Emily of New Moon
me ware my white dress and good hat. Oh, Father, I pinned that lovely
picture of the lace ball dress up on the wall of Aunt Elizabeth’s
room, just like I had it at home and Aunt Elizabeth took it down and
burned it and skolded me for making pin marks in the paper. I said Aunt
Elizabeth you should not have burned that picture. I wanted to have
it when I grow up to have a dress made like it for balls. And Aunt
Elizabeth said Do you expect to attend many balls if I may ask and I
said Yes when I am rich and famus and Aunt Elizabeth said Yes when the
moon is made of green cheese.
“I saw Dr. Burnley yesterday when he came over to buy some eggs from
Aunt Elizabeth. I was disappointed because he looks just like other
people. I thought a man who didn’t believe in God would look queer in
some way. He did not sware either and I was sorry for I have never
heard any one sware and I am very angshus to. He has big yellow eyes
like Ilse and a loud voice and Rhoda says when he gets mad you can hear
him yelling all over Blair Water. There is some mistery about Ilse’s
mother which I cannot fathum. Dr. Burnley and Ilse live alone. Rhoda
says Dr. Burnley says he will have no devils of women in that house.
That speech is wikked but striking. Old Mrs. Simms goes over and cooks
dinner and supper for them and then vamooses and they get their own
breakfast. The doctor sweeps out the house now and then and Ilse never
does anything but run wild. The doctor never smiles so Rhoda says. He
must be like King Henry the Second.
“I would like to get akwanted with Ilse. She isn’t as sweet as Rhoda
but I like her looks, too. But she doesn’t come to school much and
Rhoda says I mustn’t have any chum but her or she will cry her eyes
out. Rhoda loves me as much as I love her. We are both going to pray
that we may live together all our lives and die the same day.
“Aunt Elizabeth always puts up my school dinner for me. She won’t
give me anything but plain bread and butter but she cuts good thick
slices and the butter is thick too and never has the horrid taste Ellen
Greene’s butter used to have. 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.
“My teacher’s name is Miss Brownell. I don’t like the cut of her jib.
(That is a naughtical frays that Cousin Jimmy uses. I know frays is
not spelled right but there is no dixonary at New Moon but that is the
sound of it.) She is too sarkastik and she likes to make you rediklus.
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.
And the aprons are made of such good stuff that they will never ware
out and it will be years before I grow out of them. But I have a white
dress for church with a black silk sash and a white legorn hat with
black bows and black kid slippers, and I feel very elegant in them.
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. I have
to go to bed at half past eight and I don’t like it but I sit up in bed
and look out of the window till it gets dark, so I get square with Aunt
Elizabeth that way, and I listen to the sound the sea makes. I like
it now though it always makes me feel sorrowful, but it’s a kind of a
nice sorrow. I have to sleep with Aunt Elizabeth and I don’t like that
either because if I move ever so little she says I figit but she admits
that I don’t kick. And she won’t let me put the window up. She doesn’t
like fresh air or light in the house. The parlour is dark as a toomb.
I went in one day and rolled up all the blinds and Aunt Elizabeth was
horrifyed and called me a little hussy and gave me the Murray look. You
would suppose I had committed a crime. I felt so insulted that I came
up to the garret and wrote a deskription of myself being drowned on a
letter-bill and then I felt better. Aunt Elizabeth said I was never to
go into the parlour again without permission but I don’t want to. I am
afraid of the parlour. All the walls are hung over with pictures of our
ancesters and there is not one good-looking person among them except
Grand-father Murray who looks handsome but very cross. The spare room
is upstairs and is just as gloomy as the parlour. Aunt Elizabeth only
lets distingwished people sleep there. I like the kitchen in daytime,
and the garret and the cook-house and the sitting-room and the hall
because of the lovely red front door and I love the dairy, but I don’t
like the other New Moon rooms. Oh, I forgot the cellar cubbord. I
love to go down there and look at the beautiful rows of jam and jelly
pots. Cousin Jimmy says it is a New Moon tradishun that the jam pots
must never be empty. What a lot of tradishuns New Moon has. It is a
very spashus house, and the trees are lovely. I have named the three
lombardys at the garden gate the Three Princesses and I have named
the old summer house Emily’s Bower, and the big apple tree by the old
orchard gate the Praying Tree because it holds up its long boughs
exactly as Mr. Dare holds up his arms in church where he prays.
“Aunt Elizabeth has given me the little right hand top burow drawer to
keep my things in.
“Oh, Father dear, I have made a great diskoverry. I wish I had made it
when you were alive for I think you’d have liked to know. _I can write
poetry._ Perhaps I could have written it long ago if I’d tried. But
after that first day in school I felt I was bound in honnour to try
and it is so easy. There is a little curly black-covered book in Aunt
Elizabeth’s bookcase called Thompson’s Seasons and I decided I would
write a poem on a season and the first three lines are,
Now Autumn comes ripe with the peech and pear,
The sportsman’s horn is heard throughout the land,
And the poor partridge fluttering falls dead.
