 section 17 of Emily of New Moon by Lucy M Montgomery. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Lee Ann Fortune section 17. Emily obedient to Aunt Elizabeth's command had eliminated the word bull from her vocabulary but to ignore the existence of bulls was not to do away with them and specifically with Mr. James Lee's English Bull who inhabited the big windy pasture west of Blair Water and who bore a dreadful reputation. He was certainly an awesome looking creature and Emily sometimes had fearful dreams of being chased by him and being unable to move and one sharp November day these dreams came true. There was a certain well at the far end of the pasture concerning which Emily felt a curiosity because cousin Jimmy had told her a dreadful tale about it. The well had been dug 60 years ago by two brothers who lived in a little house which was built down near the shore. It was a very deep well which was considered a curious thing in that low lying land near pond and sea. The brothers had gone 90 feet before they found a spring. Then the sides of the well had been stoned up but the work never went further. Thomas and Silas Lee had quarrelled over some trivial difference of opinion as to what kind of a hood should be put over it and in the heat of his anger Silas had struck Thomas on the head with his hammer and killed him. The well house was never built. Silas Lee was sent to prison for manslaughter and died there. The farm passed to another brother Mr. James Lee's father who moved the house to the other end of it and planked the well over. Cousin Jimmy added that Tom Lee's ghost was supposed to haunt the scene of his tragic death but he couldn't vouch for that though he had written a poem on it. A very eerie poem it was too and made Emily's blood run cold with a fearful joy when he recited it to her one misty night by the big potato pot ever since she had wanted to see the old well. Her chance came one Saturday when she was prowling alone in the old graveyard. Beyond it lay the Lee posture and there was apparently not a sign of a bull in or about it. Emily decided to pay a visit to the old well and went skimming down the field against the sweep of the north wind racing across the gulf. The wind woman was a giantess that day and a mighty swirl she was stirring up along the shore but as Emily drew near the big sand dunes they made a little harbor of calmness around the old well. Emily coolly lifted up one of the planks, knelt on the others and peered down. Fortunately the planks were strong and comparatively new otherwise the small maiden of new moon might have explored the well more thoroughly than she desired to do. As it was she could see little of it. Huge ferns grew thickly out of the crevices among the stones of its sides and reached across it shutting out the view of its gloomy depths. Rather disappointed Emily replaced the plank and started homeward. She had not gone ten steps before she stopped. Mr. James Lee's bull was coming straight towards her and was less than twenty yards away. The short fence was not far behind Emily and she might possibly have reached in time had she run but she was incapable of running. As she wrote that night in her letter to her father she was paralyzed with terror and could no more move than she could in her dreams of this very occurrence. It is quite conceivable that a dreadful thing might have happened then and there had not a certain boy been sitting on the short fence. He had been sitting there unnoticed all the time Emily had been peering into the well. Now he sprang down. Emily saw or sensed a sturdy body dashing past her. The owner thereof ran to within ten feet of the bull, hurled a stone squarely into the monster's hairy face then sped off at right angles towards the side fence. The bull, thus insulted, turned with a menacing rumble and lumbered off after the intruder. Run now! screamed the boy over his shoulder to Emily. Emily did not run. Terrified as she was there was something in her that would not let her run until she saw whether her gallant rescuer made good his escape. He reached his fence in the neck of time. Then, and not till then, Emily ran too and scrambled over the short fence just as the bull started back across the pasture, evidently determined to catch somebody. Trembling, she made her way through the spiky grass of the sand hills and met the boy at the corner. They stood and looked at each other for a moment. The boy was a stranger to Emily. He had a cheery, impudent, clean-cut face with keen grey eyes and plenty of tawny curls. He wore as few clothes as decency permitted, and had only the pretense of a hat. Emily liked him. There was nothing of Teddy's subtle charm in him, but he had a certain forceful attraction of his own, and he had just saved her from a terrible death. Thank you, said Emily shyly, looking up at him with great grey eyes that looked blue under her long lashes. It was a very effective look, which lost nothing of effectiveness from being wholly unconscious. Nobody had as yet told Emily how very wholesome that shy, sudden up glance of hers was. Isn't he a ripp snorter? said the boy easily. He thrust his hands into his ragged pockets and stared at Emily so fixedly that she dropped her eyes in confusion, thereby doing further damage with those demure lids and sulken fringes. He's dreadful, she said with a shudder, and I was so scared. Were you now, and me thinking you were full of grit to be standing there like that, looking at him cool as a cucumber? What's it like to be afraid? Weren't you ever afraid? asked Emily. No, don't know what it's like, said the boy carelessly and a bit boastfully. What's your name? Emily Bird Star. Live round here? I live at New Moon. Where simple Jimmy Murray lives. He isn't simple, cried Emily indignantly. Oh, all right, I don't know him, but I'm going to. I'm going to hire with him for Chaw Boy for the winter. I didn't know, said Emily surprised. Are you really? Yeah. I didn't know it myself, till just this minute. He was asking Aunt Tom about me last week, but I didn't mean to hire out then. Now I guess I will. Want to know my name? Of course. Perry Miller. I live with my old beast of an Aunt Tom down at Stovepipe Town. Dad was a sea captain, and I used to sail with him when he was alive. Sailed everywhere. Go to school? Yes. I don't, never did. Aunt Tom lives so far away. Anyhow, I didn't think I'd like it. Guess I'll go now, though. Can't you read? asked Emily, wonderingly. Yes, some, and figure. Dad learned me some when he was alive. I ain't bothered with it since. I'd rather be down round the harbour. Great fun there. But if I make up my mind to go to school, I'll learn like thunder. I suppose you're awful clever. No, not very. Father said I was a genius, but Aunt Elizabeth says I'm just queer. What's a genius? I'm not sure. Sometimes it's a person who writes poetry. I write poetry. Perry stared at her. Golly! I'll write poetry, too, then. I don't believe you could write poetry, said Emily. A little disdainfully, it must be admitted. Teddy can't, and he's very clever. Who's Teddy? A friend of mine. There was just a trace of stiffness in Emily's voice. Then, said Perry, folding his arms across his breast and scowling. I'm going to punch this friend of yours head for him. You're not! cried Emily. She was very indignant, and quite forgotful the moment that Perry had rescued her from the bull. She tossed her own head and started homeward. Perry turned, too. Mayors will go up and see Jimmy Murray about hiring before I go home. He said, Don't be mad now. If you don't want anybody's head punched, I won't punch it. Only you've got to like me, too. Why, of course, I'll like you, said Emily, as if there could be no question about it. She smiled, her slow, blossoming smile at Perry, and thereby reduced him to hopeless bondage. Two days later, Perry Miller was installed as Chaw Boy at New Moon, and in a fortnight's time Emily felt as if he must have been there always. Aunt Elizabeth didn't want cousin Jimmy to hire him, she wrote to her father, because he was one of the boys who did a dreadful thing one night last fall. They changed all the horses that were tied to the fence one Sunday night when preaching was going on, and when folks came out the confusion was awful. Aunt Elizabeth said it wouldn't be safe to have him round the place, but cousin Jimmy said it was awful hard to get a Chaw Boy, and that we owed Perry something for saving my life from the bull. So Aunt Elizabeth gave in, and lets him sit at the table with us, but he has to stay in the kitchen in the evenings. The rest of us are in the sitting-room, but I am allowed to go out and help Perry with his lessons. He can only have one candle, and the light is very dim. It