Emily of New Moon
poor child has no one to look after her propperly. I wish I could use
some of her words because they are so striking. She gets them from her
father. I think my aunts are too perticular. One night when the Rev.
Mr. Dare was here to tea I used the word bull in my conversashun. I
said Ilse and I were afraid to go through Mr. James Lee’s pasture where
the old well was because he had a cross bull there. After Mr. Dare
had gone Aunt Elizabeth gave me an awful skolding and told me I was
never to use _that word_ again. But she had been talking of tigers at
tea--in connexshun with missionaries--and I can’t understand why it is
more disgraceful to talk about bulls than tigers. Of course bulls are
feroshus animals but so are tigers. But Aunt Elizabeth says I am always
disgracing them when they have company. When Mrs. Lockwood was here
from Shrewsbury last week they were talking about Mrs. Foster Beck, who
is a bride, and I said Dr. Burnley thought she was devilishly pretty.
Aunt Elizabeth said EMILY in an awful tone. She was pale with rath.
Dr. Burnley said it, I cryed, I am only kwoting. And Dr. Burnley did
say it the day I stayed to dinner with Ilse and Dr. Jameson was there
from Shrewsbury. I saw Dr. Burnley in one of his rages that afternoon
over something Mrs. Simms had done in his office. It was a groosome
sight. His big yellow eyes blazed and he tore about and kicked over a
chair and threw a mat at the wall and fired a vase out of the window
and said _terrible things_. I sat on the sofa and stared at him like
one fassinated. It was so interesting I was sorry when he cooled down
which he soon did because he is like Ilse and never stays mad long. He
never gets mad at Ilse though. Ilse says she wishes he would--it would
be better than being taken no notis of. She is as much of an orfan as
I am, poor child. Last Sunday she went to church with her old faded
blue dress on. There was a tare right in front of it. Aunt Laura wepped
when she came home and then spoke to Mrs. Simms about it because she
did not dare speak to Dr. Burnley. Mrs. Simms was cross and said it
was not her place to look after Ilses close but she said she had got
Dr. Burnley to get Ilse a nice sprigged muslin dress and Ilse had got
egg stane on it, and when Mrs. Simms skolded her for being so careless
Ilse flew into a rage and went upstairs and tore the muslin dress to
pieces, and Mrs. Simms said she wasn’t going to bother her head again
about a child like that and there was nothing for her to ware but her
old blue but Mrs. Simms didn’t know it was tore. 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. Mostly he laughs in a horrid sarkastic way like _Jolly
Jim’s_ uncle.
“We had barley soup for dinner that day--very watery.
“Aunt Laura is giving me five cents a week for washing the dishes. I
can only spend one cent of it and the other four have to be put in
the toad bank in the sitting-room on the mantel. The toad is made of
brass and sits on top of the bank and you put the cents in his mouth
one at a time. He swallows them and they drop into the bank. It’s very
fassinating (I should not write fassinating again because you told me
I must not use the same word too often but I cant think of any other
that deskribes my feelings so well). The toad bank is Aunt Laura’s but
she said I could use it. I just hugged her. Of course I never hug Aunt
Elizabeth. She is too rijid and bony. She does not aprove of Aunt Laura
paying me for washing dishes. I tremble to think what she would say if
she knew Cousin Jimmy gave me a whole dollar on the sly last week.
“I wish he had not given me so much. It worrys me. It is an awful
responsibility. It will be so diffikult to spend it wisely also
without Aunt Elizabeth finding out about it. I hope I shall never
have a million dollars. I am sure it would crush me utterly. I keep
my dollar hid on the shelf with my letters and I put it in an old
envelope and wrote on it Cousin Jimmy Murray gave me this so that if I
died suddenly and Aunt Elizabeth found it she would know I came by it
honestly.
“Now that the days are getting cool Aunt Elizabeth makes me wear my
thick flannel petticoat. 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 to-day. 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.
Sweet little flower thy modest face
Is ever lifted tords the sky
And a reflexshun of its face
Is caught within thine own blue eye.
The meadow queens are tall and fair
The columbines are lovely too
But the poor talent I possess
Shall laurel thee my flower of blue.
“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 To-day Road, the Yesterday Road and the To-morrow Road. The To-day
Road is by the brook and we call it that because it is lovely now. The
Yesterday Road is out in the stumps where Lofty John cut some trees
down and we call it that because it used to be lovely. The To-morrow
Road is just a tiny path in the maple clearing and we call it that
because it is going to be lovely some day, when the maples grow bigger.
