull thud of the treadles overhead—but she thought Aunt Elizabeth was concocting pies in the cook-house and would see or hear the callers. She would take them into the sitting-room and then Emily could make her escape. And on one thing she was determined—they should not see her in that Mother Hubbard. Miss Potter was a thin, venomous, acidulated gossip who seemed to dislike everybody in general and Emily in particular; and Mrs. Ann Cyrilla was a plump, pretty, smooth, amiable gossip who, by very reason of her smoothness and amiability, did more real harm in a week than Miss Potter did in a year. Emily distrusted her even while she could not help liking her. She had so often heard Mrs. Ann Cyrilla make smiling fun of people, to whose "faces" she had been very sweet and charming, and Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, who had been one of the "dressy Wallaces" from Derry Pond, was especially fond of laughing over the peculiarities of other people's clothes.

Again the knock came—Miss Potter's this time, as Emily knew by the staccato raps. They were getting impatient. Well, they might knock there till the cows come home, vowed Emily. She would not go to the door in the Mother Hubbard. Then she heard Perry's voice outside explaining that Miss Elizabeth was away in the stumps behind the barn picking raspberries, but that he would go and get her if they would walk in and make themselves at home. To Emily's despair, this was just what they did. Miss Potter sat down with a creak and Mrs. Ann Cyrilla with a puff, and Perry's retreating footsteps died away in the yard. Emily realized that she was by way of being in a plight. It was very hot and stuffy in the tiny boot closet—where Cousin Jimmy's working clothes were kept as well as boots. She hoped earnestly that Perry would not be long in finding Aunt Elizabeth.

"My, but it's awful hot," said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, with a large groan.

Poor Emily—no, no, we must not call her poor Emily; she does not deserve pity—she has been very silly and is served exactly right; Emily, then, already violently perspiring in her close quarters, agreed wholly with her.

"I don't feel the heat as fat people do," said Miss Potter. "I hope Elizabeth won't keep us waiting long. Laura's weaving—I hear the loom going in the garret. But there would be no use in seeing her—Elizabeth would override anything Laura might promise, just because it wasn't her arrangement. I see somebody has just finished sanding the floor. Look at those worn boards, will you? You'd think Elizabeth Murray would have a new floor laid down; but she is too mean, of course. Look at that row of candles on the chimney-piece—all that trouble and poor light because of the little extra coal-oil would cost. Well, she can't take her money with her—she'll have to leave it all behind at the golden gate even if she is a Murray."

Emily experienced a shock. She realized that not only was she being half suffocated in the boot closet, but that she was an eavesdropper—something she had never been since the evening at Maywood when she had hidden under the table to hear her aunts and uncles discussing her fate. To be sure, that had been voluntary, while this was compulsory—at least, the Mother Hubbard had made it compulsory. But that would not make Miss Potter's comments any pleasanter to hear. What business had she to call Aunt Elizabeth mean? Aunt Elizabeth wasn't mean. Emily was suddenly very angry with Miss Potter. She, herself, often criticized Aunt Elizabeth in secret, but it was intolerable that an outsider should do it. And that little sneer at the Murrays! Emily could imagine the shrewish glint in Miss Potter's eye as she uttered it. As for the candles—

"The Murrays can see farther by candle-light than you can by sunlight, Miss Potter," thought Emily disdainfully—or at least as disdainfully as it is possible to think when a river of perspiration is running down your back, and you have nothing to breathe but the aroma of old leather.

"I suppose it's because of the expense that she won't send Emily to school any longer than this year," said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. "Most folks think she ought to give her a year at Shrewsbury, anyhow—you'd think she would for pride's sake, if nothing else. But I am told she has decided against it."

Emily's heart sank. She hadn't been quite sure till now that Aunt Elizabeth wouldn't send her to Shrewsbury. The tears sprang to her eyes—burning, stinging tears of disappointment.

"Emily ought to be taught something to earn a living by," said Miss Potter. "Her father left nothing."

"He left me," said Emily below her breath, clenching her fists. Anger dried up her tears.

"Oh," said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, laughing with tolerant derision, "I hear that Emily is going to make a living by writing stories—not only a living but a fortune, I believe."

She laughed again. The idea was so exquisitely ridiculous. Mrs. Ann Cyrilla hadn't heard anything so funny for a long time.

"They say she wastes half her time scribbling trash," agreed Miss Potter. "If I was her Aunt Elizabeth I would soon cure her of that nonsense."

"You mightn't find it so easy. I understand she has always been a difficult girl to manage—so very pig-headed, Murray-like. The whole clamjamfry of them are as stubborn as mules."

(Emily, wrathfully: "What a disrespectful way to speak of us! Oh, if I only hadn't on this Mother Hubbard I'd fling this door open and confront them.")

"She needs a tight rein, if I know anything of human nature," said Miss Potter. "She's going to be a flirt—anyone can see that. She'll be Juliet over again. You'll see. She makes eyes at every one and her only fourteen!"

(Emily, sarcastically: "I do not! And Mother wasn't a flirt. She could have been, but she wasn't. You couldn't flirt, even if you wanted to—you respectable old female!")

"She isn't pretty as poor Juliet was, and she's very sly—sly and deep. Mrs. Dutton says she's the slyest child she ever saw. But still there are things I like about poor Emily."

Mrs. Ann Cyrilla's tone was very patronizing. "Poor" Emily writhed among the boots.

"The thing I don't like in her is that she is always trying to be smart," said Miss Potter decidedly. "She says clever things she has read in books and passes them off as her own—"

(Emily, outraged: "I don't!")

"And she's very sarcastic and touchy, and of course as proud as Lucifer," concluded Miss Potter.

Mrs. Ann Cyrilla laughed pleasantly and tolerantly again.

"Oh, that goes without saying in a Murray. But their worst fault is that they think nobody can do anything right but themselves, and Emily is full of it. Why, she even thinks she can preach better than Mr. Johnson."

(Emily: "That is because I said he contradicted himself in one of his sermons—and he did. And I've heard you criticize dozens of sermons, Mrs. Ann Cyrilla.")

"She's jealous, too," continued Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. "She can't bear to be beaten—she wants to be first in everything. I understand she actually shed tears of mortification the night of the concert because Ilse Burnley carried off the honours in the dialogue. Emily did very poorly—she was a perfect stick. And she contradicts older people continually. It would be funny if it weren't so ill-bred."

"It's odd Elizabeth doesn't cure her of that. The Murrays think their breeding is a little above the common," said Miss Potter.

(Emily, wrathfully, to the boots: "It is, too.")

"Of course," said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, "I think a great many of Emily's faults come from her intimacy with Ilse Burnley. She shouldn't be allowed to run about with Ilse as she does. Why, they say Ilse is as much an infidel as her father. I have always understood she doesn't believe in God at all—or the Devil either."

(Emily: "Which is a far worse thing in your eyes.")

"Oh, the doctor's training her a little better now since he found out his precious wife didn't elope with Leo Mitchell," sniffed Miss Potter. "He makes her go to Sunday-school. But she's no fit associate for Emily. She swears like a trooper, I'm told. Mrs. Mark Burns was in the doctor's office one day and heard Ilse in the parlour say distinctly 'out, damned Spot!' probably to the dog."

"Dear, dear," moaned Mrs. Ann Cyrilla.

"Do you know what I saw her do one day last week—saw her with my own eyes!" Miss Potter was very emphatic over this. Ann Cyrilla need not suppose that she had been using any other person's eyes.

"You couldn't surprise me," gurgled Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. "Why, they say she was at the charivari at Johnson's last Tuesday night, dressed as a boy."

"Quite likely. But this happened in my own front yard. She was there with Jen Strang, who had come to get a root of my Persian rose-bush for her mother. I asked Ilse if she could sew and bake and a few other things that I thought she ought to be reminded of. Ilse said 'No' to them all, quite brazenly, and then she said—what do you think that girl said?"

"Oh, what?" breathed Mrs. Ann Cyrilla eagerly.

"She said, 'Can you stand on one foot and lift your other to a level with your eyes, Miss Potter? I can.' And"—Miss Potter hushed her tone to the proper pitch of horror—"she did it!"

The listener in the closet stifled a spasm of laughter in Cousin Jimmy's grey juniper. How madcap Ilse did love to shock Miss Potter!

"Good gracious, were there any men around?" entreated Mrs. Ann Cyrilla.

"No—fortunately. But it's my belief she would have done it just the same no matter who was there. We were close to the road—anybody might have been passing. I felt so ashamed. In my time a young girl would have died before she would have done a thing like that."

"It's no worse than her and Emily bathing by moonlight up on the sands without a stitch on," said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. "That was the most scandalous thing. Did you hear about it?"

"Oh, yes, that story's all over Blair Water. Everybody's heard it but Elizabeth and Laura. I can't find out how it started. Were they seen?"

"Oh, dear no, not so bad as that. Ilse told it herself. She seemed to think it was quite a matter of course. I think some one ought to tell Laura and Elizabeth."

"Tell them yourself," suggested Miss Potter.

"Oh, no, I don't want to get in wrong with my neighbours. I am not responsible for Emily Starr's training, thank goodness. If I were I wouldn't let her have so much to do with Jarback Priest, either. He's the queerest of all those queer Priests. I'm sure he must have a bad influence over her. Those green eyes of his positively give me the creeps. I can't find out that he believes in anything."

(Emily, sarcastically again: "Not even the Devil?")

"There's a queer story going around about him and Emily," said Miss Potter. "I can't make head or tail of it. They were seen on the big hill last Wednesday evening at sunset, behaving in a most extraordinary fashion. They would walk along with their eyes fixed on the sky—then suddenly stop—grasp each other by the arm and point upward. They did it time and again. Mrs. Price was watching them from the window and she can't imagine what they were up it. It was too early for stars, and she couldn't see a solitary thing in the sky. She laid awake all night wondering about it."

"Well, it all comes to this—Emily Starr needs looking after," said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. "I sometimes feel that it would be wiser to stop Muriel and Gladys from going about so much with her."

(Emily, devoutly: "I wish you would. They are so stupid and silly and they just stick around Ilse and me all the time.")

"When all is said and done, I pity her," said Miss Potter. "She's so foolish and high-minded that she'll get in wrong with every one, and no decent, sensible man will ever be bothered with her. Geoff North says he went home with her once and that was enough for him."

(Emily, emphatically: "I believe you! Geoff showed almost human intelligence in that remark.")

"But then she probably won't live through her teens. She looks very consumptive. Really, Ann Cyrilla, I do feel sorry for the poor thing."

This was the proverbial last straw for Emily. She, whole Starr and half Murray to be pitied by Beulah Potter! Mother Hubbard or no Mother Hubbard, it could not be borne! The closet door suddenly opened wide and Emily stood revealed, Mother Hubbard and all, against a background of boots and jumpers. Her cheeks were crimson, her eyes black. The mouths of Mrs. Ann Cyrilla and Miss Beulah Potter fell open and stayed open; their faces turned dull red; they were dumb.

Emily looked at them steadily for a minute of scornful, eloquent silence. Then, with the air of a queen, she swept across the kitchen and vanished through the sitting-room door, just as Aunt Elizabeth came up the sandstone steps with dignified apologies for keeping them waiting. Miss Potter and Mrs. Ann Cyrilla were so dumbfounded that they were hardly able to talk about the Ladies' Aid, and got themselves confusedly away after a few jerky questions and answers. Aunt Elizabeth did not know what to make of them and thought they must have been unreasonably offended over having to wait. Then she dismissed the matter from her mind. A Murray did not care what Potters thought or did. The open closet door told no tales, and she did not know that up in the lookout chamber Emily was lying face downward across the bed crying passionately for shame and anger and humiliation. She felt degraded and hurt. It had all been the outcome of her own silly vanity in the beginning—she acknowledged that—but her punishment had been too severe.

She did not mind so much what Miss Potter had said, but Mrs. Ann Cyrilla's tiny barbs of malice did sting. She had liked pretty, pleasant Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, who had always seemed kind and friendly and had paid her many compliments. She had thought Mrs. Ann Cyrilla had really liked her. And now to find out that she would talk about her like this!

"Couldn't they have said one good thing of me?" she sobbed. "Oh, I feel soiled, somehow—between my own silliness and their malice—and all dirty and messed-up mentally. Will I ever feel clean again?"

She did not feel "clean" until she had written it all out in her diary. Then she took a less distorted view of it and summoned philosophy to her aid.

"Mr. Carpenter says we should make every experience teach us something," she wrote. "He says every experience, no matter whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, has something for us if we are able to view it dispassionately. 'That,' he added bitterly, 'is one of the pieces of good advice I have kept by me all my life and never been able to make any use of myself.'

"Very well, I shall try to view this dispassionately! I suppose the way to do it is to consider all that was said of me and decide just what was true and what false, and what merely distorted—which is worse than the false, I think.

"To begin with: hiding in the closet at all, just out of vanity, comes under my heading of bad deeds. And I suppose that appearing as I did, after I had stayed there so long, and covering them with confusion, was another. But if so, I can't feel it 'dispassionately' yet, because I am sinfully glad I did it—yes, even if they did see me in the Mother Hubbard! I shall never forget their faces! Especially Mrs. Ann Cyrilla's. Miss Potter won't worry over it long—she will say it served me right—but Mrs. Ann Cyrilla will never, to her dying day, get over being found out like that.

"Now for a review of their criticisms of Emily Byrd Starr and the decision as to whether said Emily Byrd Starr deserved the said criticisms, wholly or in part. Be honest now, Emily, 'look then into thy heart' and try to see yourself, not as Miss Potter sees you or as you see yourself, but as you really are.

"(I think I'm going to find this interesting!)

"In the first place, Mrs. Ann Cyrilla said I was pig-headed.

"Am I pig-headed?

"I know I am determined, and Aunt Elizabeth says I am stubborn. But pig-headedness is worse than either of those. Determination is a good quality and even stubbornness has a saving grace in it if you have a little gumption as well. But a pig-headed person is one who is too stupid to see or understand the foolishness of a certain course and insists on taking it—insists, in short, on running full tilt into a stone wall.

"No, I am not pig-headed. I accept stone walls.

"But I take a good deal of convincing that they are stone walls and not cardboard imitations. Therefore, I am a little stubborn.