keeps us snuffing it all the time. It is great fun to snuff candles. Perry is head of his class in school already. He is only in the third book, although he is nearly twelve. Miss Brownell said something sarcastic to him the first day in school, and he just threw back his head and laughed, loud and long. Miss Brownell gave him a whipping for it, but she has never been sarcastic to him again. She does not like to be laughed at, I can see. Perry isn't afraid of anything. I thought he might not go to school any more when she whipped him, but he says a little thing like that isn't going to keep him from getting an education, since he has made up his mind to it. He is very determined. On to Elizabeth is determined too, but she says Perry is stubborn. I'm teaching Perry grammar. He says he wants to learn to speak properly. I told him he should not call his aunt Tom an old beast, but he said he had to because she wasn't a young beast. He says the place he lives in is called Stovepipe Town, because the houses have no chimneys, only pipes sticking out of the roof, but he would live in a mansion some day. Aunt Elizabeth says I ought not to be so friendly with a hired boy, but he is a nice boy, though his manners are crude. Aunt Laura says they are crude. I don't know what it means, but I guess it means he always says what he thinks right out, then eats beans with his knife. I like Perry, but in a different way from Teedy. Isn't it funny, dear father, how many kinds of ways of liking there are? I don't think Ilsa likes him. She makes fun of his ignorance, and turns up who knows at him because his clothes are patched, though her own clothes are queer enough. Teedy doesn't like him much, and he drew such a funny picture of Perry hanging by his heels from the gallows. The face looked like Perry's, and still it didn't. Cousin Jimmy said it was a caricature, and laughed at it, but I dared not show it to Perry for fear he would punch Teedy's head. I showed it to Ilsa, and she got mad and tore it in two. I can't imagine why. Perry says he can recite as well as Ilsa, and could draw pictures too, if he put his mind to it. I can see he doesn't like to think anybody can do anything he can't, but he can't see the wallpaper in the air like I can, though he tries until I fear he will strain his eyes. He can make better speeches than any of us. He says he used to mean to be a sailor like his father, but now he thinks he will be a lawyer when he grows up, and go to Parliament. Teedy is going to be an artist if his mother will let him, and Ilsa is going to be a concert reciter. There is another name that I don't know how it is spelled, and I am going to be a Pertess. I think we are a talented crowd. Perhaps that is a vain thing to say, dear father. A very terrible thing happened the day before yesterday. On Saturday morning we were at family prayers, all kneeling quite solemn around the kitchen. I just looked at Perry once, and he made such a funny face at me that I laughed right out loud before I could help it. That was not the terrible thing, until Elizabeth was very angry. I would not tell that it was Perry made me laugh, because I was afraid he might be sent away if I did. So until Elizabeth said I was to be punished, and I was not let go to Jenny Strang's party in the afternoon, it was dreadful disappointment, but it was not the terrible thing either. Perry was away with cousin Jimmy all day, and when he came home at night he said to me, very fierce, who has been making you cry? I said I had been crying a little, but not much, because I was not let go to the party because I had laughed at prayers. And Perry marched right up to until Elizabeth and told her it was all his fault that I laughed. Until Elizabeth said I should not have laughed anyhow, but Aunt Laura was grievously upset, and said my punishment had been far too severe, and she said that she would let me wear her pearl ring to school Monday to make up for it. I was enraptured for it is a lovely ring, and no other girl has one. As soon as roll call was over Monday morning I put up my hand to ask Miss Brownell a question, but really to show off my ring. That was wicked pride, and I was punished. Atreus says Coral Lee, one of the big girls in the sixth class, came and asked me to let her wear the ring for a while. I didn't want to, but she said if I didn't she would get all the girls in my class to send me to Coventry, which is a dreadful thing, dear father, it makes you feel like an outcast. So I let her, and she kept it on till the afternoon recess, and then she came and told me she had lost it in the brook. This was the terrible thing. Oh father dear, I was nearly wild. I dared not go home and face on Laura. I had promised her I would be so careful of the ring. I thought I might earn money to get her another ring, but when I figured it out on my slate I knew I would have to wash dishes for twenty years to do it. I wept in my despair. Perry saw me, and after school he marched up to Coral Lee, and said, you fork over that ring or I'll tell Miss Brownell about it. And Coral Lee forked it over very meek, and said I was going to give it to her anyhow. I was just playing a joke, and Perry said, don't you play any more jokes on Emily or I'll joke you. It is very comforting to have such a champion. I trembled to think what it would have been like if I had had to go home and tell Aunt Laura I had lost her ring. But it was Coral Lee to tell me she had lost it when she had not, and harrow up my mind so. I could not be so cruel to an orphan girl. When I got home I looked in the glass to see if my hair had turned white. I am told that sometimes happens, but it hadn't. Perry knows more geography than any of us because he has been nearly everywhere in the world with his father. He tells me such fascinating stories after his lessons are done. He talks till the candle is burned to the last inch, and then he uses that to go to bed with up the black hole into the kitchen loft, because Aunt Elizabeth will not let him have more than one candle a night. Ilse and I had a fight yesterday about which we'd rather be Joan of Arc or Francis Willard. We didn't begin it as a fight, but just as an argument, but it ended that way. I would rather be Francis Willard because she is alive. We had the first snow yesterday. I made a poem on it, as I said. Along the snow the sunbeams glide, Earth is a peerless gleaming bride, dripping with diamonds, clad in trailing white. No bride was ever half so fair and bright. I read it to Perry, and he said he could make poetry just as good, and he said right off, Mike has made a long row of tracks across the snow. Now, isn't that as good as yours? I didn't think it was, because you could say it just as well in prose, but when you talk of peerless gleaming brides in prose it sounds funny. Mike did make a row of little tracks right across the barnfield, and they looked so pretty, but not so pretty as the mice tracks in some flower, Cousin Jimmy spilled on the granary floor. They are the dearest little things. They look like poetry. I'm sorry winter has come because Ilse and I can't play in our house in Lofty John's bush any more till spring, or outside at the Tansy Patch. Sometimes we play indoors at the Tansy Patch, but Mrs Kent makes us feel queer. She sits and watches us all the time. So we don't go, only when TD coaxes very hard. And the pigs have been killed, poor things, so Cousin Jimmy doesn't boil for them any more. But there is one consolation. I do not have to wear a sun bonnet to school now. Aunt Laura made me such a pretty red hood with ribbons on it, at which Aunt Elizabeth looked scornfully, saying it was extravagant. I like school here better every day, but I can't like Miss Brownell. She isn't fair. She told us she would give the one who wrote the best composition of pink ribbon to wear from Friday night to Monday. I wrote the brook story about the brook in Lofty John's bush, all its adventures and thoughts. And Miss Brownell said I must have copied it, and Rhoda Stewart got the ribbon. Aunt Elizabeth said you waste enough time writing trash. I think you might have won that ribbon. She was mortified, I think, because I had disgraced New Moon by not getting it, but I did not tell her what had happened. Teddy says a good sport never winds over losing. I want to be a good sport. Rhoda is so hateful to me now. She says she is surprised that a New Moon girl should have a hired boy for a bow. That is very silly, because Perry is not my bow. Perry told us she had more gab than sense. That was not polite, but it is true. One day in class Rhoda said the moon was situated east of Canada. Perry laughed right out, and Miss Brownell made him stay in a recess, but she never said anything to Rhoda