Emily of New Moon quotes

Emily loved her pussies. She had brought them up herself, as she proudly said. They had been given to her when they were kittens by her Sunday School teacher.

“A living present is so nice,” she told Ellen, “because it keeps on getting nicer all the time.”

But she worried considerably because Saucy Sal didn’t have kittens.

Emily was not crying; she stared straight into the darkness, trying to face the awful thing Ellen had told her. She did not doubt it—something told her it was true. Why couldn’t she die, too? She couldn’t go on living without Father.

“If I was God I wouldn’t let things like this happen,” she said.

She felt it was very wicked of her to say such a thing—Ellen had told her once that it was the wickedest thing anyone could do to find fault with God. But she didn’t care.

she undressed as swiftly as her cold fingers permitted and crept into the little cot bed which stood across the open window. The voices of the gentle spring night called to her all unheeded—unheard the Wind Woman whistled by the eaves.

For the fairies dwell only in the kingdom of Happiness; having no souls they cannot enter the kingdom of Sorrow.

She lay there cold and tearless and motionless when her father came into the room. How very slowly he walked—how very slowly he took off his clothes. How was it she had never noticed these things before? But he was not coughing at all.

“Dear little child—little beloved Emilykin, it is quite true,” he said, “I meant to tell you myself tonight. And now that old absurdity of an Ellen has told you—brutally, I suppose—and hurt you dreadfully.

She has the brain of a hen and the sensibility of a cow. May jackals sit on her grandmother’s grave!

I wouldn’t have hurt you, dear.”

I went in—and your mother, white and weak, smiled just that dear, slow, wonderful smile I loved, and said, ‘We’ve—got—the only—baby—of any importance—in—the world, dear. Just—think—of that!’ ”

“I wish people could remember from the very moment they’re born,” said Emily. “It would be so very interesting.”

“I dare say we’d have a lot of uncomfortable memories,” said her father, laughing a little. “It can’t be very pleasant getting used to living—no pleasanter than getting used to stopping it.

“After a little while you won’t wish that.

You have yet to learn how kind time is.

And life has something for you—I feel it. Go forward to meet it fearlessly, dear. I know you don’t feel like that just now—but you will remember my words by and by.”

“Yes, you do, honey. You can’t help liking God.

He is Love itself, you know. You mustn’t mix Him up with Ellen Greene’s God, of course.

”

Emily, with an eloquent glance at Ellen’s hands, went and got the dish towel.

“Your hands are fat and pudgy,” she said. “The bones don’t show at all.”

“Never mind sassing back! It’s awful, with your poor pa dead in there. But if your Aunt Ruth takes you she’ll soon cure you of that.”

“Well, you won’t have the choosing likely. You ought to be thankful to get a home anywhere. Remember you’re not of much importance.”

“I am important to myself,” cried Emily proudly.

“It’ll be some chore to bring you up,” muttered Ellen. “Your Aunt Ruth is the one to do it, in my opinion. She won’t stand no nonsense. A fine woman she is and the neatest housekeeper on P. E. Island.

“Your Aunt Ruth is the one to do it, in my opinion. She won’t stand no nonsense. A fine woman she is and the neatest housekeeper on P. E. Island. You could eat off her floor.”

“I don’t want to eat off her floor. I don’t care if a floor is dirty as long as the tablecloth is clean.”

“Well, her tablecloths are clean too, I reckon. She’s got an elegant house in Shrewsbury with bow windows and wooden lace all round the roof. It’s very stylish. It would be a fine home for you.

“I know what your God is like,” said Emily. “I saw His picture in that Adam-and-Eve book of yours.

He has whiskers and wears a nightgown. I don’t like Him. But I like Father’s God.

”

“I’ll give you a quarter for a kiss,” he whispered genially. A joke was Uncle Oliver’s idea of being kind and sympathetic, but Emily did not know this, and resented it.

“I don’t sell my kisses,” she said, lifting her head as haughtily as any Murray of them all could do.

Uncle Oliver chuckled and seemed infinitely amused and not a bit offended. But Emily heard a sniff across the room.

Emily had reached the limit of her endurance.

“You make me feel as if I was made up of scraps and patches!” she burst out indignantly.

The Murrays stared at her. Perhaps they felt some compunction—for, after all, none of them were ogres and all were human, more or less.

“When I was a little girl,” she said, “I never spoke until I was spoken to.”

“But if nobody ever spoke until they were spoken to there would be no conversation,” said Emily argumentatively.

“I never answered back,” Aunt Ruth went on severely. “In those days little girls were trained properly. We were polite and respectful to our elders. We were taught our place and we kept it.”

Father had had so many of them for her—“sweetheart” and “darling” and “Emily-child” and “dear wee kidlet” and “honey” and “elfkin.” He had a pet name for every mood and she had loved them all. As for Cousin Jimmy, he was nice.

Whatever part of him was missing it wasn’t his heart.

She felt so grateful to him that after she was safely in her bed again she forced herself to eat one of the lozenges, though it took all her grit to worry it down.