"Miss Potter said I was a flirt. This is wholly untrue, so I won't discuss it. But she also said I 'made eyes.' Now do I? I don't mean to—I know that; but it seems you can 'make eyes' without being conscious of it, so how am I going to prevent that? I can't go about all the days of my life with my eyes dropped down. Dean said the other day:

"'When you look at me like that, Star, there is nothing for me but to do as you ask.'

"And Aunt Elizabeth was quite annoyed last week because she said I was looking 'improperly' at Perry when I was coaxing him to go to the Sunday-school picnic. (Perry hates Sunday-school picnics.)

"Now, in both cases I thought I was only looking beseechingly.

"Mrs. Ann Cyrilla said I wasn't pretty. Is that true?"

Emily laid down her pen, went over to the mirror and took a "dispassionate" stock of her looks. Black of hair—smoke-purple of eye—crimson of lip. So far, not bad. Her forehead was too high, but the new way of doing her hair obviated that defect. Her skin was very white and her cheeks, which had been so pale in childhood, were now as delicately hued as a pink pearl. Her mouth was too large, but her teeth were good. Her slightly pointed ears gave her a fawn-like charm. Her neck had lines that she could not help liking. Her slender, immature figure was graceful; she knew, for Aunt Nancy had told her, that she had the Shipley ankle and instep. Emily looked very earnestly at Emily-in-the-Glass from several angles, and returned to her diary.

"I have decided that I am not pretty," she wrote. "I think I look quite pretty when my hair is done a certain way, but a really pretty girl would be pretty no matter how her hair was done, so Mrs. Ann Cyrilla was right. But I feel sure that I am not so plain as she implied, either.

"Then she said I was sly—and deep. I don't think it is any fault to be 'deep,' though she spoke as if she thought it was. I would rather be deep than shallow. But am I sly? No. I am not. Then what is it about me that makes people think I am sly? Aunt Ruth always insists that I am. I think it is because I have a habit, when I am bored or disgusted with people, of stepping suddenly into my own world and shutting the door. People resent this—I suppose it is only natural to resent a door being shut in your face. They call it slyness when it is only self-defence. So I won't worry over that.

"Miss Potter said an abominable thing—that I passed off clever speeches I had read in books, as my own—trying to be smart. That is utterly false. Honestly, I never 'try to be smart.' But—I do try often to see how a certain thing I've thought out sounds when it is put into words. Perhaps this is a kind of showing-off. I must be careful about it.

"Jealous: no, I'm not that. I do like to be first, I admit. But it wasn't because I was jealous of Ilse that I cried that night at the concert. I cried because I felt I had made a mess of my part. I was a stick, just as Mrs. Ann Cyrilla said. I can't act a part somehow. Sometimes a certain part seems to suit me and then I can be it, but if not I'm no good in a dialogue. I only went in it to oblige Mrs. Johnson, and I felt horribly mortified because I knew she was disappointed.

And I suppose my pride suffered a bit, but I never thought of being jealous of Ilse. I was proud of her—she does magnificently in a play.

"Yes, I contradict. I admit that is one of my faults. But people do say such outrageous things! And why isn't it as bad for people to contradict me? They do it continually—and I am right just as often as they are.

"Sarcastic? Yes, I'm afraid that is another of my faults. Touchy—no, I'm not. I'm only sensitive. And proud? Well, yes, I am a little proud—but not nearly as proud as people think me. I can't help carrying my head at a certain angle and I can't help feeling it is a great thing to have a century of good, upright people with fine traditions and considerable brains behind you. Not like the Potters—upstarts of yesterday!

"Oh, how those women garbled things about poor Ilse. We couldn't, I suppose, expect a Potter or the wife of a Potter to recognize the sleep-walking scene from Lady Macbeth. I have told Ilse repeatedly that she ought to see that all doors are shut when she tries it over. She is quite wonderful in it. She never was at that charivari—she only said she'd like to go. And as for the moonlight bathing—that was true enough except that we had some stitches on. There was nothing dreadful about it. It was perfectly beautiful—though now it is all spoiled and degraded by being dragged about in common gossip. I wish Ilse hadn't told about it.

"We had gone away up the sandshore for a walk. It was a moonlit night and the sandshore was wonderful. The Wind Woman was rustling in the grasses on the dunes and there was a long, gentle wash of little gleaming waves on the shore. We wanted to bathe, but at first we thought we couldn't because we didn't have our bathing dresses. So we sat on the sands and we just talked. The great gulf stretched out before us, silvery, gleaming, alluring, going farther and farther into the mists of the northern sky. It was like an ocean in 'fairylands forlorn.'

"I said:

"'I would like to get into a ship and sail straight out there—out—out—where would I land?'

"'Anticosti, I expect,' said Ilse—a bit too prosaically, I thought.

"'No—no—Ultima Thule, I think,' I said dreamily. 'Some beautiful unknown shore where "the rain never falls, and the wind never blows." Perhaps the country back of the North Wind where Diamond went. One could sail to it over that silver sea on a night like this.'

"'That was heaven, I think,' said Ilse.

"Then we talked about immortality, and Ilse said she was afraid of it—afraid of living for ever and for ever; she said she was sure she would get awfully tired of herself. I said I thought I liked Dean's idea of a succession of lives—I can't make out from him whether he really believes that or not—and Ilse said that might be all very well if you were sure of being born again as a decent person, but how about it if you weren't?

"'Well, you have to take some risk in any kind of immortality,' I said.

"'Anyhow,' said Ilse, 'whether I am myself or somebody else next time, I do hope I won't have such a dreadful temper. If I just go on being myself I'll smash my harp and tear my halo to pieces and pull all the feathers out of the other angels' wings half an hour after getting to heaven. You know I will, Emily. I can't help it. I had a fiendish quarrel with Perry yesterday again. It was all my fault—but of course he vexed me by his boasting. I wish I could control my temper.'

"I don't mind Ilse's rages one bit now—I know she never means anything she says in them. I never say anything back. I just smile at her and if I've a bit of paper handy I jot down the things she says. This infuriates her so that she chokes with anger and can't say anything more. At all other times Ilse is a darling and such good fun.

"'You can't control your rages because you like going into them,' I said.

"Ilse stared at me.

"'I don't—I don't.'

"'You do. You enjoy them,' I insisted.

"'Well, of course," said Ilse, grinning, "I do have a good time while they last. It's awfully satisfying to say the most insulting things and call the worst names. I believe you're right, Emily. I do enjoy them. Queer I never thought of it. I suppose if I really were unhappy in them I wouldn't go into them. But after they're over—I'm so remorseful. I cried for an hour yesterday after fighting with Perry.'

"'Yes, and you enjoyed that, too—didn't you?'

"Ilse reflected.

"'I guess so, Emily; you're an uncanny thing. I won't talk about it any more. Let's go bathing. No dresses? What does it matter. There isn't a soul for miles. I can't resist those waves. They're calling me.'

"I felt just as she did, and bathing by moonlight seemed such a lovely, romantic thing—and it is, when the Potters of the world don't know of it. When they do, they smudge it. We undressed in a little hollow among the dunes—that was like a bowl of silver in the moonlight—but we kept our petticoats on. We had the loveliest time splashing and swimming about in that silver-blue water and those creamy little waves, like mermaids or sea nymphs. It was like living in a poem or a fairy tale. And when we came out I held out my hands to Ilse and said:

 

"Come unto these yellow sands
Curtseyed when we have and kissed,
The wild winds whist,
Foot it featly here and there
And, sweet sprites, the burden bear.

 

"Ilse took my hands and we danced in rings over the moonlit sands, and then we went up to the silver bowl and dressed and went home perfectly happy. Only, of course, we had to carry our wet petticoats rolled up under our arms, so we looked rather slinky, but nobody saw us. And that is what Blair Water is so scandalized about.

"All the same, I hope Aunt Elizabeth won't hear of it.

"It is too bad Mrs. Price lost so much sleep over Dean and me. We were not performing any weird incantations—we were simply walking over the Delectable Mountain and tracing pictures in the clouds. Perhaps it was childish—but it was great fun. That is one thing I like about Dean—he isn't afraid of doing something harmless and pleasant just because it's childish. One cloud he pointed out to me looked exactly like an angel flying along the pale, shining sky and carrying a baby in its arms. There was a filmy blue veil over its head with a faint, first star gleaming through it. Its wings were tipped with gold and its white robe flecked with crimson.

"'There goes the Angel of the Evening Star with to-morrow in its arms,' said Dean.

"It was so beautiful that it gave me one of my wonder moments. But ten seconds later it had changed into something that looked like a camel with an exaggerated hump!

"We had a wonderful half hour, even if Mrs. Price, who couldn't see anything in the sky, did think us quite mad.

"Well, it all comes to this, there's no use trying to live in other people's opinions. The only thing to do is to live in your own. After all, I believe in myself. I'm not so bad and silly as they think me, and I'm not consumptive, and I can write. Now that I've written it all out I feel differently about it. The only thing that still aggravates me is that Miss Potter pitied me—pitied by a Potter!

"I looked out of my window just now and saw Cousin Jimmy's nasturtium bed—and suddenly the flash came—and Miss Potter and her pity, and her malicious tongue seemed to matter not at all. Nasturtiums, who coloured you, you wonderful, glowing things? You must have been fashioned out of summer sunsets.

"I help Cousin Jimmy a great deal with his garden this summer. I think I love it as much as he does. Every day we make new discoveries of bud and bloom.

"So Aunt Elizabeth won't send me to Shrewsbury! Oh, I feel as disappointed as if I'd really hoped she would. Every door in life seems shut to me.

"Still, after all, I've lots to be thankful for. Aunt Elizabeth will let me go to school another year here, I think, and Mr. Carpenter can teach me heaps yet; I'm not hideous; moonlight is still a fair thing; I'm going to do something with my pen some day—andI've got a lovely, grey, moon-faced cat who has just jumped up on my table and poked my pen with his nose as a signal that I've written enough for one sitting.

"The only real cat is a grey cat!"

Chapter 5 Half a Loaf

One late August evening Emily heard Teddy's signal whistle from the To-morrow Road, and slipped out to join him. He had news—that was evident from his shining eyes.

"Emily," he cried excitedly, "I'm going to Shrewsbury after all! Mother told me this evening she had made up her mind to let me go!"

Emily was glad—with a queer sorriness underneath, for which she reproached herself. How lonesome it would be at New Moon when her three old pals were gone! She had not realized until that moment how much she had counted on Teddy's companionship. He had always been there in the background of her thoughts of the coming year. She had always taken Teddy for granted. Now there would be nobody—not even Dean, for Dean was going away for the winter as usual—to Egypt or Japan, as he might decide at the last moment. What would she do? Would all the Jimmy-books in the world take the place of her flesh-and-blood chums?

"If you were only going, too!" said Teddy, as they walked along the To-morrow Road—which was almost a To-day Road now, so fast and so tall had the leafy young maples grown.

"There's no use wishing it—don't speak of it—it makes me unhappy," said Emily jerkily.

"Well, we'll have week-ends anyhow. And it's you I have to thank for going. It was what you said to Mother that night in the graveyard that made her let me go. I know she's been thinking of it ever since, by things she would say every once in a while. One day last week I heard her muttering: 'It's awful to be a mother—awful to be a mother and suffer like this.' Yet she called me selfish!' And another time she said, 'Is it selfish to want to keep the only thing you have left in the world?' But she was lovely to-night when she told me I could go. I know folks say Mother isn't quite right in her mind—and sometimes she is a little queer. But it's only when other people are around. You've no idea, Emily, how nice and dear she is when we're alone. I hate to leave her. But I must get some education!"

"I'm very glad if what I said has made her change her mind, but she will never forgive me for it. She has hated me ever since—you know she has. You know how she looks at me whenever I'm at the Tansy Patch—oh, she's very polite to me. But her eyes, Teddy."

"I know," said Teddy, uncomfortably. "But don't be hard on Mother, Emily. I'm sure she wasn't always like that—though she has been ever since I can remember. I don't know anything of her before that. She never tells me anything—I don't know a thing about my father. She won't talk about him. I don't even know how she got that scar on her face."

"I don't think there's anything the matter with your mother's mind, really," said Emily slowly. "But I think there's something troubling it—always troubling it—something she can't forget or throw off. Teddy, I'm sure your mother is haunted. Of course, I don't mean by a ghost or anything silly like that. But by some terrible thought."

"She isn't happy, I know," said Teddy, "and, of course, we're poor. Mother said to-night she could only send me to Shrewsbury for three years—that was all she could afford. But that will give me a start—I'll get on somehow after that. I know I can. I'll make it up to her yet."

"You will be a great artist some day," said Emily dreamily.

They had come to the end of the To-morrow Road. Before them was the pond pasture, whitened over with a drift of daisies. Farmers hate the daisies as a pestiferous weed, but a field white with them on a summer twilight is a vision from the Land of Lost Delight. Beneath them Blair Water shone like a great golden lily. Up on the eastern hill the little Disappointed House crouched amid its shadows, dreaming, perhaps, of the false bride that had never come to it. There was no light at the Tansy Patch. Was lonely Mrs. Kent crying there in the darkness, with only her secret, tormenting heart-hunger for companion?

Emily was looking at the sunset sky—her eyes rapt, her face pale and seeking. She felt no longer blue or depressed—somehow she never could feel that way long in Teddy's company. In all the world there was no music like his voice. All good things seemed suddenly possible with him. She could not go to Shrewsbury—but she could work and study at New Moon—oh, how she would work and study. Another year with Mr. Carpenter would do a great deal for her—as much as Shrewsbury, perhaps. She, too, had her Alpine Path to climb—she would climb it, no matter what the obstacles in the way—no matter whether there was any one to help her or not.

"When I am I'll paint you just as you're looking now," said Teddy, "and call it Joan of Arc—with a face all spirit—listening to her voices."

In spite of her voices Emily went to bed that night feeling rather down-hearted—and woke in the morning with an unaccountable conviction that some good news was coming to her that day—a conviction that did not lessen as the hours passed by in the commonplace fashion of Saturday hours at New Moon—busy hours in which the house was made immaculate for Sunday, and the pantry replenished. It was a cool, damp day when the fogs were coming up from the shore on the east wind, and New Moon and its old garden were veiled in mist.