for saying such a ridiculous thing. But the meanest thing Rhoda said was that she had forgiven me for the way I had used her. That made my blood boil when I hadn't done anything to be forgiven for. The idea! We have begun to eat the big beef ham that hung in the southwest corner of the kitchen. The other Wednesday night Perry and I held cousin Jimmy Pecker Road through the turnips in the first cellar. We have to go through it to the second cellar because the outside hatch is banked up now. It was great fun. We had a candle stuck up in a hole in the wall, and it made such lovely shadows. And we could eat all the apples we wanted from the big barrel in the corner. And the spirit moved cousin Jimmy to recite some of his poetry as he threw the turnips. I'm reading the Alambra. It belongs to our bookcase. Onto Elizabeth does not like to say it isn't fit for me to read, because it was one of her father's books. But I don't believe she approves because she knits very furiously and looks black at me over her glasses. Teddy lent me Hunt's Anderson stories. I love them. Only I always think of a different end for the Ice Maiden, and save Rudy. They're same as John Killigrew has swallowed her reading ring. I wonder what she did that for? Cousin Jimmy says there is to be any clips of the sun in December. I hope it won't interfere with Christmas. My hands are chapped. Aunt Laura rubs Mutton Tollo on them every night when I go to bed. It is hard to write poetry with chapped hands. I wonder if Mrs. Hemons ever had chapped hands. It does not mention anything like that in her biography. Jimmy Ball has to be a minister when he grows up. His mother told Aunt Laura that she consecrated him to it in his cradle. I wonder how she did it. We have breakfast by candlelight now and I like it. Elsa was up here Sunday afternoon, and we went up in the garret and talked about God, because that is proper on Sundays. We have to be very careful what we do on Sundays. It is a tradition of New Moon to keep Sundays very holy. Grandfather Murray was very strict. Cousin Jimmy told me a story about him. They always cut the wood for Sunday on Saturday night, but one time they forgot, and there was no wood on Sunday to cook the dinner. So grandfather Murray said, you must not cut wood on Sunday's boys, but just break a little with the back of the axe. Elsa is very curious about God, although she doesn't believe in him most of the time, and doesn't like to talk about him, but still wants to find out about him. 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 cupboard 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. But Elsa got mad at the last, and said I was a she, Jacobite, whatever that is. And a thief. And that no Christian would steal donuts from her poor old aunt. So I went and confessed to Aunt Elizabeth, and she said I was not to have a donut at supper. It was hard to see the others eating them. I thought Perry ate his very quick, but after supper he beckoned me outdoors, and gave me half his donut, which he had kept for me. He had wrapped it in his handkerchief, which was not very clean. But I ate it, because I did not want to hurt his feelings. Aunt Laura says Elsa has a nice smile. I wonder if I have a nice smile. I looked at the glass in Elsa's Roman's Mild, but it did not seem to me very nice. Now the nights have got cold, until Elizabeth always puts a ginger full of hot water in the bed. I like to put my toes against it. That is all we use the ginger for nowadays, but grandfather Murray used to keep real gin in it. Now that the snow has come, cousin Jimmy can't work in his garden anymore, and he is very lonesome. I think the garden is just as pretty in winter as in summer. There are such pretty dimples and baby hills where the snow has covered up the flower beds, and in the evenings it is all pink and rosy at sunset, and by moonlight it is like dreamland. I like to look out of the sitting room window at it, and watch the rabbits' candles floating in the air above it, and wonder what all the little roots and seeds are thinking of down under the snow. And it gives me a lovely creepy feeling to look at it through the red glass in the front door. There is a beautiful fringe of icicles along the cookhouse roof, but there will be much more beautiful things in heaven. I was reading about Anzaneta today, and it made me feel religious. Good night, my dearest of fathers. Emily. P.S. That doesn't mean that I have any other father. It is just a way of saying very, very dear. E.B.S. End of section 17, Recording by Leanne Fortune Section 18 of Emily of New Moon by Lucy M Montgomery. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Leanne Fortune. Section 18. Emily and Elsa were sitting out on the side bench of Blair Water School writing poetry on their slats. At least, Emily was writing poetry and Elsa was reading it, as she wrote, and occasionally suggesting a rhyme when Emily was momentarily stuck for one. It may as well be admitted here and now that they had no business whatever to be doing this. They should have been doing sums, as Ms. Brownwell supposed they were, but Emily never did sums when she took it into her blackhead to write poetry, and Elsa hated arithmetic on general principles. Ms. Brownwell was hearing the geography class at the other side of the room. The pleasant sunshine was showering in over them through the big window, and everything seemed propitious for a flight with the muses. Emily began to write a poem about the view from the school window. It was quite a long time since she had been allowed to sit out on the side bench. This was a boon reserved for those pupils who had found favour in Ms. Brownwell's cold eyes, and Emily had never been one of those. But this afternoon, Elsa had asked for both herself and Emily, and Ms. Brownwell had let both go, not being able to think of any valid reason for permitting Elsa and refusing Emily, as she would have liked to do, for she had one of those petty natures which never forget or forgive any offence. Emily on her first day of school had, so Ms. Brownwell believed, been guilty of impertinence and defiance, and successful defiance at that. This rankled in Ms. Brownwell's mind-stool, and Emily felt its venom in a score of subtle ways. She never received any commendation. She was a target for Ms. Brownwell's sarcasm continually, and the small favours that other girls received never came her way. So this opportunity to sit on the side bench was a pleasing novelty. There were points about sitting on the side bench. You could see all over the school without turning your head, and Ms. Brownwell could not sneak up behind you and look over your shoulder to see what you were up to. But in Emily's eyes, the finest thing about it was that you could look right down into the school bush and watch the old spruces where the windwoman played, the long grey-green trails of moss hanging from the branches, like banners of Elfland, the little red squirrels running along the fence, and the wonderful white aisles of snow where splashes of sunlight fell like pools of golden wine, and there was one little opening in the trees through which you could see right over the Blairwater Valley, to the sandhills and the gulf beyond. Today the sandhills were softly rounded and gleaming white under the snow, but beyond them the gulf was darkly, deeply blue, with dazzling white masses of ice like baby icebergs floating about in it. Just to look at it thrilled Emily with a delight that was unutterable, but which she yet must try to utter. She began her poem. Fractions were utterly forgotten. What had numerators and denominators to do with those curving bosoms of white snow, that heavenly blue, those crossed dark fur tips against the pearly skies, those ethereal woodland aisles of pearl and gold. Emily was lost to her world, so lost that she did not know the geography class had scattered to their respective seats, and that Miss Brownall, catching sight of Emily's entranced gay skywards as she searched for a rhyme, was stepping softly towards her. Ilse was drawing a picture on her slate and did not see her, or she would have warned Emily. The latter suddenly felt her slate drawn out of her hand, and heard Miss Brownall saying, I suppose you have finished those sums, Emily. Emily had not finished even one sum. She had only covered her slate with verses, verses that Miss Brownall must not see, must not see. Emily sprang to her feet and clutched wildly off to her slate. That Miss Brownall, with a smile of malicious enjoyment on her thin lips, held it beyond her reach. What is this? It does not look exactly like fractions, lines on the view, view, from the window of Blair Water School. Rarely children, we seem to have a budding poet among us. The