“I doubt it,” said Aunt Ruth, in a biting tone. “What’s bred in the bone comes out in the flesh. As for Douglas Starr, I think that it was perfectly disgraceful for him to die and leave that child without a cent.”

“Did he do it on purpose?” asked Cousin Jimmy blandly.

It was the first time he had spoken.

“Father wasn’t a failure!” cried Emily, choking with anger. “You had no right to call him a failure.

Nobody who was loved as much as he was could be a failure.

I don’t believe anybody ever loved you. So it’s you that’s a failure. And I’m not going to die of consumption.”

Then Aunt Laura said a queer thing—for a Murray.

“Thank heaven for that!” said Aunt Laura.

Cousin Jimmy followed Emily out and overtook her in the little hall. Looking carefully around to ensure privacy, he whispered,

“Is it very hard to write poetry?” asked Emily, looking with new respect at Cousin Jimmy.

“Easy as rolling off a log if you can find enough rhymes,” said Cousin Jimmy.

They all went away that morning except the New Moon people. Aunt Elizabeth announced that they would stay until the next day to pack up and take Emily with them.

“Oh, can’t they! Mike and Saucy Sal can. Oh, I must take them. Oh, please, Aunt Elizabeth. I love those cats. And they’re the only things left in the world that love me. Please!”

“What’s a cat more or less on two hundred acres?” said Cousin Jimmy, pulling his forked beard.

“Take ’em along, Elizabeth.”

Aunt Elizabeth considered for a moment. She couldn’t understand why anybody should want a cat. Aunt Elizabeth was one of those people who never do understand anything unless it is told them in plain language and hammered into their heads.

And then they understand it only with their brains and not with their hearts.

“You may take one of your cats,” she said at last, with the air of a person making a great concession. “One—and no more. No, don’t argue. You may as well learn first as last, Emily, that when I say a thing I mean it.

Aunt Elizabeth considered for a moment. She couldn’t understand why anybody should want a cat.

Aunt Elizabeth was one of those people who never do understand anything unless it is told them in plain language and hammered into their heads.

And then they understand it only with their brains and not with their hearts.

Emily sighed. Since she was eight she had known there were no fairies anywhere nowadays; yet she hadn’t quite given up the hope that one or two might linger in old-fashioned, out-of-the-way spots. And where so likely as at New Moon?

“Why, you know, if a fairy was really-truly it wouldn’t be a fairy,” said Uncle Jimmy seriously. “Could it, now?”

Before Emily could think this out the aunts returned and soon they were all on the road again.

“No wonder he died of consumption,” said Aunt Elizabeth. “Night air is poison.”

“What air is there at night but night air?” asked Emily.

“Emily,” said Aunt Elizabeth icily, “get—into—bed.”

But it was utterly impossible to sleep, lying there in that engulfing bed that seemed to swallow her up, with that cloud of blackness above her and not a gleam of light anywhere—and Aunt Elizabeth lying beside her, long and stiff and bony.

“I feel as if I was in bed with a griffin,” thought Emily.

“Oh—oh—oh—I’m going to cry—I know I am.”

“It—it wasn’t as elegant—as New Moon,” sobbed Emily, “but—Father was there.

I guess I’m Father-sick, Aunt Elizabeth.

Didn’t you feel awfully lonely when your father died?”

“And now,” said Aunt Elizabeth, “I want to say that I am not in the habit of talking all night if you are. I tell you to go to sleep, and I expect you to obey me. Good night.”

The tone of Aunt Elizabeth’s good night would have spoiled the best night in the world.

But Emily lay very still and sobbed no more, though the noiseless tears trickled down her cheeks in the darkness for some time. She lay so still that Aunt Elizabeth imagined she was asleep and went to sleep herself.

she whispered, stretching out her arms. “Oh, I’m so glad to hear you. You’re such company, Wind Woman. I’m not lonesome any more. And the flash came, too! I was afraid it might never come at New Moon.”

Her soul suddenly escaped from the bondage of Aunt Elizabeth’s stuffy featherbed and gloomy canopy and sealed windows.

She was out in the open with the Wind Woman and the other gipsies of the night—the fireflies, the moths, the brooks, the clouds.

Here and there the young maple branches interlaced as if to make a screen for dryad faces—Emily knew all about dryads, thanks to her father and the great sheets of moss under the trees were meet for Titania’s couch.

“This is one of the places where dreams grow,” said Emily happily.

She wished the path might go on forever, but presently it veered away from the brook, and when she had scrambled over a mossy, old board fence she found herself in the “front-garden” of New Moon, where Cousin Jimmy was pruning some spirea bushes.

“I got about after a while, though—pretty near as good as new. Folks say I’ve never been quite right since—but they only say that because I’m a poet, and because nothing ever worries me.

Poets are so scarce in Blair Water folks don’t understand them, and most people worry so much, they think you’re not right if you don’t worry.

”

Emily ran curiously over. The big flat stone was inscribed with one of the long, discursive epitaphs of an older day. But beneath the epitaph was no scriptural verse or pious psalm.