At twilight a thin, grey rain began to fall, and still the good news had not come. Emily had just finished scouring the brass candlesticks and composing a poem called Rain Song, simultaneously, when Aunt Laura told her that Aunt Elizabeth wanted to see her in the parlour.

Emily's recollections of parlour interviews with Aunt Elizabeth were not especially pleasant. She could not recall any recent deed, done or left undone, which would justify this summons, yet she walked into the parlour quakingly: whatever Aunt Elizabeth was going to say to her it must have some special significance or it would not be said in the parlour. This was just one of Aunt Elizabeth's little ways. Daffy, her big cat, slipped in beside her like a noiseless, grey shadow. She hoped Aunt Elizabeth would not shoo him out: his presence was a certain comfort: a cat is a good backer when he is on your side!

Aunt Elizabeth was knitting; she looked solemn but not offended or angry. She ignored Daff, but thought that Emily seemed very tall in the old, stately, twilit room. How quickly children grew up! It seemed but the other day since fair, pretty Juliet—Elizabeth Murray shut her thoughts off with a click.

"Sit down, Emily," she said. "I want to have a talk with you."

Emily sat down. So did Daffy, wreathing his tail comfortably about his paws. Emily suddenly felt that her hands were clammy and her mouth dry. She wished that she had knitting, too. It was nasty to sit there, unoccupied, and wonder what was coming. What did come was the one thing she had never thought of. Aunt Elizabeth, after knitting a deliberate round on her stocking, said directly:

"Emily, would you like to go to Shrewsbury next week?"

Go to Shrewsbury? Had she heard aright?

"Oh, Aunt Elizabeth!" she said.

"I have been talking the matter over with your uncles and aunts," said Aunt Elizabeth. "They agree with me that you should have some further education. It will be a considerable expense, of course—no, don't interrupt. I don't like interruptions—but Ruth will board you for half-price, as her contribution to your up-bringing—Emily, I will not be interrupted! Your Uncle Oliver will pay the other half; your Uncle Wallace will provide your books, and I will see to your clothes. You will, of course, help your Aunt Ruth about the house in every way possible as some return for her kindness. You may go to Shrewsbury for three years on a certain condition."

What was the condition? Emily, who wanted to dance and sing and laugh through the old parlour as no Murray, not ever her mother, had ever ventured to dance and laugh before, constrained herself to sit rigidly on her ottoman and ask herself that question. Behind her suspense she felt that the moment was quite dramatic.

"Three years at Shrewsbury," Aunt Elizabeth went on, "will do as much for you as three at Queen's—except, of course, that you don't get a teacher's licence, which doesn't matter in your case, as you are not under the necessity of working for your living. But, as I have said, there is a condition."

Why didn't Aunt Elizabeth name the condition? Emily felt that the suspense was unendurable. Could it be possible that Aunt Elizabeth was a little afraid to name it? It was not like her to talk for time. Was it so very terrible?

"You must promise," said Aunt Elizabeth sternly, "that for the three years you are at Shrewsbury you will give up entirely this writing nonsense of yours—entirely, except in so far as school compositions may be required."

Emily sat very still—and cold. No Shrewsbury on the one hand—on the other no more poems, no more stories and "studies," no more delightful Jimmy-books of miscellany. She did not take more than one instant to make up her mind.

"I can't promise that, Aunt Elizabeth," she said resolutely.

Aunt Elizabeth dropped her knitting in amazement. She had not expected this. She had thought Emily was so set on going to Shrewsbury that she would do anything that might be asked of her in order to go—especially such a trifling thing as this—which, so Aunt Elizabeth thought, involved only a surrender of stubbornness.

"Do you mean to say you won't give up your foolish scribbling for the sake of the education you've always pretended to want so much?" she demanded.

"Not that I won't—it's just that I can't," said Emily despairingly. She knew Aunt Elizabeth could not understand—Aunt Elizabeth never had understood this. "I can't help writing, Aunt Elizabeth. It's in my blood. There's no use in asking me. I do want an education—it isn't pretending—but I can't give up my writing to get it. I couldn't keep such a promise—so what use would there be in making it?"

"Then you can stay home," said Aunt Elizabeth angrily.

Emily expected to see her get up and walk out of the room. Instead, Aunt Elizabeth picked up her stocking and wrathfully resumed her knitting. To tell the truth, Aunt Elizabeth was absurdly taken aback. She really wanted to send Emily to Shrewsbury. Tradition required so much of her, and all the clan were of opinion she should be sent. This condition had been her own idea. She thought it a good chance to break Emily of a silly un-Murray-like habit of wasting time and paper, and she had never doubted that her plan would succeed, for she knew how much Emily wanted to go. And now this senseless, unreasoning, ungrateful obstinacy—"the Starr coming out," thought Aunt Elizabeth rancorously, forgetful of the Shipley inheritance! What was to be done? She knew too well from past experience that there would be no moving Emily once she had taken up a position, and she knew that Wallace and Oliver and Ruth, though they thought Emily's craze for writing as silly and untraditional as she did, would not back her—Elizabeth—up in her demand. Elizabeth Murray foresaw a complete right-about-face before her, and Elizabeth Murray did not like the prospect. She could have shaken, with a right good will, the slim, pale thing sitting before her on the ottoman. The creature was so slight—and young—and indomitable. For over three years Elizabeth Murray had tried to cure Emily of this foolishness of writing and for over three years she, who had never failed in anything before, had failed in this. One couldn't starve her into submission—and nothing short of it would seem to be efficacious.

Elizabeth knitted furiously in her vexation, and Emily sat motionless, struggling with her bitter disappointment and sense of injustice. She was determined she would not cry before Aunt Elizabeth, but it was hard to keep the tears back. She wished Daff wouldn't purr with such resounding satisfaction, as if everything were perfectly delicious from a grey cat's point of view. She wished Aunt Elizabeth would tell her to go. But Aunt Elizabeth only knitted furiously and said nothing. It all seemed rather nightmarish. The wind was rising and the rain began to drive against the pane, and the dead-and-gone Murrays looked down accusingly from their dark frames. They had no sympathy with flashes and Jimmy-books and Alpine paths—with the pursuit of unwon, alluring divinities. Yet Emily couldn't help thinking, under all her disappointment, what an excellent setting it would make for some tragic scene in a novel.

The door opened and Cousin Jimmy slipped in. Cousin Jimmy knew what was in the wind and had been coolly and deliberately listening outside the door. He knew Emily would never promise such a thing—he had told Elizabeth so at the family council ten days before. He was only simply Jimmy Murray, but he understood what sensible Elizabeth Murray could not understand.

"What is wrong?" he asked, looking from one to the other.

"Nothing is wrong," said Aunt Elizabeth haughtily. "I have offered Emily an education and she has refused it. She is free to do so, of course."

"No one can be free who has a thousand ancestors," said Cousin Jimmy in the eerie tone in which he generally said such things. It always made Elizabeth shiver—she could never forget that his eeriness was her fault. "Emily can't promise what you want. Can you, Emily?"

"No." In spite of herself a couple of big tears rolled down Emily's cheeks.

"If you could," said Cousin Jimmy, "you would promise it for me, wouldn't you?"

Emily nodded.

"You've asked too much, Elizabeth," said Cousin Jimmy to the angry lady of the knitting-needles. "You've asked her to give up all her writing—now, if you'd just asked her to give up some—Emily, what if she just asked you to give up some? You might be able to do that, mightn't you?"

"What some?" asked Emily cautiously.

"Well, anything that wasn't true, for instance." Cousin Jimmy sidled over to Emily and put a beseeching hand on her shoulder. Elizabeth did not stop knitting, but the needles went more slowly. "Stories, for instance, Emily. She doesn't like your writing stories, especially. She thinks they're lies. She doesn't mind other things so much. Don't you think, Emily, you could give up writing stories for three years? An education is a great thing. Your grandmother Archibald would have lived on herring tails to get an education—many a time I've heard her say it. Come, Emily?"

Emily thought rapidly. She loved writing stories: it would be a hard thing to give them up. But if she could still write air-born fancies in verse—and weird little Jimmy-book sketches of character—and accounts of everyday events—witty—satirical—tragic—as the humour took her—she might be able to get along.

"Try her—try her," whispered Cousin Jimmy. "Propitiate her a little. You do owe her a great deal, Emily. Meet her half-way."

"Aunt Elizabeth," said Emily tremulously, "if you will send me to Shrewsbury I promise you that for three years I won't write anything that isn't true. Will that do? Because it's all I can promise."

Elizabeth knitted two rounds before deigning to reply. Cousin Jimmy and Emily thought she was not going to reply at all. Suddenly she folded up her knitting and rose.

"Very well. I will let it go at that. It is, of course, your stories I object to most: as for the rest, I fancy Ruth will see to it that you have not much time to waste on it."

Aunt Elizabeth swept out, much relieved in her secret heart that she had not been utterly routed, but had been enabled to retreat from a perplexing position with some of the honours of war. Cousin Jimmy patted Emily's black head.

"That's good, Emily. Mustn't be too stubborn, you know. And three years isn't a lifetime, pussy."

No: but it seems like one at fourteen. Emily cried herself to sleep when she went to bed—and woke again at three by the clock, of that windy, dark-grey night on the old north shore—rose—lighted a candle—sat down at her table and described the whole scene in her Jimmy-book; being exceedingly careful to write therein no word that was not strictly true!

Chapter 6 Shrewsbury Beginnings

Teddy and Ilse and Perry whooped for joy when Emily told them she was going to Shrewsbury. Emily, thinking it over, was reasonably happy. The great thing was that she was going to High School. She did not like the idea of boarding with Aunt Ruth. This was unexpected. She had supposed Aunt Ruth would never be willing to have her about and that, if Aunt Elizabeth did decide to send her to Shrewsbury, she would board elsewhere—probably with Ilse. Certainly, she would have greatly preferred this. She knew quite well that life would not be very easy under Aunt Ruth's roof. And then she must write no more stories.

To feel within her the creative urge and be forbidden to express it—to tingle with delight in the conception of humorous or dramatic characters, and be forbidden to bring them into existence—to be suddenly seized with the idea of a capital plot and realize immediately afterward that you couldn't develop it. All this was a torture which no one who has not been born with the fatal itch for writing can realize. The Aunt Elizabeths of the world can never understand it. To them, it is merely foolishness.

Those last two weeks of August were busy ones at New Moon. Elizabeth and Laura held long conferences over Emily's clothes. She must have an outfit that would cast no discredit on the Murrays, but common sense and not fashion was to give the casting vote. Emily herself had no say in the matter. Laura and Elizabeth argued "from noon to dewy eve" one day as to whether Emily might have a taffeta silk blouse—Ilse had three—and decided against it, much to Emily's disappointment. But Laura had her way in regard to what she dared not call an "evening dress," since the name would have doomed it in Elizabeth's opinion: it was a pretty crepe thing, of a pinkish-grey—the shade, I think, which was then called ashes-of-roses—and was made collarless—a great concession on Elizabeth's part—with the big puffed sleeves that look very absurd to-day, but which, like every other fashion, were pretty and piquant when worn by the youth and beauty of their time. It was the prettiest dress Emily had ever had—and the longest, which meant much in those days, when you could not be grown up until you had put on "long" dresses. It came to her pretty ankles.

She put it on one evening, when Laura and Elizabeth were away, because she wanted Dean to see her in it. He had come up to spend the evening with her—he was off the next day, having decided on Egypt—and they walked in the garden. Emily felt quite old and sophisticated because she had to lift her shimmering skirt clear of the ribbon grasses. She had a little greyish-pink scarf wound around her head and looked more like a star than ever, Dean thought. The cats were in attendance—Daffy, sleek and striped, Saucy Sal, who still reigned supreme in the New Moon barns. Cats might come and cats might go, but Saucy Sal went on for ever. They frisked over the grass plots and pounced on each other from flowery jungles and rolled insinuatingly around Emily's feet. Dean was going to Egypt but he knew that nowhere, even amid the strange charm of forgotten empires, would he see anything he liked better than the pretty picture Emily and her little cats made in the prim, stately, scented old garden of New Moon.

They did not talk as much as usual and the silences did queer things to both of them. Dean had one or two mad impulses to throw up the trip to Egypt and stay home for the winter—go to Shrewsbury perhaps; he shrugged his shoulders and laughed at himself. This child did not need his looking after—the ladies of New Moon were competent guardians. She was only a child yet—in spite of her slim height and her unfathomable eyes. But how perfect the white line of her throat—how kissable the sweet red curve of her mouth. She would be a woman soon—but not for him—not for lame Jarback Priest of her father's generation. For the hundredth time Dean told himself that he was not going to be a fool. He must be content with what fate had given him—the friendship and affection of this exquisite, starry creature. In the years to come her love would be a wonderful thing—for some other man. No doubt, thought Dean cynically, she would waste it on some good-looking young manikin who wasn't half worthy of it.

Emily was thinking how dreadfully she was going to miss Dean—more than she had ever missed him before. They had been such good pals that summer. She had never had a talk with him, even if it were only for a few minutes, without feeling that life was richer. His wise, witty, humorous, satiric sayings were educative. They stimulated—stung—inspired her. And his occasional compliments gave her self-confidence. He had a certain strange fascination for her that no one else in the world possessed. She felt it though she could not analyse it. Teddy, now—she knew perfectly well why she liked Teddy. It was just because of his Teddyness. And Perry—Perry was a jolly, sunburned, outspoken, boastful rogue you couldn't help liking. But Dean was different. Was his charm the allure of the unknown—of experience—of subtle knowledge—of a mind grown wise on bitterness—of things Dean knew that she could never know? Emily couldn't tell. She only knew that everybody tasted a little flat after Dean—even Teddy, though she liked him best.

Oh, yes, Emily never had any doubt at all that she liked Teddy best. And yet Dean seemed to satisfy some part of her subtle and intricate nature that always went hungry without him.

"Thank you for all you've taught me, Dean," she said as they stood by the sundial.

"Do you think you have taught me nothing, Star?"

"How could I? I'm so young—so ignorant—"

"You've taught me how to laugh without bitterness, I hope you'll never realize what a boon that is. Don't let them spoil you at Shrewsbury, Star. You're so pleased over going that I don't want to throw cold water. But you'd be just as well off—better—here at New Moon."