But oh Father dear I haven’t forgotten the dear old trees down home.
I always think of them after I go to bed. But I am happy here. It
isn’t wrong to be happy, is it Father. Aunt Elizabeth says I got over
being homesick very quick but I am often homesick _inside_. I have got
akwanted with Lofty John. Ilse is a great friend of his and often goes
there to watch him working in his carpenter shop. He says he has made
enough ladders to get to heaven without the priest but that is just his
joke. He is really a very devowt Catholic and goes to the chapel at
White Cross every Sunday. I go with Ilse though perhaps I ought not to
when he is an enemy of my family. He is of stately baring and refined
manners--very sivil to me but I don’t always like him. When I ask him
a serius question he always winks over my head when he ansers. That
is insulting. Of course I never ask any questions on relijus subjects
but Ilse does. She likes him but she says he would burn us all at the
stake if he had the power. She asked him right out if he wouldn’t
and he winked at me and said Oh, we wouldn’t burn nice pretty little
Protestants like you. We would only burn the old ugly ones. That was a
frivellus reply. Mrs. Lofty John is a nice woman and not at all proud.
She looks just like a little rosy rinkled apple.
“On rainy days we play at Ilse’s. We can slide down the bannisters and
do what we like. Nobody cares only when the doctor is home we have to
be quiet because he cant bear any noise in the house except what he
makes himself. The roof is flat and we can get out on it through a door
in the garret ceiling. 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. Sometimes I do them just to find out what I feel like
doing them. And sometimes I do them because I want to have some exiting
things to tell my grandchildren. Is it impropper to talk about haveing
grandchildren. I have discovered that it is impropper to talk about
haveing children. One evening when people were here Aunt Laura said to
me quite kindly What are you thinking so ernestly about, Emily, and I
said I am picking names for my children. I mean to have ten. And after
the company had gone Aunt Elizabeth said to Aunt Laura _icilly_ I think
it will be better in the future Laura if you do _not_ ask that child
what she is thinking of. If Aunt Laura doesnt I shall be sorry because
when I have an intresting thought I like to tell it.
“School begins again next week. Ilse is going to ask Miss Brownell if
I can sit with her. I intend to act as if Rhoda was not there at all.
Teddy is going too. Dr. Burnley says he is well enough to go though his
mother doesnt like the idea. Teddy says she never likes to have him go
to school but she is glad that he hates Miss Brownell. Aunt Laura says
the right way to end a letter to a dear friend is yours affeckshunately.
“So I am yours very affeckshunately.
“_Emily Byrd Starr._
“P. S. Because _you_ are my _very dearest friend still_, Father. Ilse
says she loves me best of anything in the world and her red leather
boots that Mrs. Simms gave her next.”
CHAPTER XIII
A DAUGHTER OF EVE
New Moon was noted for its apples and on that first autumn of Emily’s
life there both the “old” and the “new” orchards bore a bumper crop.
In the new were the titled and pedigreed apples; and in the old the
seedlings, unknown to catalogues, that yet had a flavour wildly sweet
and all their own. There was no taboo on any apple and Emily was free
to eat all she wanted of each and every kind,--the only prohibition
being that she must not take any to bed with her. Aunt Elizabeth, very
properly, did not want her bed messed up with apple seeds; and Aunt
Laura had a horror of any one eating apples in the dark lest they might
eat an apple worm into the bargain. Emily, therefore, should have been
able fully to satisfy her appetite for apples at home; but there is
a certain odd kink in human nature by reason of which the flavour of
the apples belonging to somebody else is always vastly superior to our
own--as the crafty serpent of Eden very well knew. Emily, like most
people, possessed this kink, and consequently thought that nowhere were
there such delicious apples as those belonging to Lofty John. He was in
the habit of keeping a long row of apples on one of the beams in his
workshop and it was understood that she and Ilse might help themselves
freely whenever they visited that charming, dusty, shaving-carpeted
spot. Three varieties of Lofty John’s apples were their especial
favourites--the “scabby apples,” that looked as if they had leprosy but
were of unsurpassed deliciousness under their queerly blotched skins;
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. To be sure, she had never been forbidden
to go--simply because it had never occurred to her aunts that an inmate
of New Moon could so forget the beloved old family feud between the