Clear and distinct, in spite of age and lichen, ran the line, “Here I stay.”

“That’s how he got even with her,” said Cousin Jimmy. “He was a good husband to her—and she was a good wife and bore him a fine family—and he never was the same after her death.

So you see, Emily, he must have been an extraordinary child—but it ended in that—” Cousin Jimmy waved his hand towards the grassy grave and the white, prim headstone.

“I wonder,” thought Emily, “if anyone will remember me ninety years after I’m dead.”

“This old yard is nearly full,” reflected Cousin Jimmy. “There’s just room in yonder corner for Elizabeth and Laura—and me. None for you, Emily.”

“No,” he said, “no, Miss Puss.

You’ve got enough life in you to carry you far. You aren’t meant for death.

”

“It was one of your mother’s aprons when she was a little girl, Emily,” said Aunt Laura comfortingly, and rather sentimentally.

“Then,” said Emily, uncomforted and unsentimental, “I don’t wonder she ran away with Father when she grew up.”

Aunt Elizabeth finished buttoning the apron and gave Emily a none too gentle push away from her.

Aunt Elizabeth, wasting no further words, picked up the bonnet and tied it on Emily’s head. Emily had to yield. But from the depths of the sunbonnet issued a voice, defiant though tremulous.

“Anyway, Aunt Elizabeth, you can’t boss God,” it said.

Aunt Elizabeth was too cross to speak all the way to the schoolhouse. She introduced Emily to Miss Brownell, and drove away. School was already “in,” so Emily hung her sunbonnet on the porch nail and went to the desk Miss Brownell assigned her.

There was another giggle from across the aisle. Emily lifted miserable eyes and in her extremity fell back on a phrase of her father’s.

“It is a matter that concerns only myself,” she said.

A red spot suddenly appeared in Miss Brownell’s sallow cheek. Her eyes gleamed with cold fire.

But there is strength in numbers and at noon hour Emily found herself standing alone on the playground facing a crowd of unfriendly faces.

Children can be the most cruel creatures alive.

They have the herd instinct of prejudice against any outsider, and they are merciless in its indulgence. Emily was a stranger and one of the proud Murrays—two counts against her.

Emily had never received so many compliments in her life.

Rhoda laid flattery on with a trowel.

Her head was quite turned and she went home from school determined to ask Aunt Elizabeth to cut her hair in a bang. If it would make a beauty of her it must be compassed somehow.

That, Emily felt, would be unendurable. No stranger eyes must behold these sacred productions. Sometimes she let Rhoda read them, though Rhoda rasped her by giggling over her finest flights.

Emily thought Rhoda as near perfection as a human being could be, but giggling was her fault.

But there is a destiny which shapes the ends of young misses who are born with the itch for writing tingling in their baby fingertips, and in the fullness of time this destiny gave to Emily the desire of her heart—gave it to her, too, …

Nobody would ever come across them there. She had writing paper enough to last for months—there must be hundreds of those jolly old letter-bills.

“Oh,” cried Emily, dancing down the garret stairs, “I feel as if I was made out of stardust.”

Thereafter few evenings passed on which Emily did not steal up to the garret and write a letter, long or short, to her father. The bitterness died out of her grief. Writing to him seemed to bring him so near;

And Aunt Laura slips in a cooky or an apple turnover when Aunt Elizabeth’s back is turned. Aunt Elizabeth says apple turnovers are not helthy for me.

Why is it that the nicest things never are helthy, Father?

Ellen Greene used to say that too.

I wish I could have a bang but Aunt Elizabeth will not hear to it. Rhoda told me I had beautiful eyes. I wish she hadn’t.

I have always suspekted my eyes were beautiful but I was not sure.

Now that I know they are I’m afraid I’ll always be wondering if people notis it.

Then she laughs at you in a disagreable, snorting way. But I forgave her for slapping me and I took a boquet to her to school next day to make up. She receeved it very coldly and let it fade on her desk.

In a story she would have wepped on my neck.

I don’t know whether it is any use forgiving people or not. Yes, it is, it makes you feel more comfortable yourself. You never had to ware baby aprons and sunbonnets because you were a boy so you can’t understand how I feel about it.

But I forgave her for slapping me and I took a boquet to her to school next day to make up. She receeved it very coldly and let it fade on her desk. In a story she would have wepped on my neck.

I don’t know whether it is any use forgiving people or not. Yes, it is, it makes you feel more comfortable yourself.

You never had to ware baby aprons and sunbonnets because you were a boy so you can’t understand how I feel about it.

If one of them walked home with her she thought it was out of condescending pity because she was friendless. For a month Emily was the most unhappy little being in Blair Water.

“I think I must have been put under a curse at birth,” she reflected disconsolately.

Aunt Elizabeth had a more prosaic idea to account for Emily’s languor and lack of appetite.

“I do,” said Emily.

“I think God is a very interesting subject, and I’m going to pray for you, Ilse, that you can believe in Father’s God.”

“Don’t you dast!” shouted Ilse, who for some mysterious reason did not like the idea. “I won’t be prayed for!”

