Emily of New Moon
“Oh!” said Emily again. “Excuse me-- How do you do!” she added, with a
vague grasp after her manners.
“Polite--and not too proud,” said Aunt Tom, peering curiously at her.
“I’ve been up to the big house with a pair of socks for the b’y but
’twas yourself I wanted to see.”
“Me?” said Emily blankly.
“Yis. The b’y has been talking a bit of you and a plan kem into my
head. Thinks I to myself it’s no bad notion. But I’ll make sure before
I waste my bit o’ money. Emily Byrd Starr is your name and Murray is
your nature. If I give the b’y an eddication will ye marry him when ye
grow up?”
“Me!” said Emily again. It seemed to be all she could say. Was she
dreaming? She _must_ be.
“Yis--you. You’re half Murray and it’ll be a great step up f’r the b’y.
He’s smart and he’ll be a rich man some day and boss the country. But
divil a cent will I spend on him unless you promise.”
“Aunt Elizabeth wouldn’t let me,” cried Emily, too frightened of this
odd old body to refuse on her own account.
“If you’ve got any Murray in you you’ll do your own choosing,” said
Aunt Tom, thrusting her face so close to Emily’s that her bushy
eyebrows tickled Emily’s nose. “Say you’ll marry the b’y and to college
he goes.”
Emily seemed to be rendered speechless. She could think of nothing to
say--oh, if she could _only_ wake up! She could not even run.
“Say it!” insisted Aunt Tom, thumping her stick sharply on a stone in
the path.
Emily was so horrified that she might have said something--anything--to
escape. But at this moment Perry bounded out of the spruce copse, his
face white with rage, and seized his Aunt Tom most disrespectfully by
the shoulder.
“You go home!” he said furiously.
“Now, b’y dear,” quavered Aunt Tom deprecatingly. “I was only trying to
do you a good turn. I was asking her to marry ye after a bit an--”
“I’ll do my own asking!” Perry was angrier than ever. “You’ve likely
spoiled everything. Go home--go home, I say!”
Aunt Tom hobbled off muttering, “Then I’ll know better than to waste me
bit o’ money. No Murray, no money, me b’y.”
When she had disappeared down the brook path Perry turned to Emily.
From white he had gone very red.
“Don’t mind her--she’s cracked,” he said. “Of course, when I grow up I
mean to ask you to marry me but--”
“I couldn’t--Aunt Elizabeth--”
“Oh, she will then. I’m going to be premier of Canada some day.”
“But I wouldn’t want--I’m sure I wouldn’t--”
“You will when you grow up. Ilse is better looking of course, and I
don’t know why I like you best but I do.”
“Don’t you ever talk to me like this again!” commanded Emily, beginning
to recover her dignity.
“Oh, I won’t--not till we grow up. I’m as ashamed of it as you are,”
said Perry with a sheepish grin. “Only I had to say something after
Aunt Tom butted in like that. I ain’t to blame for it so don’t you hold
it against me. But just you remember that I’m going to ask you some
day. And I believe Teddy Kent is too.”
Emily was walking haughtily away but she turned at this to say coolly
over her shoulder,
“If he does I’ll marry him.”
“If you do I’ll knock his head off,” shouted Perry in a prompt rage.
But Emily walked steadily on home and went to the garret to think
things over.
“It has been romantic but not comfortable,” was her conclusion. And
that particular poem on spring was never finished.
CHAPTER XXII
WYTHER GRANGE
No reply or acknowledgement came from Great-Aunt Nancy Priest regarding
Emily’s picture. Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Laura, knowing Great-Aunt
Nancy’s ways tolerably well, were not surprised at this, but Emily
felt rather worried over it. Perhaps Great-Aunt Nancy did not approve
of what she had done; or perhaps she still thought her too stupid to
bother with.
Emily did not like to lie under the imputation of stupidity. She wrote
a scathing epistle to Great-Aunt Nancy on a letter-bill in which she
did not mince her opinions as to that ancient lady’s knowledge of the
rules of epistolary etiquette; the letter was folded up and stowed away
on the little shelf under the sofa but it served its purpose in blowing
off steam and Emily had ceased to think about the matter when a letter
came from Great-Aunt Nancy in July.
Elizabeth and Laura talked the matter over in the cook-house, forgetful
or ignorant of the fact that Emily was sitting on the kitchen doorstep
just outside. Emily was imagining herself attending a drawing-room of
Queen Victoria. Robed in white, with ostrich plumes, veil, and court
train, she had just bent to kiss the Queen’s hand when Aunt Elizabeth’s
voice shattered her dream as a pebble thrown into a pool scatters the
fairy reflection.
“What is your opinion, Laura,” Aunt Elizabeth was saying, “of letting
Emily visit Aunt Nancy?”
Emily pricked up her ears. What was in the wind now?
“From her letter she seems very anxious to have the child,” said Laura.
Elizabeth sniffed.
“A whim--a whim. You know what her whims are. Likely by the time Emily
got there she’d be quite over it and have no use for her.”
“Yes, but on the other hand if we don’t let her go she will be
dreadfully offended and never forgive us--or Emily. Emily should have
her chance.”
“I don’t know that her chance is worth much. If Aunt Nancy really has
any money beyond her annuity--and that’s what neither you nor I nor any
living soul knows, unless it’s Caroline--she’ll likely leave it all to
some of the Priests--Leslie Priest’s a favourite of hers, I understand.
Aunt Nancy always liked her husband’s family better than her own, even
though she’s always slurring at them. Still--she _might_ take a fancy
to Emily--they’re both so odd they might suit each other--but you know
the way she talks--she and that abominable old Caroline.”
“Emily is too young to understand,” said Aunt Laura.
“I understand more than you think,” cried Emily indignantly.