words were harmless enough, but, oh, the hateful sneer that ran through the tone, the contempt, the mockery that was in it. It seared Emily's soul like a whiplash. Nothing was more terrible to her than the thought of having her beloved poems read by Stranger Eyes. Cold, unsympathetic, derisive Stranger Eyes. Please, please, Miss Brownall, she stammered miserably. Don't read it. I'll rub it off. I'll do my sums right away. Only please don't read it. It isn't anything. Miss Brownall laughed cruelly. You are too modest, Emily. It is a whole slate full of poetry. Think of that, children. Poetry. We have a pupil in the school who can write. Poetry. And she does not want us to read this. Poetry. I'm afraid Emily is selfish. I'm sure we should all enjoy this. Poetry. Emily cringed every time Miss Brownall said, poetry, with that jeering emphasis, and that hateful pulls before it. Many of the children giggled, partly because they enjoyed seeing a Murray of New Moon growled, partly because they realized that Miss Brownall expected them to giggle. Wrote a steward giggle louder than anyone else. But Jenny Strang, who had tormented Emily on her first day at school, refused to giggle, and scarled blackly at Miss Brownall instead. Miss Brownall held up the slate and read Emily's poem aloud, in a sing-song nasal voice, with absurd intonations and gestures that made it seem a very ridiculous thing. The lines Emily had thought the finest seemed the most ridiculous. The other pupils laughed more than ever, and Emily felt that the bitterness of the moment could never go out of her heart. The little fancies that had been so beautiful when they came to her, she wrote, were shattered and bruised now, like torn and mangled butterflies. This does in some fairy dream, chanted Miss Brownall, shutting her eyes and wagging her head from side to side. The giggles became shouts of laughter. Oh! thought Emily, clenching her hands. I wish. I wish the bears that ate the naughty children in the Bible would come and eat you. There were no nice retributive bears in the school bush, however, and Miss Brownall read the whole poem through. She was enjoying herself hugely. To ridicule a pupil always gave her pleasure, and when that pupil was Emily of new moon, in whose heart and soul she had always sent something fundamentally different from her own, the pleasure was exquisite. When she reached the end, she handed the slate back to the crimson-cheeked Emily. Take your poetry, Emily, she said. Emily snatched the slate. No slate rag was handy, but Emily gave the palm of her hand a fierce lick, and one side of the slate was wiped off. Another lick, and the rest of the poem went. It had been disgraced, degraded. It must be blotted out of existence. To the end of her life Emily never forgot the pain and humiliation of that experience. Miss Brownall laughed again. What a pity to obliterate such poetry, Emily, she said. Suppose you do those sums now. They are not poetry, but I am in the school to teach arithmetic, and I am not here to teach the art of writing poetry. Go to your own seat. Yes, Rhoda? For Rhoda Stewart was holding up her hand and snapping her fingers. Please, Miss Brownall, she said with a distinct triumph in her turns. Emily's star has a whole bunch of poetry in her desk. She was reading it to Elsa Burnley this morning while you thought they were learning history. Perry Miller turned around and a delightful missile compounded of chute paper and known as a spit-pull flew across the room and struck Rhoda squarely in the face. But Miss Brownall was already at Emily's desk, having reached it one jump before Emily herself. Don't touch them. You have no right, gasped Emily frantically. But Miss Brownall had the bunch of poetry in her hands. She turned and walked up to the platform. Emily followed. Those poems were very dear to her. She had composed them during the various stormy recesses, when it had been impossible to play out of doors, and written them down on disreputable scraps of paper borrowed from her mates. She had meant to take them home that very evening and copy them on lettables. And now this horrible woman was going to read them to the whole jarring giggling school. But Miss Brownall realised that the time was too short for that. She had to content herself with reading over the titles, with some appropriate comments. Meanwhile Perry Miller was relieving his feelings by bombarding Rhoda Stewart with spit-pulls. So craftily timed that Rhoda had no idea from what quarter of the room they were coming and so could not tell on anyone. They're greatly interfered with her enjoyment of Emily's scrape, however. As for Teddy Kent, who did not wage war with spit-pulls but preferred subtler methods of revenge, he was busy drawing something on a sheet of paper. Rhoda found the sheet on her desk the next morning. On it was depicted a small scrawny monkey hanging by its tail from a branch, and the face of the monkey was as the face of Rhoda Stewart. Where at Rhoda Stewart waxed wrath but for the sake of her own vanity tore the sketch to tatters and kept silence regarding it. She did not know that Teddy had made a similar sketch, with Miss Brownall figuring as a vampirish-looking bat and thrust it into Emily's hand as they left school. The last diamond, a romantic tale, read Miss Brownall. Lines on a birch tree, looks to me more like lines on a very dirty piece of paper, Emily. Lines written on a sundial in our garden, did her. Lines to my favourite cat, another romantic tale, I presume. Ode to Ilse, thy neck is of a wondrous pearly sheen. Hardly that, I should say. Ilse's neck is very sunburned. A description of our parlour. The violet spell. I hope the violet spell's better than you do, Emily. The disappointed house. Lily's lifted up white cups for the bees to drink. I didn't write it that way, cried tortured Emily. Lines to a piece of brocade in Aunt Laura's bureau drawer. Farewell on leaving home. Lines to a spruce tree, it keeps off heat and sun and glare. It is a goodly tree, I wean. Are you quite sure that you know what wean means, Emily? Poem on Mr Tom Bennett's field. Poem on the view from Aunt Elizabeth's window. You are strong on views, Emily. Epitaph on a drowned kitten. Meditations at the tomb of my great-great-grandmother, poor lady. To my northern birds. Lines composed on the bank of Blair Water-gazing at the stars. Crusted with uncounted gems, those stars so distant, cold and true. Don't try to pass those lines off as your own, Emily. You couldn't have written them. I did, I did. Emily was white with sense of outrage, and I've written lots far better. Miss Brownell suddenly crumpled the ragged little papers up in her hand. We have wasted enough time over this trash, she said. Go to your seat, Emily. She moved towards the stove. For a moment Emily did not realise her purpose. Then, as Miss Brownell opened the stove door, Emily understood and bounded forward. She courted the papers and tooled them from Miss Brownell's hand before the latter could tighten her grasp. You shall not burn them. You shall not have them, gasped Emily. She crammed the perms into the pocket of her baby apron, and faced Miss Brownell in a kind of calm rage. The Murray look was on her face, and although Miss Brownell was not so violently affected by it as Aunt Elizabeth had been, it nevertheless gave her an unpleasant sensation, as of having roused forces with which she did not tamper further. This tormented child looked quite capable of flying at her, tooth and claw. Give me those papers, Emily. But she said it rather uncertainly. I will not, said Emily's dormally. They are mine. You have no right to them. I wrote them at recesses. I didn't break any rules. You Emily looked defiantly into Miss Brownell's cold eyes. You are an unjust tyrannical person. Miss Brownell turned to her desk. I'm coming up to New Moon tonight to tell your Aunt Elizabeth of this, she said. Emily was at first too much excited over saving her precious poetry to pay much heed to this threat. But as her excitement ebbed, cold dread flowed in. She knew she had an unpleasant time ahead of her, that at all events they should not get her poems, not one of them, no matter what they did to her. As soon as she got home from school, she flew to the garret and secreted them on the shelf of the old sofa. 