For a moment Ilse looked as if she didn’t like this either. Then she laughed and gave Emily a volcanic hug.

“Well, anyway, please like me. Nobody likes me, you know.”

“Your father must like you, Ilse.”

“You oughtn’t to be so good to me because I was bad today,” Emily said, between delicious mouthfuls. “I suppose I disgraced the Murrays going barefoot.”

“If I were you I’d hide my boots every time I went out of the gate,” said Aunt Laura.

“But I wouldn’t forget to put them on before I came back. What Elizabeth doesn’t know will never hurt her.”

It wouldn’t be fair, though, when I know how she feels about it. But I’ve always asked God to bless all my friends so she’ll be in that and maybe some good will come of it. Is ’golly’ a proper word to say, Aunt Laura?”

“I’m sorry for that,” said Emily, seriously, “because it’s very striking.”

Ilse was crimson, too, and her eyes were pools of scintillating, tawny fire.

They were both so pretty in their fury that it was almost a pity they couldn’t have been angry all the time.

“You needn’t suppose, you little puling, snivelling chit, that you are going to boss me, just because you live at New Moon,” shrieked Ilse, as an ultimatum, stamping her foot.

This was unbearable to a girl who never “said things” about her friends or once-friends.

“I’m not going to say things about you,” said Emily deliberately. “I am just going to think them.”

This was far more aggravating than speech and Emily knew it. Ilse was driven quite frantic by it. Who knew what unearthly things Emily might be thinking about her any time she took the notion to?

“If I couldn’t write better poetry than you, I’d hang myself,” she derided.

“I’ll lend you a dime to buy a rope,” said Emily.

Ilse glared at her, vanquished.

“You go to the devil!” she said.

Emily got up and went, not to the devil, but back to New Moon.

Ilse relieved her feelings by knocking the boards of their china closet down, and kicking their “moss gardens” to pieces, and departed also.

Emily felt exceedingly badly. Here was another friendship destroyed—a friendship, too, that had been very delightful and satisfying. Ilse had been a splendid chum—there was no doubt about that. After Emily had cooled down she went to the dormer window and cried.

“Wretched, wretched me!” she sobbed, dramatically, but very sincerely.

Yet the bitterness of her break with Rhoda was not present. This quarrel was fair and open and aboveboard. She had not been stabbed in the back. But of course she and Ilse would never be chums again.

Yet the bitterness of her break with Rhoda was not present. This quarrel was fair and open and aboveboard. She had not been stabbed in the back. But of course she and Ilse would never be chums again.

You couldn’t be chums with a person who called you a chit and a biped, and a serpent, and told you to go to the devil.

The thing was impossible. And besides, Ilse could never forgive her—for Emily was honest enough to admit to herself that she had been very aggravating, too.

“Why, that was yesterday,” she said in amazement, when Emily, rather distantly, referred to it.

Yesterday and today were two entirely different things in Ilse’s philosophy.

Emily accepted it—she found she had to. Ilse, it transpired, could no more help flying into tantrums now and then than she could help being jolly and affectionate between them.

To be called a serpent and a crocodile one minute and hugged and darling-ed the next was somewhat disconcerting until time and experience took the edge off it.

“Aren’t I nice enough between times to make up for it?”

demanded Ilse. “Dot Payne never flies into tempers, but would you like her for a chum?”

He was a busy man, for, whatever his shortcomings were, his skill was unquestioned and the bounds of his practice extended far. By the sickbed he was as gentle and sympathetic as he was brusque and sarcastic away from it.

As long as you were ill there was nothing Dr. Burnley would not do for you; once you were well he had apparently no further use for you.

He had been absorbed all through July trying to save Teddy Kent’s life up at the Tansy Patch. Teddy was out of danger now and able to be up, but his improvement was not speedy enough to satisfy Dr. Burnley.

Perhaps she, too, had received some orders from the doctor. She was a tiny creature, with enormous masses of dull, soft, silky, fawn hair, dark, mournful eyes, and a broad scar running slantwise across her pale face.

Without the scar she must have been pretty, and she had a voice as soft and uncertain as the wind in the tansy.

Emily, with her instinctive faculty of sizing up people she met, felt that Mrs. Kent was not a happy woman.

Burnley would marry again and Aunt Elizabeth said no, he would not and she did not think it right for people to marry a second time. Mrs. Anderson said Sometimes I have thought he would take Laura. Aunt Elizabeth just swept her a hawty glance.

There is no use in denying it, there are times when I am very proud of Aunt Elizabeth, even if I do not like her.

“Teddy is a very nice boy, Father. I think you would aprove of him. Should there be two p’s in aprove?

Ilse says the boys in school call him sissy for that but I think it is noble and manley of him. Teddy wishes she would let him have a dog but she wont.

I have thought Aunt Elizabeth was tirannical but Mrs. Kent is far worse in some ways. But then she loves Teddy and Aunt Elizabeth does not love me.

