She sat on a long wooden bench that was satin-smooth with age and scrubbing, and watched Aunt Elizabeth lighting candles here and there, in great, shining, brass candlesticks—on the shelf between the windows, on the high dresser where the row of blue and white plates began to wink her a friendly welcome, on the long table in the corner. And as she lighted them, elvish “rabbits’ candles” flashed up amid the trees outside the windows.
Emily had never seen a kitchen like this before. It had dark wooden walls and low ceiling, with black rafters crossing it, from which hung hams and sides of bacon and bunches of herbs and new socks and mittens, and many other things, the names and uses of which Emily could not imagine. The sanded floor was spotlessly white, but the boards had been scrubbed away through the years until the knots in them stuck up all over in funny little bosses, and in front of the stove they had sagged, making a queer, shallow little hollow. In one corner of the ceiling was a large square hole which looked black and spookish in the candlelight, and made her feel creepy. Something might pop down out of a hole like that if one hadn’t behaved just right, you know. And candles cast such queer wavering shadows. Emily didn’t know whether she liked the New Moon kitchen or not. It was an interesting place—and she rather thought she would like to describe it in the old account book, if it hadn’t been burned—but Emily suddenly found herself trembling on the verge of tears.
“Cold?” said Aunt Laura kindly. “These June evenings are chilly yet. Come into the sitting-room—Jimmy has kindled a fire in the stove there.”
Emily, fighting desperately for self-control, went into the sitting-room. It was much more cheerful than the kitchen. The floor was covered with gay-striped homespun, the table had a bright crimson cloth, the walls were hung with pretty, diamond-patterned paper, the curtains were of wonderful pale-red damask with a design of white ferns scattered all over them. They looked very rich and imposing and Murray-like. Emily had never seen such curtains before. But best of all were the friendly gleams and flickers from the jolly hardwood fire in the open stove that mellowed the ghostly candlelight with something warm and rosy-golden. Emily toasted her toes before it and felt reviving interest in her surroundings. What lovely little leaded glass doors closed the china closets on either side of the high, black, polished mantel! What a funny, delightful shadow the carved ornament on the sideboard cast on the wall behind it—just like a negro’s side-face, Emily decided. What mysteries might lurk behind the chintz-lined glass doors of the bookcase! Books were Emily’s friends wherever she found them. She flew over to the bookcase and opened the door. But before she could see more than the backs of rather ponderous volumes, Aunt Elizabeth came in, with a mug of milk and a plate whereon lay two little oatmeal cakes.
“Emily,” said Aunt Elizabeth sternly, “shut that door. Remember that after this you are not to meddle with things that don’t belong to you.”
“I thought books belonged to everybody,” said Emily.
“Ours don’t,” said Aunt Elizabeth, contriving to convey the impression that New Moon books were in a class by themselves. “Here is your supper, Emily. We are all so tired that we are just having a lunch. Eat it and then we will go to bed.”
Emily drank the milk and worried down the oatcakes, still gazing about her. How pretty the wallpaper was, with the garland of roses inside the gilt diamond! Emily wondered if she could “see it in the air.” She tried—yes, she could—there it hung, a yard from her eyes, a little fairy pattern, suspended in midair like a screen. Emily had discovered that she possessed this odd knack when she was six. By a certain movement of the muscles of her eyes, which she could never describe, she could produce a tiny replica of the wallpaper in the air before her—could hold it there and look at it as long as she liked—could shift it back and forth, to any distance she chose, making it larger or smaller as it went farther away or came nearer. It was one of her secret joys when she went into a new room anywhere to “see the paper in the air.” And this New Moon paper made the prettiest fairy paper she had ever seen.
“What are you staring at nothing in that queer way for?” demanded Aunt Elizabeth, suddenly returning.
Emily shrank into herself. She couldn’t explain to Aunt Elizabeth—Aunt Elizabeth would be like Ellen Greene and say she was “crazy.”
“I—I wasn’t staring at nothing.”
“Don’t contradict. I say you were,” retorted Aunt Elizabeth. “Don’t do it again. It gives your face an unnatural expression. Come now—we will go upstairs. You are to sleep with me.”
Emily gave a gasp of dismay. She had hoped it might be with Aunt Laura. Sleeping with Aunt Elizabeth seemed a very formidable thing. But she dared not protest. They went up to Aunt Elizabeth’s big, sombre bedroom where there was dark, grim wallpaper that could never be transformed into a fairy curtain, a high black bureau, topped with a tiny swing-mirror, so far above her that there could be no Emily-in-the-glass, tightly closed windows with dark-green curtains, a high bedstead with a dark-green canopy, and a huge, fat, smothering featherbed, with high, hard pillows.
Emily stood still, gazing about her.
“Why don’t you get undressed?” asked Aunt Elizabeth.
“I—I don’t like to undress before you,” faltered Emily.
Aunt Elizabeth looked at Emily through her cold, spectacled eyes.
“Take off your clothes, at once,” she said.
Emily obeyed, tingling with anger and shame. It was abominable—taking off her clothes while Aunt Elizabeth stood and watched her. The outrage of it was unspeakable. It was even harder to say her prayers before Aunt Elizabeth. Emily felt that