"Dean! I want some education—"

"Education! Education isn't being spoon-fed with algebra and second-rate Latin. Old Carpenter could teach you more and better than the college cubs, male and female, in Shrewsbury High School."

"I can't go to school any more here," protested Emily. "I'd be all alone. All the pupils of my age are going to Queen's or Shrewsbury or staying home. I don't understand you, Dean. I thought you'd be so glad they're letting me go to Shrewsbury."

"I am glad—since it pleases you. Only—the lore I wished for you isn't learned in High Schools or measured by terminal exams. Whatever of worth you get at any school you'll dig out for yourself. Don't let them make anything of you but yourself, that's all. I don't think they will."

"No, they won't," said Emily decidedly. "I'm like Kipling's cat—I walk by my wild lone and wave my wild tail where so it pleases me. That's why the Murrays look askance at me. They think I should only run with the pack. Oh, Dean, you'll write me often, won't you? Nobody understands like you. And you've got to be such a habit with me I can't do without you."

Emily said—and meant—it lightly enough; but Dean's thin face flushed darkly. They did not say good-bye—that was an old compact of theirs. Dean waved his hand at her.

"May every day be kind to you," he said.

Emily gave him only her slow, mysterious smile—he was gone. The garden seemed very lonely in the faint blue twilight, with the ghostly blossoms of the white phlox here and there. She was glad when she heard Teddy's whistle in Lofty John's Bush.

On her last evening at home she went to see Mr. Carpenter and get his opinion regarding some manuscripts she had left with him for criticism the preceding week. Among them were her latest stories, written before Aunt Elizabeth's ultimatum. Criticism was something Mr. Carpenter could give with a right good will and he never minced matters; but he was just, and Emily had confidence in his verdicts, even when he said things that raised temporary blisters on her soul.

"This love story is no good," he said bluntly.

"I know that it isn't what I wanted to make it," sighed Emily.

"No story ever is," said Mr. Carpenter. "You'll never write anything that really satisfies you though it may satisfy other people. As for love stories, you can't write them because you can't feel them. Don't try to write anything you can't feel—it will be a failure—'echoes nothing worth.' This other yarn now—about this old woman. It's not bad. The dialogue is clever—the climax simple and effective. And thank the Lord you've got a sense of humour. That's mainly why you're no good at love stories, I believe. Nobody with any real sense of humour can write a love story."

Emily didn't see why this should be. She liked writing love stories—and terribly sentimental, tragical stories they were.

"Shakespeare could," she said defiantly.

"You're hardly in the Shakespeare class," said Mr. Carpenter dryly.

Emily blushed scorchingly.

"I know I'm not. But you said nobody."

"And I maintain it. Shakespeare is the exception that proves the rule. Though his sense of humour was certainly in abeyance when he wrote Romeo and Juliet. However, let's come back to Emily of New Moon. This story—well, a young person might read it without contamination."

Emily knew by the inflection of Mr. Carpenter's voice that he was not praising her story. She kept silence and Mr. Carpenter went on, flicking her precious manuscripts aside irreverently.

"This one sounds like a weak imitation of Kipling. Been reading him lately?"

"Yes."

"I thought so. Don't try to imitate Kipling. If you must imitate, imitate Laura Jean Libbey. Nothing good about this but its title. A priggish little yarn. And Hidden Riches is not a story—it's a machine. It creaks. It never made me forget for one instant that itwas a story. Hence it isn't a story."

"I was trying to write something very true to life," protested Emily.

"Ah, that's why. We all see life through an illusion—even the most disillusioned of us. That's why things aren't convincing if they're too true to life. Let me see—The Madden Family—another attempt at realism. But it's only photography—not portraiture."

"What a lot of disagreeable things you've said," sighed Emily.

"It might be a nice world if nobody ever said a disagreeable thing, but it would be a dangerous one," retorted Mr. Carpenter. "You told me you wanted criticism, not taffy. However, here's a bit of taffy for you. I kept it for the last. Something Different is comparatively good and if I wasn't afraid of ruining you I'd say it was absolutely good. Ten years from now you can rewrite it and make something of it. Yes, ten years—don't screw up your face, Jade. You have talent—and you've got a wonderful feeling for words—you get the inevitable one every time—that's a priceless thing. But you have some vile faults, too. Those cursed italics—forswear them, Jade, forswear them. And your imagination needs a curb when you get away from realism."

"It's to have one now," said Emily, gloomily.

She told him of her compact with Aunt Elizabeth. Mr. Carpenter nodded.

"Excellent."

"Excellent!" echoed Emily blankly.

"Yes. It's just what you need. It will teach you restraint and economy. Stick to facts for three years and see what you can make of them. Leave the realm of imagination severely alone and confine yourself to ordinary life."

"There isn't any such thing as ordinary life," said Emily.

Mr. Carpenter looked at her for a moment.

"You're right—there isn't," he said slowly. "But one wonders a little how you know it. Well, go on—go on—walk in your chosen path—and 'thank whatever gods there be' that you're free to walk it."

"Cousin Jimmy says nobody can be free who has a thousand ancestors."

"And yet people call that man simple," muttered Mr. Carpenter. "However, your ancestors don't seem to have wished any special curse on you. They've simply laid it on you to aim for the heights and they'll give you no peace if you don't. Call it ambition—aspiration—cacoëthes scribendi—any name you will. Under its sting—or allure—one has to go on climbing—until one fails—or—"

"Succeeds," said Emily, flinging back her dark head.

"Amen," said Mr. Carpenter.

Emily wrote a poem that night—Farewell to New Moon—and shed tears over it. She felt every line of it. It was all very well to be going to school—but to leave dear New Moon! Everything at New Moon was linked with her life and thoughts—was a part of her.

"It's not only that I love my room and trees and hills—they love me," she thought.

Her little black trunk was packed. Aunt Elizabeth had seen that everything necessary was in it, and Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy had seen that one or two unnecessary things were in it. Aunt Laura had told Emily that she would find a pair of black lace stockings inside her strap slippers—even Laura did not dare go so far as silk stockings—and Cousin Jimmy had given her three Jimmy-books and an envelope with a five-dollar bill in it.

"To get anything you want with, Pussy. I'd have made it ten but five was all Elizabeth would advance me on next month's wages. I think she suspected."

"Can I spend a dollar of it for American stamps if I can find a way to get them?" whispered Emily anxiously.

"Anything you like," repeated Cousin Jimmy loyally—though even to him it did not appear an unaccountable thing that any one should want to buy American stamps. But if dear little Emily wanted American stamps, American stamps she should have.

The next day seemed rather dream-like to Emily—the bird she heard singing rapturously in Lofty John's bush when she woke at dawn—the drive to Shrewsbury in the early crisp September morning—Aunt Ruth's cool welcome—the hours at a strange school—the organization of the "Prep" classes—home to supper—surely it must all have taken more than a day.

Aunt Ruth's house was at the end of a residential side street—almost out in the country. Emily thought it a very ugly house, covered as it was with gingerbread-work of various kinds. But a house with white wooden lace on its roof and its bay windows was the last word of elegance in Shrewsbury. There was no garden—nothing but a bare, prim, little lawn; but one thing rejoiced Emily's eyes. Behind the house was a big plantation of tall, slender fir-trees—the tallest, straightest, slenderest firs she had ever seen, stretching back into long, green, gossamered vistas.

Aunt Elizabeth had spent the day in Shrewsbury and went home after supper. She shook hands with Emily on the doorstep and told her to be a good girl and do exactly as Aunt Ruth bade her. She did not kiss Emily, but her tone was very gentle for Aunt Elizabeth. Emily choked up and stood tearfully on the doorstep to watch Aunt Elizabeth out of sight—Aunt Elizabeth going back to dear New Moon.

"Come in," said Aunt Ruth, and "please don't slam the door."

Now, Emily never slammed doors.

"We will wash the supper dishes," said Aunt Ruth. "You will always do that after this. I will show you where everything is put. I suppose Elizabeth told you I would expect you to do a few chores for your board."

"Yes," said Emily briefly.

She did not mind doing chores, any number of them—but it was Aunt Ruth's tone.

"Of course your being here will mean a great deal of extra expense for me," continued Aunt Ruth. "But it is only fair that we should all contribute something to your bringing up. I think, and I have always thought, that it would have been much better to send you to Queen's to get a teacher's licence."

"I wanted that, too," said Emily.

"M—m." Aunt Ruth pursed her mouth. "So you tell me. In that case I don't see why Elizabeth didn't send you to Queen's. She has pampered you enough in other ways, I'm sure—I would expect her to give in about this, too, if she thought you really wanted it. You will sleep in the kitchen chamber. It is warmer in winter than the other rooms. There is no gas in it but I could not afford to let you have gas to study by in any case. You must use candles—you can burn two at a time. I shall expect you to keep your room neat and tidy and to be here at my exact hours for meals. I am very particular about that. And there is another thing you might as well understand at once. You must not bring your friends here. I do not propose to entertain them."

"Not Ilse—or Perry—or Teddy?"

"Well, Ilse is a Burnley and a distant connection. She might come in once in a while—I can't have her running in at all times. From all I hear of her she isn't a very suitable companion for you. As for the boys—certainly not. I know nothing of Teddy Kent—and you ought to be too proud to associate with Perry Miller."

"I'm too proud not to associate with him," retorted Emily.

"Don't be pert with me, Em'ly. You might as well understand right away that you are not going to have things all your own way, here, as you had at New Moon. You have been badly spoiled. But I will not have hired boys calling on my niece. I don't know where you get your low tastes from, I'm sure. Even your father seemed like a gentleman. Go upstairs and unpack your trunk. Then do your lessons. We go to bed at nine o'clock!"

Emily felt very indignant. Even Aunt Elizabeth had never dreamed of forbidding Teddy to come to New Moon. She shut herself in her room and unpacked drearily. The room was such an ugly one. She hated it at sight. The door wouldn't shut tight; the slanting ceiling was rain stained, and came down so close to the bed that she could touch it with her hand. On the bare floor was a large "hooked" mat which made Emily's eyes ache. It was not in Murray taste—nor in Ruth Dutton's taste either, to be just. A country cousin of the deceased Mr. Dutton had given it to her. The centre, of a crude, glaring scarlet, was surrounded by scrolls of militant orange and violent green. In the corners were bunches of purple ferns and blue roses.

The woodwork was painted a hideous chocolate brown, and the walls were covered with paper of still more hideous design. The pictures were in keeping, especially a chromo of Queen Alexandra, gorgeously bedizened with jewels, hung at such an angle that it seemed the royal lady must certainly fall over on her face. Not even a chromo could make Queen Alexandra ugly or vulgar, but it came piteously near it. On a narrow, chocolate shelf sat a vase filled with paper flowers that had been paper flowers for twenty years. One couldn't believe that anything could be as ugly and depressing as they were.

"This room is unfriendly—it—doesn't want me—I can never feel at home here," said Emily.

She was horribly homesick. She wanted the New Moon candle-lights shining out on the birch-trees—the scent of hop-vines in the dew—her purring pussy cats—her own dear room, full of dreams—the silences and shadows of the old garden—the grand anthems of wind and billow in the gulf—that sonorous old music she missed so much in this inland silence. She missed even the little graveyard where slept the New Moon dead.

"I'm not going to cry." Emily clenched her hands. "Aunt Ruth will laugh at me. There's nothing in this room I can ever love. Is there anything out of it?"

She pushed up the window. It looked south into the fir grove and its balsam blew in to her like a caress. To the left there was an opening in the trees like a green, arched window, and one saw an enchanting little moonlit landscape through it. And it would let in the splendour of sunset. To the right was a view of the hill-side along which West Shrewsbury straggled: the hill was dotted with lights in the autumn dusk, and had a fairy-like loveliness. Somewhere near by there was a drowsy twittering, as of little, sleepy birds swinging on a shadowy bough.

"Oh, this is beautiful," breathed Emily, bending out to drink in the balsam-scented air. "Father told me once that one could find something beautiful to love everywhere. I'll love this."

Aunt Ruth poked her head in at the door, unannounced.

"Em'ly, why did you leave that antimacassar crooked on the sofa in the dining-room?"

"I—don't—know," said Emily confusedly. She hadn't even known she had disarranged the antimacassar. Why did Aunt Ruth ask such a question, as if she suspected her of some dark, deep, sinister design?

"Go down and put it straight."

As Emily turned obediently Aunt Ruth exclaimed,

"Em'ly Starr, put that window down at once! Are you crazy?"

"The room is so close," pleaded Emily.

"You can air it in the daytime but never have that window open after sundown. I am responsible for your health now. You must know that consumptives have to avoid night air and draughts."

"I'm not a consumptive," cried Emily rebelliously.

"Contradict, of course."

"And if I were, fresh air any time is the best thing for me. Dr. Burnley says so. I hate being smothered."

"'Young people think old people to be fools and old people know young people to be fools.'" Aunt Ruth felt that the proverb left nothing to be said. "Go and straighten that antimacassar, Em'ly."

"Em'ly" swallowed something and went. The offending antimacassar was mathematically corrected.

Emily stood for a moment and looked about her. Aunt Ruth's dining-room was much more splendid and "up-to-date" than the "sitting-room" at New Moon where they had "company" meals. Hardwood floor—Wilton rug—Early English oak furniture. But it was not half as "friendly" as the old New Moon room, Emily thought. She was more homesick than ever. She did not believe she was going to like anything in Shrewsbury—living with Aunt Ruth, or going to school. The teachers all seemed flat and insipid after pungent Mr. Carpenter and there was a girl in the Junior class she had hated at sight. And she had thought it would be all so delightful—living in pretty Shrewsbury and going to High School. Well, nothing ever is exactly like what you expect it to be, Emily told herself in temporary pessimism as she went back to her room. Hadn't Dean told her once that he had dreamed all his life of rowing in a gondola through the canals of Venice on a moonlit night? And when he did he was almost eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Emily set her teeth as she crept into bed.

"I shall just have to fix my thoughts on the moonlight and romance and ignore the mosquitoes," she thought. "Only—Aunt Ruth does sting so."

