“Get into bed,” said Aunt Elizabeth, turning down the clothes.
Emily glanced at the shrouded window.
“Aren’t you going to open the window, Aunt Elizabeth?”
Aunt Elizabeth looked at Emily as if the latter had suggested removing the roof.
“Open the window—and let in the night air!” she exclaimed. “Certainly not!”
“Father and I always had our window open,” cried Emily.
“No wonder he died of consumption,” said Aunt Elizabeth. “Night air is poison.”
“What air is there at night but night air?” asked Emily.
“Emily,” said Aunt Elizabeth icily, “get—into—bed.”
Emily got in.
But it was utterly impossible to sleep, lying there in that engulfing bed that seemed to swallow her up, with that cloud of blackness above her and not a gleam of light anywhere—and Aunt Elizabeth lying beside her, long and stiff and bony.
“I feel as if I was in bed with a griffin,” thought Emily. “Oh—oh—oh—I’m going to cry—I know I am.”
Desperately and vainly she strove to keep the tears back—they would come. She felt utterly alone and lonely—there in that darkness, with an alien, hostile world all around her—for it seemed hostile now. And there was such a strange, mysterious, mournful sound in the air—far away, yet clear. It was the murmur of the sea, but Emily did not know that and it frightened her. Oh, for her little bed at home—oh, for Father’s soft breathing in the room—oh, for the dancing friendliness of well-known stars shining down through her open window! She must go back—she couldn’t stay here—she would never be happy here! But there wasn’t any “back” to go to—no home—no father—. A great sob burst from her—another followed and then another. It was no use to clench her hands and set her teeth—and chew the inside of her cheeks—nature conquered pride and determination and had her way.
“What are you crying for?” asked Aunt Elizabeth.
To tell the truth Aunt Elizabeth felt quite as uncomfortable and disjointed as Emily did. She was not used to a bedfellow; she didn’t want to sleep with Emily any more than Emily wanted to sleep with her. But she considered it quite impossible that the child should be put off by herself in one of the big, lonely New Moon rooms; and Laura was a poor sleeper, easily disturbed; children always kicked, Elizabeth Murray had heard. So there was nothing to do but take Emily in with her; and when she had sacrificed comfort and inclination to do her unwelcome duty this ungrateful and unsatisfactory child was not contented.
“I asked you what you were crying for, Emily?” she repeated.
“I’m—homesick, I guess,” sobbed Emily.
Aunt Elizabeth was annoyed.
“A nice home you had to be homesick for,” she said sharply.
“It—it wasn’t as elegant—as New Moon,” sobbed Emily, “but—Father was there. I guess I’m Father-sick, Aunt Elizabeth. Didn’t you feel awfully lonely when your father died?”
Elizabeth Murray involuntarily remembered the ashamed, smothered feeling of relief when old Archibald Murray had died—the handsome, intolerant, autocratic old man who had ruled his family with a rod of iron all his life and had made existence at New Moon miserable with the petulant tyranny of the five years of invalidism that had closed his career. The surviving Murrays had behaved impeccably, and wept decorously, and printed a long and flattering obituary. But had one genuine feeling of regret followed Archibald Murray to his tomb? Elizabeth did not like the memory and was angry with Emily for evoking it.
“I was resigned to the will of Providence,” she said coldly. “Emily, you must understand right now that you are to be grateful and obedient and show your appreciation of what is being done for you. I won’t have tears and repining. What would you have done if you had no friends to take you in? Answer me that.”
“I suppose I would have starved to death,” admitted Emily—instantly beholding a dramatic vision of herself lying dead, looking exactly like the pictures she had seen in one of Ellen Greene’s missionary magazines depicting the victims of an Indian famine.
“Not exactly—but you would have been sent to some orphanage where you would have been half-starved, probably. You little know what you have escaped. You have come to a good home where you will be cared for and educated properly.”
Emily did not altogether like the sound of being “educated properly.” But she said humbly,
“I know it was very good of you to bring me to New Moon, Aunt Elizabeth. And I won’t bother you long, you know. I’ll soon be grown-up and able to earn my own living. What do you think is the earliest age a person can be called grown-up, Aunt Elizabeth?”
“You needn’t think about that,” said Aunt Elizabeth shortly. “The Murray women have never been under any necessity for earning their own living. All we require of you is to be a good and contented child and to conduct yourself with becoming prudence and modesty.”
This sounded terribly hard.
“I will be,” said Emily, suddenly determining to be heroic, like the girl in the stories she had read. “Perhaps it won’t be so very hard after all, Aunt Elizabeth,”—Emily happened at this point to recall a speech she had heard her father use once, and thought this a good opportunity to work it in—“because, you know, God is good and the devil might be worse.”
Poor Aunt Elizabeth! To have a speech like that fired at her in the darkness of the night from that unwelcome little interloper into her orderly life and peaceful bed! Was it any wonder that for a moment or so she was too paralyzed to reply! Then she exclaimed in tones of horror,
“Emily, never say that again.”
“All right,” said Emily meekly. “But,” she added defiantly under her breath, “I’ll go on thinking it.”
“And now,” said Aunt Elizabeth, “I want to say that I am not in the habit of talking all night if you are. I tell you to