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, strong nature facing humiliation. She would not have been afraid of justice, but she knew at the bar of Aunt Elizabeth and Miss Brownell she would not have justice. And I can't write farther about it, she thought, her little breast heaving. The shame of it all was too deep and intimate to be written out, and so she could find no relief for her pain. They did not have supper at New Moon in wintertime until Cousin Jimmy had finished his chores, and was ready to stay in for the night, so Emily was left undisturbed in the garret. From the dormer window she looked down on a dreamland scene that would ordinarily have delighted her. There was a red sunset behind the white distant hills, shining through the dark trees like a great fire. There was a delicate blue trestle of bare, brown shadows all over the crusted garden. There was a pale, ethereal, alpine glow all over the southeastern sky, and presently there was a little lovely new moon in the silvery arch over lofty John's Bush, but Emily found no pleasure in any of them. Presently she saw Miss Brownell coming up the lane under the white arms of the birches with her manish stride. If my father was alive, said Emily looking down at her, you would go away from this place with a flea in your ear. The minutes passed, each seeming very long to Emily. At last Aunt Laura came up. Your Aunt Elizabeth wants you to come down to the kitchen, Emily. Aunt Laura's voice was kind and sad. Emily fought down a sob. She hated to have Aunt Laura think she had been naughty, but she could not trust herself to explain. Aunt Laura would sympathise and sympathy would break her down. She went silently down the two long flights of stairs before Aunt Laura and out to the kitchen. The supper table was set and the candles were lighted. The big black raftered kitchen looked spooky and weird as it always did by candlelight. Aunt Elizabeth sat rigidly by the table and her face was very hard. Miss Brownell sat in the rocking chair, her pale eyes glittering with triumphant malice. There seemed something baleful and poisonous in her very glance. Also her nose was very red, which did not add to her charm. Cousin Jimmy in his grey jumper was perched on the edge of the wood box, whistling at the ceiling and looking more gnome-like than ever. Perry was nowhere to be seen. Emily was sorry for this. The presence of Perry, who was on her side, would have been a great moral support. I am sorry to say, Emily, that I've been hearing some very bad things about your behaviour in school today, said Aunt Elizabeth. No, I don't think you are sorry, said Emily gravely. Now that the crisis had come, she found herself able to confront it coolly, nay more, to take a curious interest in it, under all her secret fear and shame, as if some part of her had detached itself from the rest and was interestedly absorbing impressions and analysing motives and describing settings. She felt that when she wrote about this scene later on, she must not forget to describe the odd shadows the candle under Aunt Elizabeth's nose cast upward on her face, producing a rather skeletonic effect. As for Miss Brownell, could she ever have been a baby, a dimpled, fat, laughing baby? The thing was unbelievable. Don't speak impertently to me, said Aunt Elizabeth. You see? said Miss Brownell significantly. I don't mean to be impertinent, but you are not sorry, persisted Emily. You are angry because you think I have disgraced New Moon, but you are a little glad that you've got someone to agree with you that I'm bad. What a grateful child, said Miss Brownell, flashing her eyes up at the ceiling, where they encountered a surprising sight. Perry Miller's head, and no more of him, was stuck down out of the black hole, and on Perry Miller's upside down face was a most disrespectful and impish grimace. Face and head disappeared in a flash, leaving Miss Brownell staring foolishly at the ceiling. You have been behaving disgracefully in school, said Aunt Elizabeth, who had not seen this by play. I am ashamed of you. It was not as bad as that, Aunt Elizabeth, said Emily steadily. You see, it was this way. I don't want to hear anything more about it, said Aunt Elizabeth. But you must, cried Emily. It isn't fair to listen only to her side. It was a little bad, but not so bad as she says. Not another word. I have heard the whole story, said Aunt Elizabeth grimly. You heard a pack of lies, said Perry, suddenly sticking his head down through the black hole again. Everybody jumped, even on to Elizabeth, who at once became angrier than ever because she had jumped. Perry Miller, come down out of that loft instantly, she commanded. Can't, said Perry, leconically, at once, I say. Can't, repeated Perry, winking audaciously at Miss Brownell. Perry Miller, come down. I will be obeyed. I am mistrust here yet. Oh, right, said Perry cheerfully, if I must. He swung himself down until his toes touched the ladder. Aunt Laura gave a little shriek. Everybody else seemed to be stricken dumb. I've just got my wet duds off, Perry was saying cheerfully, waving his legs about to get a foothold on the ladder, while he hung to the sides of the black hole with his elbows. Fell into the brook when I was watering the cows. Was going to put on dry ones, but just as you say, Jimmy, implored Pruy Elizabeth Murray, surrendering at discretion. She could not cope with the situation. Perry, get back into that loft and get your clothes on this minute, ordered Cousin Jimmy. The bear legs shut up and disappeared. There was a chuckle as mirthful and malicious as an owl's beyond the black hole. Aunt Elizabeth gave a convulsive grasp of relief and turned to Emily. She was determined to regain ascendancy and Emily must be thoroughly humbled. Emily, kneel down here before Miss Brownell and ask her pardon for your conduct today, she said. Into Emily's pale cheek came a scarlet protest. She could not do this. She would ask pardon of Miss Brownell, but not on her knees. To kneel to this cruel woman who had hurt her so, she could not, would not do it. Her whole nature rose up in protest against such a humiliation. Kneel down, repeated Aunt Elizabeth. Miss Brownell looked pleased and expectant. It would be very satisfying to see this child who had to fight her, kneeling before her as a penitent. Never again, Miss Brownell felt, would Emily be able to look levily at her with those dauntless eyes, that bespoke a soul untamable and free, no matter what punishment might be inflicted upon body or mind. The memory of this moment would always be with Emily. She could never forget that she had an ulter in a basement. Emily felt this as clearly as Miss Brownell did and remained stubbornly on her feet. Aunt Elizabeth, please let me tell my side of the story. She pleaded. I have heard all I wish to hear of the matter. You will do as I say, Emily, or you will be outcast in this house until you do. No one will talk to you, play with you, eat with you, have anything to do with you, until you have obeyed me. Emily shuddered. That was a punishment she could not face. To be cut off from her world, she knew it would bring her to terms before long. She might as well yield at once, but oh, the bitterness, the shame of it! A human being should not kneel to anyone but God, said Cousin Jimmy unexpectedly, still staring at the ceiling. A sudden strange change came over Elizabeth Murray's proud angry face. She stood very still, looking at Cousin Jimmy, stood so long that Miss Brownell made a motion of petulant impatience. Emily, said Aunt Elizabeth in a different tone, I was wrong. I shall not ask you to kneel, but you must apologise to your teacher, and I shall punish you later on. Emily put her hands behind her and looked straight into Miss Brownell's eyes again. I am sorry for anything I did today that was wrong, she said, and I ask your pardon for it. Miss Brownell got on her feet. She felt herself cheated of a legitimate triumph. Whatever Emily's punishment would be, she would not have the satisfaction of seeing it. She could have shaken, sampled Jimmy Murray with a right good will, but it would hardly do to show all she felt. Elizabeth Murray was not a trustee, but she was the heaviest great-pair new moon, and had great influence with the school board. I shall excuse your conduct if you behave yourself in future, Emily, she said coldly. I feel that I have only done my duty in putting the matter before your aunt. No, thank you, Miss Murray. I cannot stay to supper. They want to get home before it is too dark. Godspeed, all travellers, said Perry cheerfully, climbing down his ladder, this time with his clothes on. Until Elizabeth ignored him, she was not going to have a scene with a hired boy before Miss Brownell. The latter switched herself out, and until Elizabeth looked at Emily. 