Aunt Elizabeth jerked open the cook-house door.
“Emily Starr, haven’t you learned by this time not to listen?”
“I wasn’t listening. I thought you knew I was sitting here--I can’t
help my ears _hearing_. Why didn’t you _whisper_? When you whisper I
know you’re talking secrets and I don’t try to hear them. Am I going to
Great-Aunt Nancy’s for a visit?”
“We haven’t decided,” said Aunt Elizabeth coldly, and that was all the
satisfaction Emily got for a week. She hardly knew herself whether she
wanted to go or not. Aunt Elizabeth had begun making cheese--New Moon
was noted for its cheeses--and Emily found the whole process absorbing,
from the time the rennet was put in the warm new milk till the white
curds were packed away in the hoop and put under the press in the old
orchard, with the big, round, grey “cheese” stone to weight it down as
it had weighed down New Moon cheeses for a hundred years. And then she
and Ilse and Teddy and Perry were absorbed heart and soul in “playing
out” the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” in Lofty John’s bush and it was
very fascinating. When they entered Lofty John’s bush they went out of
the realm of daylight and things known into the realm of twilight and
mystery and enchantment. Teddy had painted wonderful scenery on old
boards and pieces of sails, which Perry had got at the Harbor. Ilse
had fashioned delightful fairy wings from tissue paper and tinsel, and
Perry had made an ass’s head for _Bottom_ out of an old calf-skin that
was very realistic. Emily had toiled happily for many weeks copying
out the different parts and adapting them to circumstances. She had
“cut” the play after a fashion that would have harrowed Shakespeare’s
soul but after all the result was quite pretty and coherent. It did not
worry them that four small actors had to take six times as many parts.
Emily was _Titania_ and _Hermia_ and a job lot of fairies besides, Ilse
was _Hippolyta_ and _Helena_, plus some more fairies, and the boys were
anything that the dialogue required. Aunt Elizabeth knew nothing of it
all; she would promptly have put a stop to the whole thing, for she
thought play-acting exceedingly wicked; but Aunt Laura was privy to the
plot, and Cousin Jimmy and Lofty John had already attended a moonlight
rehearsal.
To go away and leave all this, even for a time, would be a hard wrench,
but on the other hand Emily had a burning curiosity to see Great-Aunt
Nancy and Wyther Grange, her quaint, old house at Priest Pond with
the famous stone dogs on the gateposts. On the whole, she thought she
would like to go; and when she saw Aunt Laura doing up her starched
white petticoats and Aunt Elizabeth grimly dusting off a small, black,
nail-studded trunk in the garret she knew, before she was told, that
the visit to Priest Pond was going to come off; so she took out the
letter she had written to Aunt Nancy and added an apologetic postscript.
Ilse chose to be disgruntled because Emily was going for a visit. In
reality Ilse felt appalled at the lonely prospect of a month or more
without her inseparable chum. No more jolly evenings of play-acting in
Lofty John’s bush, no more pungent quarrels. Besides, Ilse herself had
never been anywhere for a visit in her whole life and she felt sore
over this fact.
“_I_ wouldn’t go to Wyther Grange for anything,” said Ilse. “It’s
haunted.”
“’Tisn’t.”
“Yes! It’s haunted by a ghost you can _feel_ and _hear_ but never
_see_. Oh, I wouldn’t be _you_ for the world! Your Great-Aunt Nancy is
an _awful crank_ and the old woman who lives with her is a _witch_.
She’ll put a spell on you. You’ll pine away and die.”
“I won’t--she isn’t!”
“_Is!_ Why, she makes the stone dogs on the gateposts howl every night
if any one comes near the place. They go, ‘_Wo-or-oo-oo_.’”
Ilse was not a born elocutionist for nothing. Her “wo-or-oo-oo” was
extremely gruesome. But it was daylight, and Emily was as brave as a
lion in daylight.
“You’re jealous,” she said, and walked off.
“I’m not, you blithering centipede,” Ilse yelled after her. “Putting
on airs because your aunt has stone dogs on her gateposts! Why, I know
a woman in Shrewsbury who has dogs on her posts that are ten times
stonier than your aunt’s!”
But next morning Ilse was over to bid Emily good-bye and entreat her
to write every week. Emily was going to drive to Priest Pond with Old
Kelly. Aunt Elizabeth was to have driven her but Aunt Elizabeth was not
feeling well that day and Aunt Laura could not leave her. Cousin Jimmy
had to work at the hay. It looked as if she could not go, and this was
rather serious, for Aunt Nancy had been told to expect her that day
and Aunt Nancy did not like to be disappointed. If Emily did not turn
up at Priest Pond on the day set Great-Aunt Nancy was quite capable of
shutting the door in her face when she did appear and telling her to go
back home. Nothing less than this conviction would have induced Aunt
Elizabeth to fall in with Old Kelly’s suggestion that Emily should ride
to Priest Pond with him. His home was on the other side of it and he
was going straight there.
Emily was quite delighted. She liked Old Kelly and thought that a drive
on his fine red wagon would be quite an adventure. Her little black
box was hoisted to the roof and tied there and they went clinking and
glittering down the New Moon lane in fine style. The tins in the bowels
of the wagon behind them rumbled like a young earthquake.
“Get up, my nag, get up,” said Old Kelly. “Sure, an’ I always like to
drive the pretty gurrls. An’ when is the wedding to be?”
“Whose wedding?”
“The slyness av her! Your own, av coorse.”
“I have no intention of being married--immediately,” said Emily, in a
very good imitation of Aunt Elizabeth’s tone and manner.
“Sure, and ye’re a chip av the ould block. Miss Elizabeth herself
couldn’t have said it better. Get up, my nag, get up.”
“I only meant,” said Emily, fearing that she had insulted Old Kelly,