“Of course there are no peeches in P. E. Island and I never heard a
sportsman’s horn here either, but you don’t have to stick too close to
facts in poetry. I filled a whole letter-bill with it and then I ran
and read it to Aunt Laura. I thought she would be overjoyed to find
she had a niece who could write poetry but she took it very coolly
and said it didn’t sound much like poetry. It’s blank verse I cryed.
_Very_ blank said Aunt Elizabeth sarkastically though I hadn’t asked
_her_ opinion. But I think I will write ryming poetry after this so
that there will be no mistake about it and I intend to be a poetess
when I grow up and become famus. I hope also that I will be silph-like.
A poetess should be silph-like. Cousin Jimmy makes poetry too. He has
made over 1000 pieces but he never writes any down but carries them
in his head. I offered to give him some of my letter-bills--for he is
very kind to me--but he said he was too old to learn new habits. I
haven’t heard any of his poetry yet because the spirit hasn’t moved
him but I am very angshus to and I am sorry they don’t fatten the pigs
till the fall. I like Cousin Jimmy more and more all the time, except
when he takes his queer spells of looking and talking. Then he fritens
me but they never last long. I have read a good many of the books in
the New Moon bookcase. A history of the reformation in France, very
relijus and sad. A little fat book deskribing the months in England
and the afoursaid Thompson’s Seasons. I like to read them because they
have so many pretty words in them, but I don’t like the feel of them.
The paper is so rough and thick it makes me creepy. Travels in Spain,
very fassinating, with lovely smooth shiny paper, a missionary book
on the Paciffic Islands, pictures very interesting because of the way
the heathen chiefs arange their hair. After they became Christians
they cut it off which I think was a pity. Mrs. Hemans Poems. I am
passhunately fond of poetry, also of stories about desert islands. Rob
Roy, a novel, but I only read a little of it when Aunt Elizabeth said
I must stop because I must not read novels. Aunt Laura says to read
it on the sly. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be all right to obey Aunt
Laura but I have a queer feeling about it and I haven’t yet. A lovely
Tiger-book, full of pictures and stories of tigers that make me feel
so nice and shivery. The Royal Road, also relijus but some fun in it
so very good for Sundays. Reuben and Grace, a story but not a novel,
because Reuben and Grace are brother and sister and there is no getting
married. Little Katy and Jolly Jim, same as above but not so exciting
and traggic. Nature’s Mighty Wonders which is good and improving. Alice
in Wonderland, which is perfectly lovely, and the Memoirs of Anzonetta
B. Peters who was converted at seven and died at twelve. When anybody
asked for a question she answered with a hym verse. That is after she
was converted. Before that she spoke English. Aunt Elizabeth told me I
ought to try to be like Anzonetta. I think I might be an Alice under
more faverable circumstances but I am sure I can never be as good
as Anzonetta was and I don’t believe I want to be because she never
had any fun. She got sick as soon as she was converted and suffered
aggonies for years. Besides I am sure that if I talked hyms to people
it would exite ridicule. I tried it once. Aunt Laura asked me the other
day if I would like blue stripes better than red in my next winter’s
stockings and I ansered just as Anzonetta did when asked a similar
question, only different, about a sack,
Jesus Thy blood and rightchusness
My beauty are, my glorious dress.
And Aunt Laura said was I crazy and Aunt Elizabeth said I was
ireverent. So I know it wouldn’t work. Besides, Anzonetta couldn’t eat
anything for years having ulsers in her stomach and I am pretty fond of
good eating.
“Old Mr. Wales on the Derry Pond Road is dying of canser. Jennie Strang
says his wife has her morning all ready.
“I wrote a biograffy of Saucy Sal to-day and a deskripshun of the road
in Lofty John’s bush. I will pin them to this letter so you can read
them too. Good night my beloved Father.
“Yours most obedient humble servant,
“_Emily B. Starr._
“P. S. I think Aunt Laura loves me. I like to be loved, Father dear.
“_E. B. S._”
CHAPTER X
GROWING PAINS
There was a great deal of suppressed excitement in school during the
last week in June, the cause thereof being Rhoda Stuart’s birthday
party, which was to take place early in July. The amount of heart
burning was incredible. Who was to be invited? That was the great
question. There were some who knew they wouldn’t and some who knew
they would; but there were more who were in truly horrible suspense.
Everybody paid court to Emily because she was Rhoda’s dearest friend
and might conceivably have some voice in the selection of guests.
Jennie Strang even went as far as bluntly to offer Emily a beautiful
white box with a gorgeous picture of Queen Victoria on the cover, to
keep her pencils in, if she would procure her an invitation. Emily
refused the bribe and said grandly that she could not interfere in such
a delicate matter. Emily really did put on some airs about it. _She_