“But Mrs. Kent doesn’t like Ilse or me. She never says so but we feel it. She never asks us to stay to tea—and we’ve always been so polite to her. I believe she is jellus of us because Teddy likes us.

I don’t know where he got the idea but it sounds atractive to me. And he says the brooks run honey instead of water. But what did you do when you were thirsty, I said. Oh, we were never thirsty there.

But I think I would like to be thirsty because then cold water tastes so good.

I would like to live in the moon. It must be such a nice silvery place.

I like misterious people but not too close. Her eyes always look hungry though she has plenty to eat. She never goes anywhere because she has a scar on her face where she was burned with a lamp exploding.

It made my blood run cold, dear Father. How thankful I am that Aunt Elizabeth only burns candles.

Some of the Murray tradishuns are very sensible. Mrs. Kent is very relijus—what she calls relijus. She prays even in the middle of the day.

So I sneaked Ilses dress over to New Moon and Aunt Laura mended it neetly and hid the tare with a pocket. Ilse said she tore up her muslin dress one of the days she didn’t believe in God and didn’t care what she did.

Ilse found a mouse in her bed one night and she just shook it out and jumped in. Oh, how brave.

I could never be as brave as that. It is not true that Dr. Burnley never smiles. I have seen him do it but not often. He just smiles with his lips but not his eyes and it makes me feel uncomfortable.

I hate it. It makes me so bunchy. But Aunt Elizabeth says I must wear it because you died of consumption. I wish close could be both graceful and helthy.

I read the story of Red Riding Hood today. I think the wolf was the most intresting caracter in it. Red Riding Hood was a stupid little thing so easily fooled.

“I wrote two poems yesterday. One was short and entitelled Lines Adressed to a blue-eyed-grass flower gathered in the Old Orchard. Here it is.

“The other poem was long and I wrote it on a letter-bill. It is called The Monark of the Forest. The Monark is the big birch in Lofty John’s bush.

I love that bush so much it hurts. Do you understand that kind of hurting.

Ilse likes it too and we play there most of the time when we are not at the Tansy Patch. We have three paths in it. We call them the Today Road, the Yesterday Road and the Tomorrow Road.

It is very exiting to be up on the roof of a house. We had a yelling contest there the other night to see which could yell the loudest. To my surprise I found I could.

You never can tell what you can do till you try.

But too many people heard us and Aunt Elizabeth was very angry. She asked me what made me do such a thing. That is an okward question because often I cant tell what makes me do things.

the “little red apples,” scarcely bigger than a crab, deep crimson all over and glossy as satin, that had such a sweet, nutty flavour; and the big green “sweet apples” that children usually thought the best of all.

Emily considered that day wasted whose low descending sun had not beheld her munching one of Lofty John’s big green sweets.

In the back of her mind Emily knew quite well that she should not be going to Lofty John’s at all.

“

I don’t want to die but since I have to I’ll die as becomes a Murray

,” she said. She had read a similar sentence in a book and it came pat to the moment. And now she must hurry. That letter to Ilse must be written.

“Well, then, I won’t use it any more,” said Emily resignedly, “but Lofty John is dod-gasted.”

Aunt Laura laughed so much after Emily had gone upstairs that Aunt Elizabeth told her a woman of her age should have more sense.

“Elizabeth, you know it was funny,” protested Laura.

“Yes,” she said. “

And I always believe there is a God when I’m here like this.

”

And he never forgot to tell her that he supposed she’d soon be thinking of getting married—for

Old Kelly thought that the surest way to please a female creature of any age was to tease her about getting married.

One day, instead of candy, he produced a plump grey kitten from the back drawer of his wagon and told her it was for her.

She was so hot with indignation that she did not feel the cold of the water or the chill of the wind as she ran back to New Moon.

A suffering or tortured animal always filled her with such a surge of sympathy that it lifted her clean out of herself.

She burst into the cookhouse where Aunt Elizabeth was frying doughnuts.

But it was weeks before Emily was really forgiven and she felt uncomfortable enough over it.

Aunt Elizabeth could be a not ungenerous conqueror but she was very disagreeable in defeat.

It was really just as well that Emily could not summon the Murray look at will.

Aunt Laura says they are crood. I don’t know what it means but I guess it means he always says what he thinks right out and eats beans with his knife. I like Perry but in a different way from Teddy.

Isn’t it funny, dear Father, how many kinds of ways of liking there are?

I don’t think Ilse likes him. She makes fun of his ignerance and turns up her nose at him because his close are patched though her own close are queer enough.

Aunt Elizabeth does not like to say it isnt fit for me to read because it was one of her fathers books, but I dont believe she aproves because she knits very furiusly and looks black at me over her glasses.

Teddy lent me Hans Andersons stories. I love them⁠—only I always think of a different end for the Ice Maiden and save Rudy.

“They say Mrs. John Killegrew has swallowed her wedding-ring. I wonder what she did that for.

“

They say Mrs. John Killegrew has swallowed her wedding-ring. I wonder what she did that for.

“Cousin Jimmy says there is to be an eklips of the sun in December. I hope it wont interfear with Chrismas.

