Emily of New Moon
about it and then I went to work and made a cake by Aunt Laura’s receet
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
saucers. You would have been proud of me Father. Mrs. Lewis took a
second piece of cake and said I would know Elizabeth Murrays cake if
I found it in central Africa. I said not a word for the honnor of the
family. But I felt very proud. I had saved the Murrays from 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 they will not ache any
more. I am glad for her sake. Before I went to bed I got the cook book
and picked out all the things Id like to make. Queen Pudding, Sea-foam
Sauce, Blackeyed Susans, Pigs In Blankets. They sound just lovely.
“I can see such beautiful fluffy white clouds over Lofty Johns bush.
I wish I could sore up and drop right into them. I cant believe they
would be wet and messy like Teddy says. Teddy cut my initials and his
together on the Monark 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
Elizabeths name on it and put it among my papers. If I die of
consumption Aunt Elizabeth will find it and know the rites of it and
mourn that she was so unjust to me. But I don’t think I will die
because Im getting much fatter and Ilse told me she heard her father
tell Aunt Laura I would be handsome if I had more color. 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 anoyed about something.
“Miss Brownell has had a spite at Perry ever since that evening and
treats him very mean but he is meek and says he wont kick up any fuss
in school because he wants to learn and get ahead. He keeps saying his
rymes are as good as mine and I know they are not and it exassperates
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 exagerate. Teddy and Perry and Ilse and
Jennie never laugh. It is funny that I like Jennie 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 poplar
in school. I do hate Frank Barker. He took my new reader and wrote in a
big sprawly way all over the front page
Steal not this book for fear of shame
For on it is the owners 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 rite way to speak
about God. I tore out the leaf and burned it and Aunt Elizabeth was
angry and even when I explained why her rath was not apeased. Ilse says
she is going to call God Alla after this. I think it is a nicer name
myself. It is so soft and doesn’t sound so stern. But I fear its not
relijus enough.
“MAY 20.
“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 pettycoat 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 brokade in her burow
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 dont 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 dixonary. That was a useful present. I feel I ought to like it.
You will soon notice an improovement in my spelling, I hope. The only
trouble is when I am writing something interesting I get so exited
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 Brownell was right. I did not
know what it really meant. It rymed so well with sheen and I thought it
meant to behold 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 letter-bills to write to you, dear
Father, because I can fold each one up by itself and adress it like a
real letter. Teddy gave me a picture of myself. He painted it in water
colors and called it The Smiling Girl. I look as if I was listening
to something that made me very happy. Ilse 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 pedler for myself. Ilse 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 Ilse to eat some but she said she wouldnt
because it would be mean to help eat a present you had given and I
insisted and then we fought over it and Ilse said I was a caterwawling
quadruped (which was ridiklus) and didn’t know enough to come in when
it rained. And I said I knew enough to have some manners at least. Ilse
got so mad she went home but she cooled off soon and came back for
supper.
“It is raining tonight and it sounds like fairies feet dancing over
the garret roof. If it had not rained Teddy was going to come down and
help me look for the Lost Dimond. Wouldnt 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 happyfying time isnt 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 June 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 window-sill. 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 cant express.
“Aunt Laura is teaching me to sew. She says I must learn to make a hem
on muslin that can’t be seen (tradishun). I hope she will teach me how
to make point lace some day. All the Murrays of New Moon have been
noted for making point lace (I mean all the women Murrays). None of the
girls in school can make point lace. Aunt Laura says she will make me
a point lace hangkerchief when I get married. All the New Moon brides
had point lace hangkerchiefs except my mother who ran away. But you
didnt 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 Mothers
room but she has never been able to find the key yet because Aunt
Elizabeth keeps it hid. Aunt Laura says Aunt Elizabeth loved my mother
very much. You would think she would love her daughter some wouldnt
you. But she doesnt. She is just bringing me up as a duty.
“JUNE 1.
“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 Priest Pond and is very old. She wrote
Aunt Elizabeth and said I might write now and then to a poor old 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 paralized.
“JUNE 7.
“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 feel insulted
because I am not stupid. Perry says he feels like going to Priest Pond
and knocking the daylights out of Great-Aunt Nancy. I told him he must
not talk like that about my family, and anyhow I dont 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 heroin
imured in a convent and I dont know how to get her out because I
am not a Catholic. I suppose it would have been better if I had
a Protestant heroin but there were no Protestants in the days of
shivalry. I might have asked Lofty John last year but this year I cant
because Ive 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 after 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 educashun. And I thought if I ever had
a pig I would call it Uncle Wallace. But now it does not seem to me
propper to call pigs after your uncles even if you dont like them.
“Teddy and Perry and Ilse and I play we are living in the days of
shivalry and Ilse and I are distressed damsels reskued by galant
knites. Teddy made a splendid suit of armor out of old barrel staves
and then Perry made a better one out of old tin boilers hammered flat
with a broken saucepan for a helmit. Sometimes we play at the Tansy
Patch. I have a queer feeling that Teddys mother hates me this summer.
Last summer she just didnt like me. Smoke and Buttercup are not there
now. They disappeared misteriously 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. Burnly. _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 tradishun.
“Today I taught Perry that he must not eat with his knife. He wants
to learn all the _rules of etiket_. And I am helping him learn a
recitation for school examination day. I wanted Ilse to do it but she