Emily of New Moon
the moment that Perry had rescued her from the bull. She tossed her own
head and started homeward. Perry turned too.
“May as well go up and see Jimmy Murray about hiring ’fore 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 gotter 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 chore 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 confushun 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 chore boy and that we ode 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 all-though he is nearly twelve. Miss Brownell
said something sarkastik 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 sarkastik 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
educashun since he has made up his mind to it. He is very determined.
“Aunt Elizabeth is determined too. But she says Perry is stubborn. I am
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 manshun 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 crood. Aunt Laura
says they are crood. I don’t know what it means but I guess it means
he always says what he thinks right out and eats beans with his knife.
I like Perry but in a different way from Teddy. Isn’t it funny, dear
Father, how many kinds of ways of liking there are? I don’t think Ilse
likes him. She makes fun of his ignerance and turns up her nose at him
because his close are patched though her own close are queer enough.
Teddy doesnt like him much and he drew such a funny picture of Perry
hanging by his heels from a gallos. The face looked like Perrys and
still it didn’t. Cousin Jimmy said it was a carrycachure and laughed
at it but I dared not show it to Perry for fear he would punch Teddys
head. I showed it to Ilse and she got mad and tore it in two. I cant
imagine why.
“Perry says he can recite as well as Ilse and could draw pictures too
if he put his mind to it. I can see he doesnt like to think anybody can
do anything he cant. But he cant see the wallpaper in the air like I
can though he tries until I fear he will strane his eyes. He can make
better speeches than any of us. He says he used to mean to be a sailer
like his father but now he thinks he will be a lawyer when he grows
up and go to parlament. Teddy is going to be an artist if his mother
will let him, and Ilse is going to be a concert reciter--there is
another name but I don’t know how it is spelled--and I am going to be a
poetess. I think we are a tallented crowd. Perhaps that is a vane 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.) Aunt 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 Aunt Elizabeth said I was to be punished and
I was not let go to Jennie Strangs party in the afternoon. (It was a
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 feerce, 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
Aunt Elizabeth and told her it was all his fault that I laughed. Aunt
Elizabeth said I should not have laughed anyhow, but Aunt Laura was
_greevously_ upset and said my punishment had been far too severe; and
she said that she would let me ware 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 wikked pride and I was punished. At recess Cora Lee, one of
the big girls in the sixth class came and asked me to let her ware the
ring for a while. I didnt want to but she said if I didnt she would get
all the girls in my class to send me to coventry (which is a dreadful
thing, dear Father, and 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 Aunt
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 figgered it out
on my slate I knew I would have to wash dishes for twenty years to do
it. I wepped in my despare. Perry saw me and after school he marched up
to Cora Lee and said You fork over that ring or I’ll tell Miss Brownell
about it. And Cora 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,
Dont you play any more jokes on Emily or I’ll joke you. It is very
comforting to have such a champeen! I tremble 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 crewel of Cora Lee to tell me she had lost it when
she had not and harrow up my mind so. I could not be so crewel to an
orfan girl.
“When I got home I looked in the glass to see if my hair had turned
white. I am told that sometimes hapens. But it hadnt.
“Perry knows more geograffy than any of us because he has been nearly
everywhere in the world with his father. He tells me such fassinating
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 Frances Willard. We didn’t begin it as a fight but just as an
argewment but it ended that way. _I_ would rather be Frances Willard
because she is alive.
“We had the first snow yesterday. I made a poem on it. This is it.
Along the snow the sunbeams glide
Earth is a peerless, gleaming bride,
Dripping with dimonds, clad in traling 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 isnt that as good as yours. I didnt 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 barn field and they looked so pretty, but not so
pretty as the mice tracks in some flour Cousin Jimmy spilled on the
granary floor. They are the dearest little things. They _look_ like
poetry.
“I am sorry winter has come because Ilse and I cant play in our house
in Lofty Johns 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 dont go only
when Teddy coaxes very hard. And the pigs have been killed, poor
things, so Cousin Jimmy doesnt boil for them any more. But there is
one consolashun I do not have to ware a sunbonnet to school now. Aunt
Laura made me such a pretty red hood with ribbons on it at which Aunt
Elizabeth looked skornfully saying it was extravagant. I like school
here better every day but I cant like Miss Brownell. She isnt fair.
She told us she would give the one who wrote the best composishun a
pink ribbon to wear from Friday night to Monday. I wrote The Brooks
Story about the brook in Lofty John’s bush--all its advenshures and
thoughts--and Miss Brownell said I must have copyed it and Rhoda Stuart
got the ribbon. Aunt Elizabeth said You waste enough time writing trash
I think you might have won that ribbon. She was mortifyed (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 whines 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 her
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 at recess but she
never said anything to Rhoda for saying such a ridiklus 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 hadnt 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 helped Cousin Jimmy pick a 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 am reading The Alhambra. It belongs to our book case. Aunt Elizabeth
does not like to say it isnt fit for me to read because it was one of
her fathers books, but I dont believe she aproves because she knits
very furiusly and looks black at me over her glasses. Teddy lent me
Hans Andersons stories. I love them--only I always think of a different
end for the Ice Maiden and save Rudy.
“They say Mrs. John Killegrew has swallowed her wedding-ring. I wonder
what she did that for.
“Cousin Jimmy says there is to be an eklips of the sun in December. I
hope it wont interfear with Chrismas.
“My hands are chapped. Aunt Laura rubs mutton tallow on them every
night when I go to bed. It is hard to write poetry with chapped hands.
I wonder if Mrs. Hemans ever had chapped hands. It does not mention