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. Aunt Elizabeth made no reply but sat haughtily down at the supper table. Emily went into the pantry and ate her bread and milk, with the odor of the delicious sausages the others were eating for savor. Emily liked sausages, and new moon sausages were the last word in sausages. Elizabeth Burnley had brought the recipe out from the old country, and its secret was carefully guarded. And Emily was hungry, but she had escaped the unbearable, and things might be worse. It suddenly occurred to her that she would write an epic poem in imitation of the lay of the last minstrel. Cousin Jimmy had read the lay to her last Saturday. She would begin the first can to write off. When Laura Murray came into the pantry, Emily, her bread and milk only half-eaten, was leaning her elbows on the dresser, gazing into space with faintly moving lips, and the light that never was on land or sea in her young eyes. Even the aroma of sausages was forgotten. Was she not drinking from a fount of casterly? Emily, said Aunt Laura, shutting the door, and looking very lovingly upon Emily out of her kind, blue eyes. You can talk to me all you want to. I don't like Miss Brownell, and I don't think you were all together in the wrong, although of course you shouldn't be writing poetry when you have sums to do, and there are some ginger cookies in that box. I don't want to talk to any one, dear Aunt Laura. I am too happy, said Emily Dreamily. I'm composing an epic. It is to be called the White Lady, and I've got 20 lines of it made already, and two of them are thrilling. The heroine wants to go into a convent, and her father warns her that if she does, she will never be able to come back to the life you gave, with all its pleasures to the grave. Oh, Aunt Laura, when I composed those lines, the flash came to me, and ginger cookies are nothing to me any more. Aunt Laura smiled again. 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. End of section 18, Recording by Leanne Fortune. Section 19 of Emily of New Moon by Lucie M Montgomery. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Leanne Fortune. Section 19. Dear Father. Oh, I have such an exciting thing to tell you. I've been the heroine of an adventure. One day last week, Ilsa asked me if I would go and stay all night with her, because her father was away and wouldn't be home till very late, and Ilsa said she wasn't frightened but very lonesome. So I asked Aunt Elizabeth if I could. I hardly dared hope, dear Father, that she would let me, for she doesn't approve of little girls being away from home at night. But, to my surprise, she said I could go very kindly. And then I heard her say in the pantry to Aunt Laura, it is a shame the way the doctor leaves that poor child so much alone at nights. It is wicked of him. 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 interesting, Aunt Elizabeth gave Aunt Laura a nudge and said, shh, little pictures have big ears. I knew she meant me, though my ears are not big, only pointed. I do wish I could find out what Ilsa's mother did. It worries me after I go to bed. I lie awake for ever so long, thinking about it. Ilsa has no idea. Once she asked her father and he told her, in a voice of thunder, never to mention that woman to him again. And there is something else that worries me too. I keep thinking of Silas Lee, who killed his brother at the old well. How dreadful the poor man must have felt. And what is it to be warped? I went over to Ilsa's and we played in the garret. I like playing there because we don't have to be careful and tidy like we do in our garret. Ilsa's garret is very untidy and can't have been dusted for years. The rag-room is worse than the rest. It is bordered off at one end of the garret, and it is full of old clothes and bags of rags and broken furniture. I don't like the smell of it. The kitchen chimney goes up through it and things hang round it, or dead. For all this is in the past now, dear father. When we got tired playing, we sat down on an old chest and talked. This is splendid in daytime, I said, but it must be awful queer at night. Mice, said Ilsa, and spiders and ghosts. I don't believe in ghosts, I said scornfully. There isn't any such thing. But maybe there is for all that, dear father. I believe this garret is haunted, said Ilsa. They say garrets always are, nonsense, I said. You know, dear father, it would not do for a new moon person to believe in ghosts. But I felt very queer. It's easy to talk, said Ilsa, beginning to be mad, though I wasn't trying to run down her garret. But you wouldn't stay here alone at night. I wouldn't mind it a bit, I said. Then I dare you to do it, said Ilsa. I dare you to come up here at bedtime and sleep here all night. Then I saw I was in an awful scrape, father, dear. It is a foolish thing to boast. I knew not what to do. It was dreadful to think of sleeping alone in that garret. But if I didn't, Ilsa would always cast it up to me whenever we fought. And worse than that, she would tell Teddy, and he would think me a coward. So I said proudly, I'll do it, Ilsa Burnley, and I'm not afraid to either. But oh, I was, inside. The mice will run over you, said Ilsa. Oh, I wouldn't be you for the world. It was mean of Ilsa to make things worse than they were. But I could feel she admired me too, and that helped me a great deal. We dragged an old feather-bed out of the rag-room, and Ilsa gave me a pillow and half her clothes. It was dark by this time, and Ilsa wouldn't go up into the garret again. So I said my prayers very carefully, and then I took a lamp and started up. I'm so used to candles now that the lamp made me nervous. Ilsa said I looked scared to death. My niece shook, dear father, but for the honour of the stars, and the marries too, I went on. I had undressed in Ilsa's room, so I got right into bed and blew out the lamp. But I couldn't go to sleep for a long time. The moonlight made the garret look weird. I don't know exactly what weird means, but I feel the garret was it. The bags and old clothes hanging from the beams looked like creatures. I thought I need not be frightened. The angels are here, but then I felt as if I would be as much frightened of angels as of anything else. And I could hear rats and mice scrambling over things. I thought whatever rat was to run over me, and then I thought that next day I would write out a description of the garret by moonlight and my feelings. At last I heard the doctor driving in, and then I heard him knocking round in the kitchen, and I felt better, and before very long I went to sleep, and I dreamed a dreadful dream. I dreamed the door of the ragroom opened, and a big newspaper came out and chased me all around the garret. And then it went on fire, and I could smell the smoke plain as plain, and it was just on me when I screamed and woke up. I was sitting right up in bed, and the newspaper was gone, but I could smell smoke still. I looked at the ragroom door, and smoke was coming out under it, and I saw firelight through the cracks of the boards. I just yelled at the top of my voice and tore down to Ilse's room, and she rushed across the hall and woke her father. He said, Damn! But he got right up, and then all three of us kept running up and down the garret stairs with pales of water, and we made an awful mess, but we got the fire out. It was just the bags of wool that had been hanging close to the chimney that had caught fire. When all was over, the doctor wiped the perspiration from his manly brow and said, That was a close call. A few minutes later would have been too late. I put on a fire when I came in to make a cup of tea, and I suppose those bags must have caught fire from a spark. I see there's a hole here where the plaster has tumbled out. I must have this whole place cleaned out. How in the world did you come to discover the fire, Emily? I was sleeping in the garret, I said. Sleeping in the garret, said the doctor. What in—what the—what were you doing there? Ilse dared me, I said. She said I'd be too scared to stay there, and I said I wouldn't. I fell asleep and woke up and smelled smoke. Your little devil, said the doctor. I suppose it was a dreadful thing to be called a devil, but the doctor looked at me stern, admiringly, that I felt as if he was paying me a compliment. He has queer ways of talking. Ilse says the only time he ever said a kind thing to her was once when she had a sore throat he called her poor little animal, and looked as if he was sorry for her. I feel sure Ilse feels dreadfully bad because her father doesn't like her, though she pretends she does not care. But, oh dear father, there is more to tell. Yesterday the Shrewsbury weekly times came, and in the Blair notes it told all about the fire at the doctors, and said it had been fortunately discovered in time by Miss Emily Starr. I can't tell you what I felt like when I saw my name in the paper. I felt famous, and I never was called Miss in earnest before. Last Saturday Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Laura went to Shrewsbury for the day, and left