Chapter 7 Pot-pourri

"September 20, 19—

"I have been neglecting my diary of late. One does not have a great deal of spare time at Aunt Ruth's. But it is Friday night and I couldn't go home for the week-end so I come to my diary for comforting. I can spend only alternate week-ends at New Moon. Aunt Ruth wants me every other Saturday to help 'houseclean.' We go over this house from top to bottom whether it needs it or not, as the tramp said when he washed his face every month, and then rest from our labours for Sunday.

"There is a hint of frost in the air to-night. I am afraid the garden at New Moon will suffer. Aunt Elizabeth will begin to think it is time to give up the cookhouse for the season and move the Waterloo back into the kitchen. Cousin Jimmy will be boiling the pigs' potatoes in the old orchard and reciting his poetry. Likely Teddy and Ilse and Perry—who have all gone home, lucky creatures—will be there and Daff will be prowling about. But I must not think of it. That way homesickness lies.

"I am beginning to like Shrewsbury and Shrewsbury school and Shrewsbury teachers—though Dean was right when he said I would not find anyone here like Mr. Carpenter. The Seniors and Juniors look down on the Preps and are very condescending. Some of them condescended to me, but I do not think they will try it again—except Evelyn Blake, who condescends every time we meet, as we do quite often, because her chum, Mary Carswell, rooms with Ilse at Mrs. Adamson's boarding-house.

"I hate Evelyn Blake. There is no doubt at all about that. And there is as little doubt that she hates me. We are instinctive enemies—we looked at each other the first time we met like two strange cats, and that was enough. I never really hated any one before. I thought I did but now I know it was only dislike. Hate is rather interesting for a change. Evelyn is a Junior—tall, clever, rather handsome. Has long, bright, treacherous brown eyes and talks through her nose. She has literary ambitions, I understand, and considers herself the best dressed girl in High School. Perhaps she is; but somehow her clothes seem to make more impression on you than she does. People criticize Ilse for dressing too richly and too old but she dominates her clothes for all that. Evelyn doesn't. You always think of her clothes before you think of her. The difference seems to be that Evelyn dresses for other people and Ilse dresses for herself. I must write a character sketch of her when I have studied her a little more. What a satisfaction that will be!

"I met her first in Ilse's room and Mary Carswell introduced us. Evelyn looked down at me—she is a little taller, being a year older—and said,

"'Oh, yes, Miss Starr? I've heard my aunt, Mrs. Henry Blake, talking about you.'

Mrs. Henry Blake was once Miss Brownell. I looked straight into Evelyn's eyes and said,

"'No doubt Mrs. Henry Blake painted a very flattering picture of me.'

"Evelyn laughed—with a kind of laugh I don't like. It gives you the feeling that she is laughing at you, not at what you've said.

"'You didn't get on very well with her, did you? I understand you are quite literary. What papers do you write for?'

"She asked the question sweetly but she knew perfectly well that I don't write for any—yet.

"'The Charlottetown Enterprise and the Shrewsbury Weekly Times,' I said with a wicked grin. 'I've just made a bargain with them. I'm to get two cents for every news item I send the Enterprise and twenty-five cents a week for a society letter for theTimes.'

"My grin worried Evelyn. Preps aren't supposed to grin like that at Juniors. It isn't done.

"'Oh, yes, I understand you are working for your board,' she said. 'I suppose every little helps. But I meant real literary periodicals.'

"'The Quill?' I asked with another grin.

"The Quill is the High School paper, appearing monthly. It is edited by the members of the Skull and Owl, a 'literary society' to which only Juniors and Seniors are eligible. The contents of The Quill are written by the students and in theory any student can contribute but in practice hardly anything is ever accepted from a Prep. Evelyn is a Skull and Owlite and her cousin is editor of The Quill. She evidently thought I was waxing sarcastic at her expense and ignored me for the rest of her call, except for one dear little jab when dress came up for discussion.

"'I want one of the new ties,' she said. 'There are some sweet ones at Jones and McCallum's and they are awfully smart. The little black velvet ribbon you are wearing around your neck, Miss Starr, is rather becoming. I used to wear one myself when they were in style.'

"I couldn't think of anything clever to say in retort. I can think of clever things so easily when there is no one to say them to. So I said nothing but merely smiled very slowly and disdainfully. That seemed to annoy Evelyn more than speech, for I heard she said afterwards that 'that Emily Starr' had a very affected smile.

"Note:—One can do a great deal with appropriate smiles. I must study the subject carefully. The friendly smile—the scornful smile—the detached smile—the entreating smile—the common or garden grin.

"As for Miss Brownell—or rather Mrs. Blake—I met her on the street a few days ago. After she passed she said something to her companion and they both laughed. Very bad manners, I think.

"I like Shrewsbury and I like school but I shall never like Aunt Ruth's house. It has a disagreeable personality. Houses are like people—some you like and some you don't like—and once in a while there is one you love. Outside, this house is covered with frippery. I feel like getting a broom and sweeping it off. Inside, its rooms are all square and proper and soulless. Nothing you could put into them would ever seem to belong to them. There are no nice romantic corners in it, as there are at New Moon. My room hasn't improved on acquaintance, either. The ceiling oppresses me—it comes down so low over my bed—and Aunt Ruth won't let me move the bed. She looked amazed when I suggested it.

"'The bed has always been in that corner,' she said, just as she might have said, 'The sun has always risen in the east.'

"But the pictures are really the worst thing about this room—chromos of the most aggravated description. Once I turned them all to the wall and of course Aunt Ruth walked in—she never knocks—and noticed them at once.

"'Em'ly, why have you meddled with the pictures?'

"Aunt Ruth is always asking 'why' I do this and that. Sometimes I can explain and sometimes I can't. This was one of the times I couldn't. But of course I had to answer Aunt Ruth's question. No disdainful smile would do here.

"'Queen Alexandra's dog collar gets on my nerves,' I said, 'and Byron's expression on his death-bed at Missolonghi hinders me from studying.'

"'Em'ly,' said Aunt Ruth, 'you might try to show a little gratitude.'

"I wanted to say,

"'To whom—Queen Alexandra or Lord Byron?' but of course I didn't. Instead I meekly turned all the pictures right side out again.

"'You haven't told me the real reason why you turned those pictures,' said Aunt Ruth sternly. 'I suppose you don't mean to tell me. Deep and sly—deep and sly—I always said you were. The very first time I saw you at Maywood I said you were the slyest child I had ever seen.'

"'Aunt Ruth, why do you say such things to me?' I said, in exasperation. 'Is it because you love me and want to improve me—or hate me and want to hurt me—or just because you can't help it?'

"'Miss Impertinence, please remember that this is my house. And you will leave my pictures alone after this. I will forgive you for meddling with them this time but don't let it happen again. I will find out yet your motive in turning them around, clever as you think yourself.'

"Aunt Ruth stalked out but I know she listened on the landing quite a while to find out if I would begin talking to myself. She is always watching me—even when she says nothing—does nothing—I know she is watching me. I feel like a little fly under a microscope. Not a word or action escapes her criticism, and, though she can't read my thoughts, she attributes thoughts to me that I never had any idea of thinking. I hate that worse than anything else.

"Can't I say anything good of Aunt Ruth? Of course I can.

"She is honest and virtuous and truthful and industrious and of her pantry she needeth not to be ashamed. But she hasn't any lovable virtues—and she will never give up trying to find out why I turned the pictures. She will never believe that I told her the simple truth.

"Of course, things 'might be worse.' As Teddy says, it might have been Queen Victoria instead of Queen Alexandra.

"I have some pictures of my own pinned up that save me—some lovely sketches of New Moon and the old orchard that Teddy made for me, and an engraving Dean gave me. It is a picture in soft, dim colours of palms around a desert well and a train of camels passing across the sands against a black sky gemmed with stars. It is full of lure and mystery and when I look at it I forget Queen Alexandra's jewellery and Lord Byron's lugubrious face, and my soul slips out—out—through a little gateway into a great, vast world of freedom and dream.

"Aunt Ruth asked me where I got that picture. When I told her she sniffed and said,

"'I can't understand how you have such a liking for Jarback Priest. He's a man I've no use for.'

"I shouldn't think she would have.

"But if the house is ugly and my room unfriendly, the Land of Uprightness is beautiful and saves my soul alive. The Land of Uprightness is the fir grove behind the house. I call it that because the firs are all so exceedingly tall and slender and straight. There is a pool in it, veiled with ferns, with a big grey boulder beside it. It is reached by a little, winding, capricious path so narrow that only one can walk in it. When I'm tired or lonely or angry or too ambitious I go there and sit for a few minutes. Nobody can keep an upset mind looking at those slender, crossed tips against the sky. I go there to study on fine evenings, though Aunt Ruth is suspicious and thinks it is just another manifestation of my slyness. Soon it will be dark too early to study there and I'll be so sorry. Somehow, my books have a meaning there they never have anywhere else.

"There are so many dear, green corners in the Land of Uprightness, full of the aroma of sun-steeped ferns, and grassy, open spaces where pale asters feather the grass, swaying gently towards each other when the Wind Woman runs among them. And just to the left of my window there is a group of tall old firs that look, in moonlight or twilight, like a group of witches weaving spells of sorcery. When I first saw them, one windy night against the red sunset, with the reflection of my candle, like a weird, signal flame, suspended in the air among their boughs, the flash came—for the first time in Shrewsbury—and I felt so happy that nothing else mattered. I have written a poem about them.

"But oh, I burn to write stories. I knew it would be hard to keep my promise to Aunt Elizabeth but I didn't know it would be so hard. Every day it seems harder—such splendid ideas for plots pop into my mind. Then I have to fall back on character studies of the people I know. I have written several of them. I always feel so strongly tempted to touch them up a bit—deepen the shadows—bring out the highlights a little more vividly. But I remember that I promised Aunt Elizabeth never to write anything that wasn't true so I stay my hand and try to paint them exactly as they are.

"I have written one of Aunt Ruth. Interesting but dangerous. I never leave my Jimmy-book or my diary in my room. I know Aunt Ruth rummages through it when I'm out. So I always carry them in my book-bag.

"Ilse was up this evening and we did our lessons together. Aunt Ruth frowns on this—and, to be strictly just, I don't know that she is wrong. Ilse is so jolly and comical that we laugh more than we study, I'm afraid. We don't do as well in class next day—and besides, this house disapproves of laughter.

"Perry and Teddy like the High School. Perry earns his lodging by looking after the furnace and grounds and his board by waiting on the table. Besides, he gets twenty-five cents an hour for doing odd jobs. I don't see much of him or Teddy, except in the week-ends home, for it is against the school rules for boys and girls to walk together to and from school. Lots do it, though. I had several chances to but I concluded that it would not be in keeping with New Moon traditions to break the rule. Besides, Aunt Ruth asks me every blessed night when I come home from school if I've walked with anybody. I think she's sometimes a little disappointed when I say 'No.'

"Besides, I didn't much fancy any of the boys who wanted to walk with me.

********

"October 20, 19—

"My room is full of boiled cabbage smells to-night but I dare not open my window. Too much night air outside. I would risk it for a little while if Aunt Ruth hadn't been in a very bad humour all day. Yesterday was my Sunday in Shrewsbury and when we went to church I sat in the corner of the pew. I did not know that Aunt Ruth must always sit there but she thought I did it on purpose. She read her Bible all the afternoon. I felt she was reading it at me, though I couldn't imagine why. This morning she asked me why I did it.

"'Did what?' I said in bewilderment.

"'Em'ly, you know what you did. I will not tolerate this slyness. What was your motive?'

"'Aunt Ruth, I haven't the slightest idea what you mean,' I said—quite haughtily, for I felt I was not being treated fairly.

"'Em'ly, you sat in the corner of the pew yesterday just to keep me out of it. Why did you do it?"

"I looked down at Aunt Ruth—I am taller than she is now and I can do it. She doesn't like it, either. I was angry and I think I had a little of the Murray look on my face. The whole thing seemed so contemptible to be making a fuss over.

"'If I did it to keep you out of it, isn't that why?' I said as contemptuously as I felt. I picked up my book-bag and stalked to the door. There I stopped. It occurred to me that, whatever the Murrays might or might not do, I was not behaving as a Starr should. Father wouldn't have approved of my behaviour. So I turned and said, very politely,

"'I should not have spoken like that, Aunt Ruth, and I beg your pardon. I didn't mean anything by sitting in the corner. It was just because I happened to go into the pew first. I didn't know you preferred the corner.'

"Perhaps I overdid the politeness. At any rate, my apology only seemed to irritate Aunt Ruth the more. She sniffed and said,

"'I will forgive you this time, but don't let it happen again. Of course I didn't expect you would tell me your reason. You are too sly for that.'

"Aunt Ruth, Aunt Ruth! If you keep on calling me sly you'll drive me into being sly in reality and then watch out. If I choose to be sly I can twist you round my finger! It's only because I'm straightforward that you can manage me at all.

"I have to go to bed every night at nine o'clock—'people who are threatened with consumption require a great deal of sleep.' When I come from school there are chores to be done and I must study in the evenings. So I haven't a moment of time for writing anything. I know Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Ruth have had a conference on the subject. But I have to write. So I get up in the morning as soon as it is daylight, dress, and put on a coat—for the mornings are cold now—sit down and scribble for a priceless hour. I didn't choose that Aunt Ruth should discover it and call me sly so I told her I was doing it. She gave me to understand that I was mentally unsound and would make a bad end in some asylum, but she didn't actually forbid me—probably because she thought it would be of no use. It wouldn't. I've got to write, that is all there is to it. That hour in the grey morning is the most delightful one in the day for me.

"Lately, being forbidden to write stories, I've been thinking them out. But one day it struck me that I was breaking my compact with Aunt Elizabeth in spirit if not in letter. So I have stopped it.

"I wrote a character study of Ilse to-day. Very fascinating. It is difficult to analyse her. She is so different and unexpectable. (I coined that word myself.) She doesn't even get mad like anybody else. I enjoy her tantrums. She doesn't say so many awful things in them as she used to but she is piquant. (Piquant is a new word for me. I like using a new word. I never think I really own a word until I've spoken or written it.)

"I am writing by my window. I love to watch the Shrewsbury lights twinkle out in the dusk over that long hill.