“My hands are chapped. Aunt Laura rubs mutton tallow on them every night when I go to bed. It is hard to write poetry with chapped hands.

I wonder if Mrs. Hemans ever had chapped hands. It does not mention anything like that in her biograffy.

“Jimmy Ball has to be a minister when he grows up. His mother told Aunt Laura that she consekrated him to it in his cradle. I wonder how she did it.

She says she thinks she might like Him if she knew Him. She spells his name with a Capital G now because it is best to be on the safe side.

I think God is just like my flash, only it lasts only a second and He lasts always.

We talked so long we got hungry and I went down to the sitting-room cubbord and got two donuts. I forgot Aunt Elizabeth had told me I could not have donuts between meals. It was not stealing it was just forgetting.

She wanted terribly to cry but she would not. Miss Brownell was coming and Miss Brownell should not see her with red eyes. But her heart burned within her.

Some sacred temple of her being had been desecrated and shamed.

And more was yet to come, she felt wretchedly sure. Aunt Elizabeth was certain to side with Miss Brownell. Emily shrank from the impending ordeal with all the dread of a sensitive, fine strung nature facing humiliation. She would not have been afraid of justice;

“

A human being should not kneel to anyone but God,

” said Cousin Jimmy, unexpectedly, still staring at the ceiling.

“You will eat your supper alone tonight, Emily, in the pantry—you will have bread and milk only. And you will not speak one word to anyone until tomorrow morning.”

“But you won’t forbid me to think?”

said Emily anxiously.

“

Not just now perhaps, dear. But when the moment of inspiration has passed it will do no harm to remember that the cookies in the box have not been counted and that they are as much mine as Elizabeth’s.

”

And Aunt Laura said The poor man is warped. You know he was not a bit like that before his wife—and then just as it was getting intresting Aunt Elizabeth gave Aunt Laura a nudge and said s-s-s-h, little pitchers have big ears.

I knew she meant me though my ears are not big, only pointed.

I do wish I could find out what Ilse’s mother did. It worrys me after I go to bed. I lie awake for ever so long thinking about it. Ilse has no idea.

I am putting that down because I want to be fair even if I do hate her. And she is interesting although she is not nice. I have written a descripshun of her on a letter-bill.

I like writing about people I don’t like better than about those I do like.

Aunt Laura is nicer to live with than Aunt Elizabeth, but Aunt Elizabeth is nicer to write about. I can deskribe her fawlts but I feel wikked and ungrateful if I say anything that is not compelmentary about dear Aunt Laura.

And she is interesting although she is not nice. I have written a descripshun of her on a letter-bill. I like writing about people I don’t like better than about those I do like.

Aunt Laura is nicer to live with than Aunt Elizabeth, but Aunt Elizabeth is nicer to write about.

I can deskribe her fawlts but I feel wikked and ungrateful if I say anything that is not compelmentary about dear Aunt Laura. Aunt Elizabeth has locked your books away and says I’m not to have them till I’m grown up.

“

P.S. Dear Father, it is lovely to write to you. But O, I never get an answer back.

“So are lots av other people.

Everybody is unhappy by spells. But creatures who have pointed ears shouldn’t be unhappy.

It’s only mortals who should be that.”

“Meaning,” said Father Cassidy with a twinkle in his eye, “that we must keep it from the old lady.

Goodbye, and may you always see a happy face in your looking-glass!

”

“It all rests with yourself, Miss Emily av New Moon.

Ye can’t be after expecting a Lofty John to be too humble. I didn’t come by the name bekase av me makeness.

”

Aunt Elizabeth did not say much more. There did not seem to be much she could say. Besides the bush wasn’t going to be cut down.

The bringer of good news is forgiven much.

She contented herself with glaring at Emily—who was too happy and excited to mind glares. She carried her letter off to the garret dormer and gloated over the stamp and the superscription a bit before she took out the enclosure.

“

Cousin Jimmy may not be all there, but what is there is very nice.

“But oh, Father, I am so lonesome for Mike tonight. Last night he was here playing with me, so cunning and pretty and smee, and now he is cold and dead in Lofty John’s bush.

“

Cousin Jimmy says that a man in Priest Pond says the end of the world is coming soon. I hope it won’t come till I’ve seen everything in it.

“Poor Elder MacKay has the mumps.

Burnley wouldn’t and Ilse won it. Aunt Laura told Dr. Burnley when he was here one day that he ought to give Ilse a good education. He said ‘I’m not going to waste money educating any she-thing.’ And he looked black as a thunder cloud.

Oh, I wish Dr. Burnley would love Ilse. I’m so glad you loved me, Father.

“Dear Father: We had our school examination today. It was a great occasion. Almost everybody was there except Dr. Burnley and Aunt Elizabeth. All the girls wore their best dresses but me.

And besides the honour of the school is at stake,’ so I whispered it to her because I was quite close. She got through the rest all right.

The strange thing is, dear Father, that now I don’t feel any more as if I hated her. I feel quite kindly to her and it is much nicer. It is uncomfortable to hate people.