Cousin Jimmy and me to keep house. We had such fun, and Cousin Jimmy let me skim all the milk pans. But after dinner unexpected company came, and there was no cake in the house. That was dreadful thing. It never happened before in the annals of New Moon. Aunt Elizabeth had toothache all day yesterday, and Aunt Laura was away at Priest Point visiting great Aunt Nancy, so no cake was made. I prayed about it, and then I went to work and made a cake by Aunt Laura's receipt, and it turned out all right. Cousin Jimmy helped me set the table and get supper, and I poured the tea, and never slopped any over in the sauces. You would have been proud of me, Father. Mrs. Lewis took a second piece of cake, and said I would know Elizabeth Murray's cake if I found it in Central Africa. I said not a word, for I'll know of the family, but I felt very proud. I had saved the Murray's drum to disgrace. When Aunt Elizabeth came home and heard the tale, she looked grim, and tasted a piece that was left, and then she said, Well, you have got some Murray in you anyway. That is the first time Aunt Elizabeth has ever praised me. She had three teeth out, so there will not ache any more. I'm glad for her sake. Before I went to bed, I got the cookbook and picked out all the things I'd like to make. Queen pudding, sea firm sauce, black-eyed susans, pigs in blankets. They sound just lovely. I can see such beautiful, fluffy white clouds over Lofty John's bush. I wish I could soar up and drop right into them. I can't believe they would be wet and messy like Teddy says. Teddy cut my initials and his together on the monarch of the forest, but somebody has cut them out. I don't know whether it was Perry or Ilse. Miss Brownell hardly ever gives me good deportment marks now, and Aunt Elizabeth is much displeased on Friday nights, but Aunt Laura understands. I wrote an account of the afternoon when Miss Brownell made fun of my poems, and put it in an old envelope, and wrote Aunt Elizabeth's name on it, and put it among my papers. If I die of consumption, Aunt Elizabeth will find it, and know the rights of it, and mourn that she was so unjust to me. But I don't think I will die because I'm getting much better. And Ilse told me she heard her father tell Aunt Laura I would be handsome if I had more colour. Is it wrong to want to be handsome, dearest father? Aunt Elizabeth says it is, and when I said to her, wouldn't you like to be handsome, Aunt Elizabeth, she seemed annoyed about something. Miss Brownell has had a spited Perry ever since that evening, and treats him very mean. But he is meek, and says he won't kick up any fuss in school, because he wants to learn and get ahead. He keeps saying his rhymes are as good as mine, and I know they are not, and it exasperates me. If I do not pay attention all the time in school, Miss Brownell says, I suppose you are composing poetry, Emily, and then everybody laughs. No, not everybody, I must not exaggerate. Teddy and Perry and Ilse and Jenny never laugh. It is funny that I like Jenny so well now, and I hated her so, that first day in school. Her eyes are not piggy after all. They are small, but they are jolly, and twinkly. She is quite popular in school. I do hate Frank Barker. He took my new reader, and wrote in a big, sprawly way, all over the front page. Still not this book for fear of shame? For on it is the owner's name, and when you die the Lord will say, where is that book? You stole away. And when you say you do not know, the Lord will say, go down below. That is not a refined poem, and besides, it is not the right way to speak about God. I tore up the leaf and burned it, and Aunt Elizabeth was angry, and even when I explained why, Heroth was not appeased. Ilse says she is going to call God Allah after this. I think it is a nicer name, myself. It is so soft, and doesn't sound so stern, but I fear it's not religious enough. May the 20th. Yesterday was my birthday, dear father. It will soon be a year since I came to New Moon. I feel as if I had always lived here. I have grown two inches. Cousin Jimmy measured me by a mark on the dairy door. My birthday was very nice. Aunt Laura made a lovely cake, and gave me a beautiful new white petticoat with an embroidered flounce. She had run a blue ribbon through it, but Aunt Elizabeth made her pull it out. And Aunt Laura also gave me that piece of pink satin brocade in her bureau drawer. I have longed for it ever since I saw it, but never hoped to possess it. Ilse asked me what I meant to do with it, but I don't mean to do anything with it. Only keep it up here in the garret with my treasures, and look at it, because it is beautiful. Aunt Elizabeth gave me a dictionary. That was a useful present. I feel I ought to like it. You will soon notice an improvement in my spelling, I hope. The only trouble is when I am writing something interesting I get so excited it is just awful to have to stop and hunt up a word to see how it is spelled. I looked up ween in it, and Miss Brunel was right. I did not know what it really meant. They rhymed so well with sheen, and I thought it meant to be hold or see, but it means to think. Cousin Jimmy gave me a big thick blank book. I am so proud of it. It will be so nice to write pieces in. But I will still use the letterables to write to you, dear father, because I can fold each one up by itself and address it like a real letter. Teddy gave me a picture of myself. He painted it in watercolours and called it the smiling girl. I look as if I was listening to something that made me very happy. Elsa says it flatters me. It does make me better looking than I am, but not any better looking than I would be if I could have a bang. Teddy says he is going to paint a real big picture of me when he grows up. Perry walked all the way to Shrewsbury to get me a necklace of pearl beads and lost it. He had no more money, so he went home to Stovepipe Town and got a young hen from his aunt Tom, and gave me that. He is a very persistent boy. I am to have all the eggs the hen lays to sell the peddler for myself. Elsa gave me a box of candy. I am only going to eat one piece a day to make it last a long time. I wanted Elsa to eat some, but she said she wouldn't, because it would be mean to help eat a present you had given, and I insisted. And then we fought over it, and Elsa said I was a catawalling quadruped, which was ridiculous, and didn't know enough to come in when it rained. And I said I knew enough to have some manners at least. Elsa got so mad she went home, but she cooled off soon and came back for supper. It is raining tonight, and it sounds like fairy's feet dancing over the garret roof. If it had not rained, Teddy was going to come down and help me look for the last diamond. Wouldn't it be splendid if we could find it? Cousin Jimmy is fixing up the garden. He lets me help him, and I have a little flower bed of my own. I always run out first thing every morning to see how much the things have grown since yesterday. Spring is such a happy frying time, isn't it, Father? The little blue people are all out round the summer house. That is what cousin Jimmy calls the violets, and I think it is lovely. He has names like that for all the flowers. The roses are the queens, and the dune lilies are the snow ladies, and the tulips are the gay folk, and the daffodils are the golden ones, and the china asters are my pink friends. Mike II is here with me, sitting on the windowsill. Mike is a smee cat. Smee is not in the dictionary. It is a word I invented myself. I could not think of any English word which just describes Mike II, so I made this up. It means sleek and glossy and soft and fluffy, all in one, and something else besides that I can't express. Aunt Laura is teaching me to sew. She says I must learn to make a hem on muslin that can't be seen tradition. I hope she will teach me how to make pointless someday. All the marries of New Moon have been noted for making pointless. I mean all the women marries. None of the girls in school can make pointless. Aunt Laura says she will make me a pointless handkerchief when I get married. All the New Moon brides had pointless handkerchiefs, except my mother, who ran away. But you didn't mind her not having one, did you, father? Aunt Laura talks a good bit about my mother to me, but not when Aunt Elizabeth is around. Aunt Elizabeth never mentions her name. Aunt Laura wants to show me mother's room, but she has never been able to find the key yet, because Aunt Elizabeth keeps her head. Aunt Laura says Aunt Elizabeth loved my mother very much. You would think she would love her daughter some, wouldn't you? But she doesn't. She is just bringing me up as a duty. June the first. Dear father, this has been a very important day. I wrote my first letter. I