"I had a letter from Dean to-day. He is in Egypt—among ruined shrines of old gods and the tombs of old kings. I saw that strange land through his eyes—I seemed to go back with him through the old centuries—I knew the magic of its skies. I was Emily of Karnak or Thebes—not Emily of Shrewsbury at all. That is a trick Dean has.

"Aunt Ruth insisted on seeing his letter and when she read it she said it was impious!

"I should never have thought of that adjective.

********

"October 21, 19—

"I climbed the steep little wooded hill in the Land of Uprightness to-night and had an exultation on its crest. There's always something satisfying in climbing to the top of a hill. There was a fine tang of frost in the air, the view over Shrewsbury Harbour was very wonderful, and the woods all about me were expecting something to happen soon—at least that is the only way I can describe the effect they had on me. I forgot everything—Aunt Ruth's stings and Evelyn Blake's patronage and Queen Alexandra's dog collar—everything in life that isn't just right. Lovely thoughts came flying to meet me like birds. They weren't my thoughts. I couldn't think anything half so exquisite. They came from somewhere.

"Coming back, on that dark little path, where the air was full of nice, whispering sounds, I heard a chuckle of laughter in a fir copse just behind me. I was startled—and a little bit alarmed. I knew at once it wasn't human laughter—it was more like the Puckish mirth of fairy folk, with just a faint hint of malice in it. I can no longer believe in wood elves—alas, one loses so much when one becomes incredulous—so this laughter puzzled me—and, yes, a horrid, crawly feeling began in my spine. Then, suddenly, I thought of owls and knew it for what it was—a truly delightful sound, as if some survival of the Golden Age were chuckling to himself there in the dark. There were two of them, I think, and they were certainly having a good time over some owlish joke. I must write a poem about it—though I'll never be able to put into words half the charm and devilry of it.

"Ilse was up on the carpet in the principal's room yesterday for walking home from school with Guy Lindsay. Something Mr. Hardy said made her so furious that she snatched up a vase of chrysanthemums that was on his desk and hurled it against the wall, where of course it was smashed to pieces.

"'If I hadn't thrown it at the wall I'd have had to have thrown it at you,' she told him.

"It would have gone hard with some girls but Mr. Hardy is a friend of Dr. Burnley's. Besides, there is something about those yellow eyes of Ilse's that do things to you. I know exactly how she would look at Mr. Hardy after she had smashed the vase. All her rage would be gone and her eyes would be laughing and daring—impudent, Aunt Ruth would call it. Mr. Hardy merely told her she was acting like a baby and would have to pay for the vase, since it was school property. That rather squelched Ilse; she thought it a tame ending to her heroics.

"I scolded her roundly. Really, somebody has to bring Ilse up and nobody but me seems to feel any responsibility in the matter. Dr. Burnley will just roar with laughter when she tells him. But I might as well have scolded the Wind Woman. Ilse just laughed and hugged me.

"'Honey, it made such a jolly smash. When I heard it I wasn't a bit mad any more.'

"Ilse recited at our school concert last week and everybody thought her wonderful.

"Aunt Ruth told me to-day that she expected me to be a star pupil. She wasn't punning on my name—oh, no, Aunt Ruth hasn't a nodding acquaintance with puns. All the pupils who make ninety per cent average at the Christmas exams and do not fall below eighty in any subject are called 'Star' pupils and are given a gold star-pin to wear for the rest of the term. It is a coveted distinction and of course not many win it. If I fail Aunt Ruth will rub it in to the bone. I must not fail.

********

"October 30, 19—

"The November Quill came out to-day. I sent my owl poem in to the editor a week ago but he didn't use is. And he did use one of Evelyn Blake's—a silly, simpering little rhyme about Autumn Leaves—very much the sort of thing I wrote three years ago.

"And Evelyn condoled with me before the whole roomful of girls because my poem hadn't been taken. I suppose Tom Blake had told her about it.

"'You mustn't feel badly about it, Miss Starr. Tom said it wasn't half bad but of course not up to The Quill's standard. Likely in another year or two you'll be able to get in. Keep on trying.'

"'Thanks,' I said. 'I'm not feeling badly. Why should I? I didn't make "beam" rhyme with "green" in my poem. If I had I'd be feeling very badly indeed.'

"Evelyn coloured to her eyes.

"'Don't show your disappointment so plainly, child,' she said.

"But I noticed she dropped the subject after that.

"For my own satisfaction I wrote a criticism of Evelyn's poem in my Jimmy-book as soon as I came from school. I modelled it on Macaulay's essay on poor Robert Montgomery, and I got so much fun out of it that I didn't feel sore and humiliated any more. I must show it to Mr. Carpenter when I go home. He'll chuckle over it.

********

"November 6, 19—

"I noticed this evening in glancing over my journal that I soon gave up recording my good and bad deeds. I suppose it was because so many of my doings were half-and-half. I never could decide in what class they belonged.

"We are expected to answer roll-call with a quotation on Monday mornings. This morning I repeated a verse from my own poem A Window that Faces the Sea. When I left Assembly to go down to the Prep classroom Miss Aylmer, the Vice-Principal, stopped me.

"'Emily, that was a beautiful verse you gave at roll-call. Where did you get it? And do you know the whole poem?'

"I was so elated I could hardly answer,

"'Yes, Miss Aylmer,' very demurely.

"'I would like a copy of it,' said Miss Aylmer. 'Could you write me off one? And who is the author?'

"'The author,' I said laughing, 'is Emily Byrd Starr. The truth is, Miss Aylmer, that I forgot to look up a quotation for roll-call and couldn't think of any in a hurry, so just fell back on a bit of my own.'

"Miss Aylmer didn't say anything for a moment. She just looked at me. She is a stout, middle-aged woman with a square face and nice, wide, grey eyes.

"'Do you still want the poem, Miss Aylmer?' I said, smiling.

"'Yes,' she said, still looking at me in that funny way, as if she had never seen me before. 'Yes—and autograph it, please.'

"I promised and went on down the stairs. At the foot I glanced back. She was still looking after me. Something in her look made me feel glad and proud and happy and humble—and—and—prayerful. Yes, that was just how I felt.

"Oh, this has been a wonderful day. What care I now for The Quill or Evelyn Blake?

"This evening Aunt Ruth marched up town to see Uncle Oliver's Andrew, who is in the bank here now. She made me go along. She gave Andrew lots of good advice about his morals and his meals and his underclothes and asked him to come down for an evening whenever he wished. Andrew is a Murray, you see, and can therefore rush in where Teddy and Perry dare not tread. He is quite good-looking, with straight, well-groomed, red hair. But he always looks as if he'd just been starched and ironed.

"I thought the evening not wholly wasted, for Mrs. Garden, his landlady, has an interesting cat who made certain advances to me. But when Andrew patted him and called him 'Poor pussy' the intelligent animal hissed at him.

"'You mustn't be too familiar with a cat,' I advised Andrew. 'And you must speak respectfully to and of him.'

"'Piffle!' said Aunt Ruth.

"But a cat's a cat for a' that.

********

"November 8, 19—

"The nights are cold now. When I came back Monday I brought one of the New Moon gin jars for my comforting. I cuddle down with it in bed and enjoy the contrasting roars of the storm wind outside in the Land of Uprightness, and the rain whirling over the room. Aunt Ruth worries for fear the cork will come out and deluge the bed. That would be almost as bad as what really did happen night before last. I woke up about midnight with the most wonderful idea for a story. I felt that I must rise at once and jot it down in a Jimmy-book before I forgot it. Then I could keep it until my three years are up and I am free to write it.

"I hopped out of bed and, in pawing around my table to find my candle, I upset my ink-bottle. Then of course I went mad and couldn't find anything! Matches—candles—everything had disappeared. I set the ink-bottle up, but I knew there was a pool of ink on the table. I had ink all over my fingers and dare not touch anything in the dark and couldn't find anything to wipe it off. And all the time I heard that ink drip-dripping on the floor.

"In desperation I opened the door—with my toes because I dare not touch it with my inky hands—and went downstairs where I wiped my hands on the stove rag and got some matches. But this time, of course, Aunt Ruth was up, demanding whys and motives. She took my matches, lighted her candle, and marched me upstairs. Oh, 'twas a gruesome sight! How could a small stone ink-bottle hold a quart of ink? There must have been a quart to have made the mess it did.

"I felt like the old Scotch emigrant who came home one evening, found his house burned down and his entire family scalped by Indians and said, 'This is pairfectly redeeclous.' The table cover was ruined—the carpet was soaked—even the wall-paper was bespattered. But Queen Alexandra smiled benignly over all and Byron went on dying.

"Aunt Ruth and I had an hour's seance with salt and vinegar. Aunt Ruth wouldn't believe me when I said I got up to jot down the plot of a story. She knew I had some other motive and it was just some more of my deepness and slyness. She also said a few other things which I won't write down. Of course I deserved a scolding for leaving that ink-bottle uncorked; but I didn't deserve all she said. However, I took it all very meekly. For one thing I had been careless: and for another I had my bedroom shoes on. Anyone can overcrow me when I'm wearing bedroom shoes. Then she wound up by saying she would forgive me this time, but it was not to happen again.

"Perry won the mile race in the school sports and broke the record. He bragged too much about it and Ilse raged at him.

********

"November 11, 19—

"Last night Aunt Ruth found me reading David Copperfield and crying over Davy's alienation from his mother, with a black rage against Mr. Murdstone in my heart. She must know why I was crying and wouldn't believe me when I told her.

"'Crying over people who never existed!' said my Aunt Ruth incredulously.

"'Oh, but they do exist,' I said. 'Why, they are as real as you are, Aunt Ruth. Do you mean to say that Miss Betsy Trotwood is a delusion?'

"I thought perhaps I could have real tea when I came to Shrewsbury, but Aunt Ruth says it is not healthy. So I drink cold water for I will not drink cambric tea any longer. As if I were a child!

********

"November 30, 19—

"Andrew was in to-night. He always comes the Friday night I don't go to New Moon. Aunt Ruth left us alone in the parlour and went out to a meeting of the Ladies' Aid. Andrew, being a Murray, can be trusted.

"I don't dislike Andrew. It would be impossible to dislike so harmless a being. He is one of those good, talkative, awkward dears who goad you irresistibly into tormenting them. Then you feel remorseful afterwards because they are so good.

"To-night, Aunt Ruth being out, I tried to discover how little I could really say to Andrew, while I pursued my own train of thought. I discovered that I could get along with very few words—'Yes'—'No'—in several inflections, with or without a little laugh—'I don't know'—'Really?'—'Well, well'—'How wonderful!'—especially the last. Andrew talked on, and when he stopped for breath I stuck in 'How wonderful.' I did it exactly eleven times. Andrew liked it. I know it gave him a nice, flattering feeling that hewas wonderful, and his conversation wonderful. Meanwhile I was living a splendid imaginary dream-life by the River of Egypt in the days of Thotmes I.

"So we were both very happy. I think I'll try it again. Andrew is too stupid to catch me at it.

"When Aunt Ruth came home she asked, 'Well, how did you and Andrew get along?'

"She asks that every time he comes down. I know why. I know the little scheme that is understood among the Murrays, even though I don't believe any of them have ever put it into words.

"'Beautifully,' I said. 'Andrew is improving. He said one interesting thing to-night, and he hadn't so many feet and hands as usual.'

"I don't know why I say things like that to Aunt Ruth occasionally. It would be so much better for me if I didn't. But something—whether it's Murray or Starr or Shipley or Burnley, or just pure cussedness I know not—makes me say them before I've time to reflect.

"'No doubt you would find more congenial company in Stovepipe Town,' said Aunt Ruth.

Chapter 8 Not Proven

Emily regretfully left the "Booke Shoppe," where the aroma of books and new magazines was as the savour of sweet incense in her nostrils, and hastened down cold and blustery Prince Street. Whenever possible she slipped into the Booke Shoppe and took hungry dips into magazines she could not afford to buy, avid to learn what kind of stuff they published—especially poetry. She could not see that many of the verses in them were any better than some of her own, yet editors sent hers back religiously. Emily had already used a considerable portion of the American stamps she had bought with Cousin Jimmy's dollar in paying the homeward way of her fledgelings, accompanied by only the cold comfort of rejection slips. Her Owl's Laughter had already been returned six times, but Emily had not wholly lost faith in it yet. That very morning she had dropped it again into the letter-box at the Shoppe.

"The seventh time brings luck," she thought as she turned down the street leading to Ilse's boarding-house. She had her examination in English at eleven o'clock and she wanted to glance over Ilse's note-book before she went for it. The Preps were almost through their terminal examinations, taking them by fits and starts when the class-rooms were free from Seniors and Juniors—a thing that always made the Preps furious. Emily felt comfortably certain she would get her star pin. The examinations in her hardest subjects were over and she did not believe she had fallen below eighty in any of them. To-day was English, in which she ought to go well over ninety. Remained only history, which she also loved. Everybody expected her to win the star pin. Cousin Jimmy was intensely excited over it, and Dean had sent her premature congratulations from the top of a pyramid, so sure was he of her success. His letter had come the previous day, along with the packet containing his Christmas gift.

"I send you a little gold necklace that was taken from the mummy of a dead princess of the nineteenth dynasty," wrote Dean. "Her name was Mena and it said in her epitaph that she was 'sweet of heart.' So I think she fared well in the Hall of Judgment and that the dread old gods smiled indulgently upon her. This little amulet lay on her dead breast for thousands of years. I send it to you weighted with centuries of love. I think it must have been a love gift. Else why should it have rested on her heart all this time? It must have been her own choice. Others would have put a finer thing on the neck of a king's daughter."

The little trinket intrigued Emily with its charm and mystery, yet she was almost afraid of it. She gave a slight ghostly shudder as she clasped it around her slim white throat and wondered about the royal girl who had worn it in those days of a dead empire. What was its history and its secret?

Naturally Aunt Ruth had disapproved. What business had Emily to be getting Christmas presents from Jarback Priest?

"At least he might have sent you something new if he had to send anything," she said.

"A souvenir of Cairo, made in Germany," suggested Emily gravely.

"Something like that," agreed Aunt Ruth unsuspiciously. "Mrs. Ayers has a handsome, gold-mounted glass paper-weight with a picture of the Sphinx in it that her brother brought her from Egypt. That battered thing looks positively cheap."