“Christmas is over. It was pretty nice. I never saw so many good things cooked all at once. Uncle Wallace and Aunt Eva and Uncle Oliver and Aunt Addie and Aunt Ruth were here.

She looked quite handsome and I was proud of her. You like your relations to look well even if you don’t like them. Aunt Laura wore her brown silk and Aunt Ruth had on a grey dress.

Aunt Eva was very elegant. Her dress had a train. But it smelled of moth balls.

“I had on my blue cashmere and wore my hair tied with blue ribbons, and Aunt Laura let me wear mother’s blue silk sash with the pink daisies on it that she had when she was a little girl at New Moon.

A certain thing happened at New Moon because Teddy Kent paid Ilse Burnley a compliment one day and Emily Starr didn’t altogether like it. Empires have been overturned for the same reason.

Teddy was skating on Blair Water and taking Ilse and Emily out in turns for “slides.” Neither Ilse nor Emily had skates. Nobody was sufficiently interested in Ilse to buy skates for her, and as for Emily, Aunt Elizabeth did not approve of girls skating.

“It was very dull,” pleaded Emily, as if dullness and wickedness were quite incompatible. “And it made me feel unhappy. Everybody seemed to be in love with the wrong person.

I have made up my mind, Aunt Elizabeth, that I will never fall in love. It makes too much trouble.

”

Everybody who has ever lived in the world and could string two rhymes together has written a poem on spring. It is the most be-rhymed subject in the world—and always will be, because it is poetry incarnate itself.

You can never be a real poet if you haven’t made at least one poem about spring.

Emily was wondering whether she would have elves dancing on the brookside by moonlight, or pixies sleeping in a bed of ferns in her poem, when something confronted her at a bend in the path which was neither elf nor pixy, but seemed odd and …

Then she began to compose a poem on it.

Everybody who has ever lived in the world and could string two rhymes together has written a poem on spring.

It is the most be-rhymed subject in the world—and always will be, because it is poetry incarnate itself. You can never be a real poet if you haven’t made at least one poem about spring.

“

Staring wasn’t thought good breeding in my time

,” said Aunt Tom.

“Yis. The b’y has been talking a bit of you and a plan kem into my head. Thinks I to myself it’s no bad notion. But I’ll make sure before I waste my bit o’ money.

Emily Byrd Starr is your name and Murray is your nature.

If I give the b’y an eddication will ye marry him when ye grow up?”

But Emily walked steadily on home and went to the garret to think things over.

“It has been romantic but not comfortable,” was her conclusion.

And that particular poem on spring was never finished.

Emily felt like one of the heroines in Gothic romance, wandering at midnight through a subterranean dungeon, with some unholy guide. She had read The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Romance of the Forest before the taboo had fallen on Dr. Burnley’s bookcase. She shivered.

It was awful but interesting.

At the end of the hall a flight of four steps led up to a door. Beside the steps was an immense black grandfather’s clock reaching almost to the ceiling.

“So this is Juliet’s girl!” she said, giving Emily one of her sparkling hands. “Don’t look so startled, child. I’m not going to kiss you.

I never held with inflicting kisses on defenseless creatures simply because they were so unlucky as to be my relatives.

Now, who does she look like, Caroline?”

There’s nothing of Juliet in her that I can see. Juliet was pretty. You are not as good-looking as that picture made you out but I didn’t expect you would be.

Pictures and epitaphs are never to be trusted.

Where’s your bang gone, Emily?”

“If you please, Great-Aunt Nancy,” said Emily deliberately, “

I don’t like to be told I look like other people. I look just like myself.

”

“

Eighty and twelve say the same thing and both lie,

” said Aunt Nancy. “What’s the use of being hypocrites among ourselves? I don’t say it isn’t well enough when men are about. Caroline, do you notice what a pretty hand Emily has? As pretty as mine when I was young.

“You will stay right here until I’m ready for you to go, Miss Puss.

I never tolerate any whims but my own.

Caroline knows that, don’t you, Caroline? Sit down to your breakfast—and eat—eat.”

Caroline and Aunt Nancy were both very kind to her that day; she had a good nap in the afternoon; and when the second night came she went straight to the Pink Room and slept soundly the night through.

The rustles and cries were as distinct as ever but swallows and spectres were two entirely different things.

“After all, I think I’ll like Wyther Grange,” said Emily.

I wander there and compose poetry. I miss Ilse and Teddy and Perry and Saucy Sal a great deal. I had a letter from Ilse today. She wrote me that they couldn’t do anything more about the Midsummer Night’s Dream till I got back.

It is nice to feel so necessary.

“Aunt Nancy doesn’t like Aunt Elizabeth. She called her a ‘tyrant’ one day and then she said ‘Jimmy Murray was a very clever boy. Elizabeth Murray killed his intellect in her temper—and nothing was done to her.

Last night I couldn’t sleep again. I was so worried. I thought I was a coward, and doing an underhanded thing and not living up to my tradishuns. At last it got so bad I couldn’t stand it.