mean the first letter that was really to go in the mail. It was to great Aunt Nancy who lives at Treespond and is very old. She wrote Aunt Elizabeth and said I might write now and then to a rural woman. My heart was touched and I wanted to. Aunt Elizabeth said we might as well let her, and she said to me you must be careful to write a nice letter and I will read it over when it is written. If you make a good impression on Aunt Nancy, she may do something for you. I wrote the letter very carefully, but it didn't sound a bit like me when it was finished. I couldn't write a good letter when I knew Aunt Elizabeth was going to read it. I felt paralysed. June the seventh. Dear father, my letter did not make a good impression on great Aunt Nancy. She did not answer it, but she wrote Aunt Elizabeth that I must be a very stupid child to write such a stupid letter. I felt insulted because I'm not stupid. Perry says he feels like going to Treespond and knocking the daylights out of great Aunt Nancy. I told him he must not talk like that about my family, and anyhow I don't see how knocking the daylights out of great Aunt Nancy would make her change her opinion about me being stupid. I wonder what daylights are, and how you knock them out of people. I have three cantos of the white lady finished. I have the heroine immured in a convent, and I don't know how to get her out because I am not a Catholic. I suppose it would have been better if I had a Protestant heroine, but there were no Protestants in the days of chivalry. I might have asked Love to John last year, but this year I can't because I've never spoken to him since he played that horrid joke on me about the apple. When I meet him on the road I look straight ahead just as lofty as he does. I have called my pig off to him to get square. Cousin Jimmy has given me a little pig for my own. When it is sold I am to have the money. I mean to give some for missionaries and put the rest in the bank to go to my education, and I thought if I ever had a pig I would call it Uncle Wallace. But now it does not seem to me proper to call pigs off to your uncles, even if you don't like them. Teddy and Perry and Ilse and I play where we are living in the days of chivalry, and Ilse and I are distressed damsels rescued by gallant knights. Teddy made a splendid suit of armour out of old barrel steves, and then Perry made a better one out of old tin boilers hammered flat with a broken saucepan for a helmet. Sometimes we play at the tansy patch. I have a queer feeling that Teddy's mother hates me this summer. Last summer she just didn't like me. Smoke and buttercup are not there now. They disappeared mysteriously in the winter. Teddy says he feels sure his mother poisoned them because she thought he was getting too fond of them. Teddy is teaching me to whistle, but Aunt Laura says it is unladylike. So many jolly things seem to be unladylike. Sometimes I almost wish my aunts were infidels like Dr. Bonely. He never bothers whether Ilse is unladylike or not. But no, it would not be good manners to be an infidel. It would not be a new moon tradition. Today I taught Perry that he must not eat with his knife. He wants to learn all the rules of etiquette. And I am helping him learn a recitation for school examination day. I wanted Ilse to do it, but she was mad because he asked me first and she wouldn't. But she should, because she is a far better reciter than I am. I am too nervous. June the 14th. Dear Father, we have composition in school now. And I learned today that you put in things like this, quotation mocks. When you write anything anybody has said, I didn't know that before. I must go over all my letters to you and put them in. And after a question you must put a mark like this, question mark. And when a letter is left out, apostrophe, which is a comma up in the air. This Brunel is sarcastic, but she does teach you things. I'm 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've written a description of her on a letter ball. 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 describe her faults but I feel wicked and ungrateful if I say anything that is not complimentary about Dear Aunt Laura. Aunt Elizabeth has locked your books away and says I'm not to have them till I'm grown up. Just as if I wouldn't be careful of them, Dear Father. She says I wouldn't because she found that when I was reading one of them I put a tiny pencil dot under every beautiful word. They didn't hurt the book a bit, Dear Father. Some of the words were dingles, purled, musk, dappled, intervails, glen, bosky, piping, shimmer, crisp, beachin'. Ivory. I think those are all lovely words, Father. Aunt Laura lets me read her copy of a pilgrim's progress on Sundays. I called a big hill in the road to White Cross the delectable mountain because it is such a beautiful one. Teddy lent me three books of poetry. One of them was Tennyson and I have learnt the bugle song of my heart so I will always have it. One was Mrs. Browning. She is lovely. I would like to meet her. I suppose I will when I die but that may be a long time away. The other was just one poem called Sorrow and Rustam. After I went to bed I cried over it. Aunt Elizabeth said, What are you sniffling about? I wasn't sniffling. I was weeping sore. She made me tell her and then she said, You must be crazy. But I couldn't go to sleep until I had thought out a different end for it, a happy one. June the 25th, Dear Father. There has been a dark shadow over this day. I dropped my saint in church. It made a dreadful noise. I felt as if everybody looked at me. Aunt Elizabeth was much annoyed. Perry dropped his two soon after. He told me after church he did it on purpose because he thought it would make me feel better, but it didn't because I was afraid the people would think it was me dropping mine again. Boys do such queer things. I hope the minister did not hear because I am beginning to like him. I never liked him much before last Tuesday. His family are all boys and I suppose he doesn't understand little girls very well. Then he called it New Moon. Aunt Laura and Aunt Elizabeth were both away and I was in the kitchen alone. Mr. Dare came in and sat down on Saucy Cell, who was asleep in the rocking chair. He was comfortable, but Saucy Cell wasn't. He didn't sit on her stomach. If he had, I suppose he would have killed her. He just sat on her legs and tail. Cell yelled, but Mr. Dare is a little deaf and didn't hear her, and I was too shy to tell him. But cousin Jimmy came in just as he was asking me if I knew my catechism, and said, catechism is it? Awful heart, man. Listen to that poor dumb beast. Get up if you're a Christian. So Mr. Dare got up and said, Dear me, this is very remarkable. I thought I felt something moving. I thought I would write this to you, dear father, because it struck me as humorous. When Mr. Dare finished asking me questions, I thought it was my turn, and I would ask him some about some things I've wanted to know for years. I asked him if he thought God was very particular about every little thing I did, and if he thought my cats would go to heaven. He said he hoped I never did wrong things and that animals had no souls. And I asked him why we shouldn't put new wine in old bottles, until Elizabeth does with hudandaline wine, and the old bottles do just as well as new ones. He explained quite kindly that the Bible bottles were made of skins and got rotten when they were old. It made it quite clear to me. Then I told him I was worried, because I knew I ought to love God better than anything, but there were things I loved better than God. He said what things? And I said flowers and stars and the wind-women and the three princesses, and things like that. And he smiled and said, but they are just a part of God, Emily, every beautiful thing is. And all at once I liked him ever so much, and didn't feel shy with him any more. He preached a sermon on heaven last Sunday. It seemed like a dull place. I think it must be more exciting than that. I wonder what I will do when I go to heaven, since I can't sing. I wonder if they will let me write poetry, but I think church is interesting. Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Laura always read their Bibles before the service begins. But I like to stay around and see everybody, and wonder what they are thinking of. It's so nice to hear the silk dresses swishing up the aisles. Bustles are very fashionable now, but Aunt Elizabeth will not wear them. I think Aunt Elizabeth would look funny with a bustle. Aunt Laura wears a very little one, your lovingest daughter, Emily B. Star. P.S. Dear Father, it is lovely to write to you. But oh, I never get an answer back. E. B. S. End of section 19, Recording by Leigh Ann Fortune