"Cheap! Aunt Ruth, do you realize that this necklace was made by hand and worn by an Egyptian princess before the days of Moses?"

"Oh, well—if you want to believe Jarback Priest's fairy tales," said Aunt Ruth, much amused. "I wouldn't wear it in public if I were you, Em'ly. The Murrays never wear shabby jewellery. You're not going to leave it on to-night, child?"

"Of course I am. The last time it was worn was probably at the court of Pharaoh in the days of the oppression. Now, it will go to Kit Barrett's snow-shoe dance. What a difference! I hope the ghost of Princess Mena won't haunt me to-night. She may resent my sacrilege—who knows? But it was not I who rifled her tomb, and somebody would have this if I didn't—somebody who mightn't think of the little princess at all. I'm sure she would rather that it was warm and shining about my neck than in some grim museum for thousands of curious, cold eyes to stare at. She was 'sweet of heart,' Dean says—she won't grudge me her pretty pendant. Lady of Egypt, whose kingdom has been poured on the desert sands like spilled wine, I salute you across the gulf of time."

Emily bowed deeply and waved her hand adown the vistas of dead centuries.

"Such high-falutin' language is very foolish," sniffed Aunt Ruth.

"Oh, most of that last sentence was a quotation from Dean's letter," said Emily candidly.

"Sounds like him," was Aunt Ruth's contemptuous agreement. "Well, I think your Venetian beads would be better than that heathenish-looking thing. Now, mind you don't stay too late, Em'ly. Make Andrew bring you home not later than twelve."

Emily was going with Andrew to Kitty Barrett's dance—a privilege quite graciously accorded since Andrew was one of the elect people. Even when she did not get home until one o'clock Aunt Ruth overlooked it. But it left Emily rather sleepy for the day, especially as she had studied late the two previous nights. Aunt Ruth relaxed her rigid rules in examination time and permitted an extra allowance of candles. What she would have said had she known that Emily used some of the extra candle-light to write a poem on Shadows I do not know and cannot record. But no doubt she would have considered it an added proof of slyness. Perhaps it was sly. Remember that I am only Emily's biographer, not her apologist.

Emily found Evelyn Blake in Ilse's room and Evelyn Blake was secretly much annoyed because she had not been invited to the snowshoe dance and Emily Starr had. Therefore Evelyn, sitting on Ilse's table and swinging her high, silken-sheathed instep flauntingly in the face of girls who had no silk stockings, was prepared to be disagreeable.

"I'm glad you've come, trusty and well-beloved," moaned Ilse. "Evelyn has been clapper-clawing me all the morning. Perhaps she'll whirl in at you now and give me a rest."

"I have been telling her that she should learn to control her temper," said Evelyn virtuously. "Don't you agree with me, Miss Starr?"

"What have you been doing now, Ilse?" asked Emily.

"Oh, I had a large quarrel with Mrs. Adamson this morning. It was bound to come sooner or later. I've been good so long there was an awful lot of wickedness bottled up in me. Mary knew that, didn't you, Mary? Mary felt quite sure an explosion was due to happen. Mrs. Adamson began it by asking disagreeable questions. She's always doing that—isn't she, Mary? After that she started in scolding—and finally she cried. Then I slapped her face."

"You see," said Evelyn, significantly.

"I couldn't help it," grinned Ilse. "I could have endured her impertinence and her scolding—but when she began to cry—she's so ugly when she cries—well, I just slapped her."

"I suppose you felt better after that," said Emily, determined not to show any disapproval before Evelyn.

Ilse burst out laughing.

"Yes, at first. It stopped her yowling, anyway. But afterwards came remorse. I'll apologize to her, of course. I do feel real sorry—but I'm quite likely to do it again. If Mary here weren't so good I wouldn't be half as bad. I have to even the balance up a bit. Mary is meek and humble and Mrs. Adamson walks all over her. You should hear her scold Mary if Mary goes out more than one evening a week."

"She is right," said Evelyn. "It would be much better if you went out less. You're getting talked about, Ilse."

"You weren't out last night, anyhow, were you, dear?" asked Ilse with another unholy grin.

Evelyn coloured and was haughtily silent. Emily buried herself in her note-book and Mary and Ilse went out. Emily wished Evelyn would go, too. But Evelyn had no intention of going.

"Why don't you make Ilse behave herself?" she began in a hatefully confidential sort of way.

"I have no authority over Ilse," said Emily coldly. "Besides, I don't think she misbehaves."

"Oh, my dear girl—why, you heard her yourself saying she slapped Mrs. Adamson."

"Mrs. Adamson needed it. She's an odious woman—always crying when there's no need in the world for her to cry. There's nothing more aggravating."

"Well, Ilse skipped French again yesterday afternoon and went for a walk up-river with Ronnie Gibson. If she does that too often she's going to get caught."

"Ilse is very popular with the boys," said Emily, who knew that Evelyn wanted to be.

"She's popular in the wrong quarters." Evelyn was condescending now, knowing by instinct that Emily Starr hated to be condescended to. "She always has a ruck of wild boys after her—the nice ones don't bother with her, you notice."

"Ronnie Gibson's nice, isn't he?"

"Well, what do you say to Marshall Orde?"

"Ilse has nothing to do with Marshall Orde."

"Oh, hasn't she! She was driving with him till twelve o'clock last Tuesday night—and he was drunk when he got the horse from the livery stable."

"I don't believe a word of it! Ilse never went driving with Marsh Orde." Emily was white-lipped with indignation.

"I was told by a person who saw them. Ilse is being talked about everywhere. Perhaps you have no authority over her but surely you have some influence. Though you do foolish things yourself sometimes, don't you? Not meaning any harm perhaps. That time you went bathing on the Blair Water sands without any clothes on, for instance? That's known all through the school. I heard Marsh's brother laughing about it. Now, wasn't that foolish, my dear?"

Emily blushed with anger and shame—though quite as much over being my-deared by Evelyn Blake as anything else. That beautiful bathing by moonlight—what a thing of desecration it had been made by the world! She would not discuss it with Evelyn—she would not even tell Evelyn they had their petticoats on. Let her think what she would.

"I don't think you quite understand some things, Miss Blake," she said, with a certain fine, detached irony of tone and manner which made very commonplace words seem charged, with meanings unutterable.

"Oh, you belong to the Chosen People, don't you?" Evelyn laughed her malicious little laugh.

"I do," said Emily calmly, refusing to withdraw her eyes from her note-book.

"Well, don't get so vexed, dear. I only spoke because I thought it a pity to see poor Ilse getting in wrong everywhere. I rather like her, poor soul. And I wish she would tone down her taste in colours a bit. That scarlet evening dress she wore at the Prep concert—really, you know, it's weird."

"She looked like a tall golden lily in a scarlet sheath, I thought," said Emily.

"What a loyal friend you are, dear. I wonder if Ilse would stand up for you like that. Well, I suppose I ought to let you study. You have English at ten, haven't you? Mr. Scoville is going to watch the room—Mr. Travers is sick. Don't you think Mr. Scoville's hair is wonderful? Speaking of hair, dear, why don't you dress yours low enough at the sides to hide your ears—the tips, anyway? I think it would become you so much better."

Emily decided that if Evelyn Blake called her "dear" again she would throw an ink-bottle at her. Why didn't she go away and let her study?

Evelyn had another shot in her locker.

"That callow young friend of yours from Stovepipe Town has been trying to get into The Quill. He sent in a patriotic poem. Tom showed it to me. It was a scream. One line especially was delicious—'Canada, like a maiden, welcomes back her sons.' You should have heard Tom howl."

Emily could hardly help smiling herself, though she was horribly annoyed with Perry for making such a target of himself. Why couldn't he learn his limitations and understand that the slopes of Parnassus were not for him?

"I do not think the editor of The Quill has any business to show rejected contributions to outsiders," she said coldly.

"Oh, Tom doesn't look on me as an outsider. And that really was too good to keep. Well, I think I'll run down to the Shoppe."

Emily sighed with relief as Evelyn took her departure. Presently Ilse returned.

"Evelyn gone? Sweet temper she was in this morning. I can't understand what Mary sees in her. Mary's a decent sort though she isn't exciting."

"Ilse," said Emily seriously. "Were you out driving with Marsh Orde one night last week?"

Ilse stared.

"No, you dear young ass, I wasn't. I can guess where you heard that yarn. I don't know who the girl was."

"But you cut French and went up-river with Ronnie Gibson?"

"Peccavi."

"Ilse—you shouldn't—really—"

"Now, don't make me mad, Emily!" said Ilse shortly. "You're getting too smug—something ought to be done to cure you before it gets chronic. I hate prunes and prisms. I'm off—I want to run round to the Shoppe before I go to the school."

Ilse gathered up her books pettishly and flounced out. Emily yawned and decided she was through with the note-book. She had half an hour yet before it was necessary to go to the school. She would lie down on Ilse's bed for just a moment.

It seemed the next minute when she found herself sitting up, staring with dismayed face at Mary Carswell's clock. Five minutes to eleven—five minutes to cover a quarter of a mile and be at her desk for examination. Emily flung on coat and cap, caught up her note-books and fled. She arrived at the High School out of breath, with a nasty subconsciousness that people had looked at her queerly as she tore through the streets, hung up her wraps without a glance at the mirror, and hurried into the class-room.

A stare of amazement followed by a ripple of laughter went over the room. Mr. Scoville, tall, slim, elegant, was giving out the examination papers. He laid one down before Emily and said gravely,

"Did you look in your mirror before you came to class, Miss Starr?"

"No," said Emily resentfully, sensing something fearfully wrong somewhere.

"I—think—I would look—now—if I were—you." Mr. Scoville seemed to be speaking with difficulty.

Emily got up and went back to the girls' dressing-room. She met Principal Hardy in the Hall and Principal Hardy stared at her. Why Principal Hardy stared—why the Preps had laughed—Emily understood when she confronted the dressing-room looking-glass.

Drawn skilfully and blackly across her upper lip and her cheeks was a moustache—a flamboyant, very black moustache, with fantastically curled ends. For a moment Emily gaped at herself in blank horror—why—what—who had done it?

She whirled furiously about. Evelyn Blake had just entered the room.

"You—you did this!" panted Emily.

Evelyn stared for a moment—then went off into a peal of laughter.

"Emily Starr! You look like a nightmare. Do you mean to tell me you went into class with that on your face?"

Emily clenched her hands.

"You did it," she said again.

Evelyn drew herself up very haughtily.

"Really, Miss Starr, I hope you don't think I'd stoop to such a trick. I suppose your dear friend Ilse thought she'd play a joke on you—she was chuckling over something when she came in a few minutes ago."

"Ilse never did it," cried Emily.

Evelyn shrugged her shoulders.

"I'd wash it off first and find out who did it afterward," she said with a twitching face as she went out

Emily, trembling from head to foot with anger, shame and the most intense humiliation she had ever suffered, washed the moustache off her face. Her first impulse was to go home—she could not face that roomful of Preps again. Then she set her teeth and went back, holding her black head very high as she walked down the aisle to her desk. Her face was burning and her spirit was aflame. In the corner she saw Ilse's yellow head bent over her paper. The others were smiling and tittering. Mr. Scoville was insultingly grave. Emily took up her pen but her hand shook over her paper.

If she could have had a good cry there and then her shame and anger would have found a saving vent. But that was impossible. She would not cry. She would not let them see the depths of her humiliation. If Emily could have laughed off the malicious joke it would have been better for her. Being Emily—and being one of the proud Murrays—she could not. She resented the indignity to the very core of her passionate soul.

As far as the English paper was concerned she might almost as well have gone home. She had lost twenty minutes already. It was ten minutes more before she could steady her hand sufficiently to write. Her thoughts she could not command at all. The paper was a difficult one, as Mr. Travers' papers always were. Her mind seemed a chaos of jostling ideas spinning around a fixed point of torturing shame. When she handed in her paper and left the class-room she knew she had lost her star. That paper would be no more than a pass, if it were that. But in her turmoil of feeling she did not care. She hurried home to her unfriendly room, thankful that Aunt Ruth was out, threw herself on the bed and wept. She felt sore, beaten, bruised—and under all her pain was a horrible, teasing little doubt.

Did Ilse do it—no, she didn't—she couldn't have. Who then? Mary? The idea was absurd. It must have been Evelyn—Evelyn had come back and played that cruel trick on her out of spite and pique. Yet she had denied it, with seemingly insulted indignation, and eyes that were perhaps a shade too innocent. What had Ilse said—"You are getting positively smug—something ought to be done to cure you before it gets chronic." Had Ilse taken that abominable way of curing her?

"No—no—no!" Emily sobbed fiercely into her pillow. But the doubt persisted.

Aunt Ruth had no doubt. Aunt Ruth was calling on her friend, Mrs. Ball, and her friend, Mrs. Ball, had a daughter who was a Prep. Anita Ball came home with the tale that had been well laughed over in Prep and Junior and Senior classes, and Anita Ball said that Evelyn Blake had said Ilse Burnley had done the deed.

"Well," said Aunt Ruth, invading Emily's room on her return home, "I hear Ilse Burnley decorated you beautifully to-day. I hope you realize what she is now."

"Ilse didn't do it," said Emily.

"Have you asked her?"

"No. I wouldn't insult her with such a question."

"Well, I believe she did do it. And she is not to come here again. Understand that."

"Aunt Ruth—"

"You've heard what I said, Em'ly. Ilse Burnley is no fit associate for you. I've heard too many tales about her lately. But this is unpardonable."

"Aunt Ruth, if I ask Ilse if she did it and she says she did not, won't you believe her?"

"No, I wouldn't believe any girl brought up as Ilse Burnley was. It's my belief she'd do anything and say anything. Don't let me see her in my house again."

Emily stood up and tried to summon the Murray look into a face distorted by weeping.

"Of course, Aunt Ruth," she said coldly, "I won't bring Ilse here if she is not welcome. But I shall go to see her. And if you forbid me—I'll—I'll go home to New Moon. I feel as if I wanted to go anyhow now. Only—I won't let Evelyn Blake drive me away."