I can bear it when other people have a bad opinion of me but it hurts too much when I have a bad opinion of myself.

So I got out of bed and went right back through all those halls to the back parlor. Aunt Nancy was still there all alone playing Solitare. She said what on earth was I out of bed for at such an hour.

She was a sly puss—always laughing and singing and dancing—no wife for Allan Burnley if you ask me. And he could have had Laura Murray. But between a fool and a sensible woman did a man ever hesitate?

The fool wins every time, Caroline.

That’s why you never got a husband. You were too sensible. I got mine by pretending to be a fool. Emily, you remember that. You have brains—hide them. Your ankles will do more for you than your brains ever will.”

This Leo was a handsome fellow—a sea-captain. He had been in love with Beatrice, so gossip ran. Some said Beatrice wanted him but that her people made her marry Allan Burnley because he was the better match. Who knows?

Gossip lies nine times and tells a half truth the tenth.

She pretended to be in love with Allan anyhow, and he believed it. When Leo came home from a voyage and found Beatrice married he took it coolly enough. But he was always over at Blair Water. Beatrice had plenty of excuses.

She could not compose any poetry—she could not write in her Jimmy-book—she could not even write to her father. Something seemed to hang between herand her old delights.

There was a drop of poison in every cup.

Even the filmy shadows on the great bay, the charm of its fir-hung cliffs and its little purple islets that looked like outposts of fairyland, could not bring to her the old “fine, careless rapture.”

All at once Emily smiled demurely. A real sense of humour was born in her at that moment.

Never again was she to feel quite so unmixedly tragic over anything.

“No,” she said, “it’s only my eyelashes and smile that are like Mother’s. But I’ve got Father’s forehead, and Grandma Starr’s hair and eyes, and Great-Uncle George’s nose, and Aunt Nancy’s hands, and Cousin Susan’s elbows, and Great-great-Grandmother Murray’s ankles, and Grandfather Murray’s eyebrows.”

“A ragbag—as we all are,” he said. “

But your soul is your own, and fire-new, I’ll swear to that.

”

“You make me believe in fairies, whether I will or no,” he told her, “and that means youth.

As long as you believe in fairies you can’t grow old.

”

“

The happiest countries, like the happiest women, have no history,

” said Dean.

“

I like cats with one part of my mind and dogs with another part,

” she said.

“I like cats but I never keep one,” Dean said. “They’re too exacting—they ask too much.

Dogs want only love but cats demand worship.

They have never got over the Bubastis habit of godship.”

“I’m an unscrupulous old demon,” said Aunt Nancy coolly. “That is what the Priests all call me behind my back. Don’t they, Caroline?

May as well have the game as the name.

I happen to have a fancy for that picture, that’s all. I’m going to frame it and hang it here in my parlour. But I’ll leave it to you in my will—that and the chessy-cat and the gazing-ball and my gold earrings.

“Ilse and I hunted all over the old orchard today for a four-leaved clover and couldn’t find one. Then I found one in a clump of clover by the dairy steps tonight when I was straining the milk and never thinking of clovers.

Cousin Jimmy says that is the way luck always comes, and it is no use to look for it.

“It is lovely to be with Ilse again. We have only fought twice since I came home. I am going to try not to fight with Ilse any more because I don’t think it is dignified, although quite interesting.

“When I read that the flash came, and I took a sheet of paper—I forgot to tell you Cousin Jimmy gave me a little box of paper and envelopes—on the sly—and I wrote on it:

I, Emily Byrd Starr, do solemnly vow this day that I will climb the Alpine Path and write my name on the scroll of fame.

“Then I put it in the envelope and sealed it up and wrote on it The Vow of Emily Byrd Starr, aged 12 years and 3 months, and put it away on the sofa shelf in the garret.

“But I don’t want to be a different girl,” said Emily decidedly. She had no intention of lowering the Starr flag to Aunt Ruth. “

I wouldn’t want to be anybody but myself even if I am plain.

Besides,” she added impressively as she turned to go out of the room, “though I may not be very good-looking now, when I go to heaven I believe I’ll be very beautiful.”

Morning came. Emily went to school, so absentminded because of her secret that she did badly in everything and was raged at by Mr. Carpenter. But it all slipped off her like the proverbial water off a duck’s back.

Her body was in Blair Water school but her spirit was in kingdoms empyreal.

As soon as school was out she betook herself to the garret with half a sheet of blue-lined notepaper. Very painstakingly she copied down the poem, being especially careful to dot every i and cross every t.

This sort of thing was happening frequently now. Every time she read her little hoard of manuscripts over she found some of which the fairy gold had unaccountably turned to withered leaves, fit only for the burning. Emily burned them—but it hurt her a little.

Outgrowing things we love is never a pleasant process.

“

Emily, I had no right to read your letters. I admit I was wrong.

Will you forgive me?”

“

The atrocious crime of being a woman which the honourable member has, with such spirit and decency, charged upon me, I shall attempt neither to palliate nor deny, but shall content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies cease with their sex and not one of that number who are ignorant in spite of manhood and experience.

”