Aunt Ruth knew quite well that the New Moon folks would not agree to a complete divorce between Emily and Ilse. They were too good friends with the doctor for that. Mrs. Dutton had never liked Dr. Burnley. She had to be content with the excuse for keeping Ilse away from her house, for which she had long hankered. Her own annoyance over the matter was not born out of any sympathy with Emily but solely from anger at a Murray being made ridiculous.

"I would have thought you'd had enough of going to see Ilse. As for Evelyn Blake, she is too clever and sensible a girl to have played a silly trick like that. I know the Blakes. They are an excellent family and Evelyn's father is well-to-do. Now, stop crying. A pretty face you've got. What sense is there in crying?"

"None at all," agreed Emily drearily, "only I can't help it. I can't bear to be made ridiculous. I can endure anything but that. Oh, Aunt Ruth, please leave me alone. I can't eat any supper."

"You've got yourself all worked up—Starr-like. We Murrays conceal our feelings."

"I don't believe you've any to conceal—some of you," thought Emily rebelliously.

"Keep away from Ilse Burnley after this, and you'll not be so likely to be publicly disgraced," was Aunt Ruth's parting advice.

Emily, after a sleepless night—during which it seemed to her that if she couldn't push that ceiling farther from her face she would surely smother—went to see Ilse the next day and reluctantly told her what Aunt Ruth had said. Ilse was furious—but Emily noted with a pang that she did not assert any innocence of the crayon trick.

"Ilse, you—you didn't really do that?" she faltered. She knew Ilse hadn't—she was sure of it—but she wanted to hear her say so. To her surprise, a sudden blush swept over Ilse's face.

"Is thy servant a dog?" she said, rather confusedly. It was very unlike straightforward, outspoken Ilse to be so confused. She turned her face away and began fumbling aimlessly with her book-bag. "You don't suppose I'd do anything like that to you, Emily?"

"No, of course not," said Emily, slowly. The subject was dropped. But the little doubt and distrust at the bottom of Emily's mind came out of its lurking-place and declared itself. Even yet she couldn't believe Ilse could do such a thing—and lie about it afterward. But why was she so confused and shamefaced? Would not an innocent Ilse have stormed about according to form, berated Emily, roundly, for mere suspicion, and aired the subject generally until all the venom had been blown out of it?

It was not referred to again. But the shadow was there and spoiled, to a certain extent, the Christmas holidays at New Moon. Outwardly, the girls were the friends they had always been, but Emily was acutely conscious of a sudden rift between them. Strive as she would she could not bridge it. The seeming unconsciousness of any such severance on Ilse's part served to deepen it. Hadn't Ilse cared enough for her and her friendship to feel the chill that had come over it? Could she be so shallow and indifferent as not to perceive it? Emily brooded and grew morbid over it. A thing like that—a dim, poisonous thing that lurked in shadow and dared not come into the open—always played havoc with her sensitive and passionate temperament. No open quarrel with Ilse could have affected her like this—she had quarrelled with Ilse scores of times and made up the next minute with no bitterness or backward glance. This was different. The more Emily brooded over it the more monstrous it grew. She was unhappy, absent, restless. Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy noticed it but attributed it to her disappointment over the star pin. She had told them she was sure she would not win. But Emily had ceased to care about the star pin.

To be sure, she had a bad time of it, when she went back to High School and the examination results were announced. She was not one of the envied four who flaunted star pins and Aunt Ruth rubbed it in for weeks. Aunt Ruth felt that she had lost family prestige in Emily's failure and she was very bitter about it. Altogether Emily felt that the New Year had come in very inauspiciously for her. The first month of it was a time she never liked to recall. She was very lonely. Ilse could not come to see her, and though she made herself go to see Ilse the subtle little rift between them was slowly widening. Ilse still gave no sign of feeling it; but then, somehow, she was seldom alone with Ilse now. The room was always filled with girls, and there was a good deal of noise and laughter and jokes and school gossip—all very harmless and even jolly, but very different from the old intimacy and understanding comradeship with Ilse. Formerly it used to be a chummy jest between them that they could walk or sit for hours together and say no word and yet feel that they had had a splendid time. There were no such silences now: when they did happen to be alone together they both chattered gaily and shallowly, as if each were secretly afraid that there might come a moment for the silence that betrays.

Emily's heart ached over their lost friendship: every night her pillow was wet with tears. Yet there was nothing she could do: she could not, try as she would, banish the doubt that possessed her. She made many an honest effort to do so. She told herself every day that Ilse Burnley could never have played that trick—that she was constitutionally incapable of it—and went straightway to Ilse with the firm determination to be just what she had always been to her. With the result that she was unnaturally cordial and friendly—even gushing—and no more like her real self than she was like Evelyn Blake. Ilse was just as cordial and friendly—and the rift was wider still.

"Ilse never goes into a tantrum with me now," Emily reflected sadly.

It was quite true. Ilse was always good-tempered with Emily, presenting a baffling front of politeness unbroken by a single flash of her old wild spirit. Emily felt that nothing could have been more welcome than one of Ilse's stormy rages. It might break the ice that was forming so relentlessly between them, and release the pent-up flood of old affection.

One of the keenest stings in the situation was that Evelyn Blake was quite well aware of the state of affairs between Ilse and Emily. The mockery of her long brown eyes and the hidden sneer in her casual sentences betrayed her knowledge and her enjoyment of it. This was gall and wormwood to Emily, who felt that she had no defence against it. Evelyn was a girl whom intimacies between other girls annoyed, and the friendship between Ilse and Emily had annoyed her especially. It had been so complete—so absorbing. There had been no place in it for anyone else. And Evelyn did not like to feel that she was barred out—that there was some garden enclosed, into which she might not enter. She was therefore hugely delighted to think that this vexingly beautiful friendship between two girls she secretly hated was at an end.

Chapter 9 A Supreme Moment

Emily came downstairs laggingly, feeling that all the colour and music had somehow gone out of life, and that it stretched before her in unbroken greyness. Ten minutes later she was encompassed by rainbows and the desert of her future had blossomed like the rose.

The cause of this miracle of transformation was a thin letter which Aunt Ruth handed to her with an Aunt Ruthian sniff. There was a magazine, too, but Emily did not at first regard it. She saw the address of a floral firm on the corner of the envelope, and sensed at touch the promising thinness of it—so different from the plump letters full of rejected verses.

Her heart beat violently as she tore it open and glanced over the typewritten sheet.

 

MISS EMILY B. STARR,

Shrewsbury, P.E. Island,

Can.

DEAR MISS STARR:

It gives us great pleasure to tell you that your poem, Owl's Laughter has been found available for use in Garden and Woodland. It appears in the current issue of our magazine, a copy of which we are sending you. Your verses have the true ring and we shall be glad to see more of your work.

It is not our custom to pay cash for our contributions but you may select two dollars' worth of seeds or plants from our catalogue to be sent to your address prepaid.

Thanking you,

We remain,

Yours truly,

THOS. E. CARLTON & CO.

 

Emily dropped the letter and seized upon the magazine with trembling fingers. She grew dizzy—the letters danced before her eyes—she felt a curious sensation of choking—for there on the front page, in a fine border of curlicues, was her poem—Owl's Laughter, by Emily Byrd Starr.

It was the first sweet bubble on the cup of success and we must not think her silly if it intoxicated her. She carried the letter and magazine off to her room to gloat over it, blissfully unconscious that Aunt Ruth was doing an extra deal of sniffing. Aunt Ruth felt very suspicious of suddenly crimsoned cheek and glowing eye and general air of rapture and detachment from earth.

In her room Emily sat down and read her poem as if she had never seen it before. There was, to be sure, a printer's error in it that made the flesh creep on her bones—it was awful to have hunter's moon come out as hunter's moan—but it was her poem—hers—accepted by and printed in a real magazine.

And paid for! To be sure a cheque would have been more acceptable—two dollars all her own, earned by her own pen, would have seemed like riches to Emily. But what fun she and Cousin Jimmy would have selecting the seeds! She could see in imagination that beautiful flower-bed next summer in the New Moon garden—a glory of crimson and purple and blue and gold.

And what was it the letter said?

"Your verses have the true ring and we shall be glad to see more of your work."

Oh, bliss—oh, rapture! The world was hers—the Alpine Path was as good as climbed—what signified a few more scrambles to the summit?

Emily could not remain in that dark little room with its oppressive ceiling and unfriendly furniture. Lord Byron's funereal expression was an insult to her happiness. She threw on her wraps and hurried out to the Land of Uprightness.

As she went through the kitchen, Aunt Ruth, naturally more suspicious than ever, inquired with markedly bland sarcasm,

"Is the house on fire? Or the harbour?"

"Neither. It's my soul that's on fire," said Emily with an inscrutable smile. She shut the door behind her and at once forgot Aunt Ruth and every other disagreeable thing and person. How beautiful the world was—how beautiful life was—how wonderful the Land of Uprightness was! The young firs along the narrow path were lightly powdered with snow, as if, thought Emily, a veil of aerial lace had been tricksily flung over austere young Druid priestesses foresworn to all such frivolities of vain adornment. Emily decided she would write that sentence down in her Jimmy-book when she went back. On and on she flitted to the crest of the hill. She felt as if she were flying—her feet couldn't really be touching the earth. On the hill she paused and stood, a rapt, ecstatic figure with clasped hands and eyes of dream. It was just after sunset. Out, over the ice-bound harbour, great clouds piled themselves up in dazzling, iridescent masses. Beyond were gleaming white hills with early stars over them. Between the dark trunks of the old fir trees to her right, far away through the crystal evening air, rose a great, round, full moon.

"'It has the true ring,'" murmured Emily, tasting the incredible words anew. "They want to see more of my work! Oh, if only Father could see my verses in print!"

Years before, in the old house at Maywood, her father, bending over her as she slept had said, "She will love deeply—suffer terribly—she will have glorious moments to compensate."

This was one of her glorious moments. She felt a wonderful lightness of spirit—a soul-stirring joy in mere existence. The creative faculty, dormant through the wretched month just passed, suddenly burned in her soul again like a purifying flame. It swept away all morbid, poisonous, rankling things. All at once Emily knew that Ilse had never done that. She laughed joyously—amusedly.

"What a little fool I've been! Oh, such a little fool! Of course, Ilse never did it. There's nothing between us now—it's gone—gone—gone. I'll go right to her and tell her so."

Emily hurried back adown her little path. The Land of Uprightness lay all about her, mysterious in the moonlight, wrapped in the exquisite reticence of winter woods. She seemed one with its beauty and charm and mystery. With a sudden sigh of the Wind Woman through the shadowy aisles came "the flash" and Emily went dancing to Ilse with the afterglow of it in her soul.

She found Ilse alone—threw her arms around her—hugged her fiercely.

"Ilse, do forgive me," she cried. "I shouldn't have doubted you—I did doubt you—but now I know—I know. You will forgive me?"

"You young goat," said Ilse.

Emily loved to be called a young goat. This was the old Ilse—her Ilse.

"Oh, Ilse, I've been so unhappy."

"Well, don't bawl over it," said Ilse. "I haven't been very hilarious myself. Look here, Emily, I've got something to tell you. Shut up and listen. That day I met Evelyn at the Shoppe and we went back for some book she wanted and we found you sound asleep—so sound asleep that you never stirred when I pinched your cheek. Then, just for devilment I picked up a black crayon and said, 'I'm going to draw a moustache on her'—shut up! Evelyn pulled a long face and said, 'Oh, no! that would be mean,don't you think?' I hadn't had the slightest intention of doing it—I'd only spoken in fun—but that shrimp Evelyn's ungodly affectation of righteousness made me so mad that I decided I would do it—shut up!—I meant to wake you right up and hold a glass before you, that was all. But before I could do it Kate Errol came in and wanted us to go along with her and I threw down the chalk and went out. That's all, Emily, honest to Caesar. But it made me feel ashamed and silly later on—I'd say a bit conscience-stricken if I had such a thing as a conscience, because I felt that I must have put the idea into the head of whoever did do it, and so was responsible in a way. And then I saw you distrusted me—and that made me mad—not tempery-mad, you see, but a nasty, cold, inside sort of madness. I thought you had no business even to suspect that I could have done such a thing as let you go to class like that. And I thought, since you did, you could go on doing it—I wouldn't say one word to put matters straight. Golly, but I'm glad you're through with seein' things."

"Do you think Evelyn Blake did it?"

"No. Oh, she's quite capable of it, of course, but I don't see how it could have been she. She went to the Shoppe with Kate and me and we left her there. She was in class fifteen minutes later, so I don't think she'd have had time to go back and do it. I really think it was that little devil of a May Hilson. She'd do anything and she was in the hall when I was flourishing the crayon. She'd 'take the suggestion as a cat laps milk.' But it couldn't have been Evelyn."

Emily retained her belief that it could have been and was. But the only thing that mattered now was the fact that Aunt Ruth still believed Ilse guilty and would continue so to believe.

"Well, that's a rotten shame," said Ilse. "We can't have any real chum-talks here—Mary always has such a mob in and E. B. pervades the place."

"I'll find out who did it yet," said Emily darkly, "and make Aunt Ruth give in."

On the next afternoon Evelyn Blake found Ilse and Emily in a beautiful row. At least Ilse was rowing while Emily sat with her legs crossed and a bored, haughty expression in her insolently half-shut eyes. It should have been a welcome sight to a girl who disliked the intimacies of other girls. But Evelyn Blake was not rejoiced. Ilse was quarrelling with Emily again—ergo, Ilse and Emily were on good terms once more.

"I'm so glad to see you've forgiven Ilse for that mean trick," she said sweetly to Emily the next day. "Of course, it was just pure thoughtlessness on her part—I've always insisted on that—she never stopped to think what ridicule she was letting you in for. Poor Ilse is like that. You know I tried to stop her—I didn't tell you this before, of course—I didn't want to make any more trouble than there was—but I told her it was a horribly mean thing to do to a friend. I thought I had put her off. It's sweet of you to forgive her, Emily dear. You are better-hearted than I am. I'm afraid I could never pardon anyone who had made me such a laughing-stock."

"Why didn't you slay her in her tracks?" said Ilse when she heard of it from Emily.

"I simply half-shut my eyes and looked at her like a Murray," said Emily, "and that was more bitter than death."