“After dinner was over the presents were given. That is a Murray tradishun. We never have stockings or trees but a big bran pie is passed all around with the presents buried in it and ribbons hanging out with names on them. It was fun. My relations all gave me useful presents except Aunt Laura. She gave me a bottle of perfume. I love it. I love nice smells. Aunt Elizabeth does not approve of perfumes. She gave me a new apron but I am thankful to say not a baby one. Aunt Ruth gave me a New Testament and said ’Em’ly, I hope you will read a portion of that every day until you have read it through,’ and I said, ‘Why, Aunt Ruth, I’ve read the whole New Testament a dozen times (and so I have) I love Revelations.’ (And I do. When I read the verse ‘and the twelve gates were twelve pearls’ I just saw them and the flash came.) ‘The Bible is not to be read as a story book,’ Aunt Ruth said coldly. Uncle Wallace and Aunt Eva gave me a pair of black mits and Uncle Oliver and Aunt Addie gave me a whole dollar in nice new silver dimes and Cousin Jimmy gave me a hair ribbon. Perry had left a silk bookmark for me. He had to go home to spend Christmas day with his Aunt Tom at Stovepipe Town but I saved a lot of nuts and raisins for him. I gave him and Teddy handkerchiefs (Teddy’s was a little the nicest) and I gave Ilse a hair ribbon. I bought them myself out of my egg money. (I will not have any more egg money for a long time because my hen has stopped laying.) Everybody was happy and once Uncle Wallace smiled right at me. I did not think him so ugly when he smiled.
“After dinner Ilse and I played games in the kitchen and Cousin Jimmy helped us make taffy. We had a big supper but nobody could eat much because they had had such a dinner. Aunt Eva’s head ached and Aunt Ruth said she didn’t see why Elizabeth made the sausages so rich. But the rest were good humored and Aunt Laura kept things pleasant. She is good at making things pleasant. And after it was all over Uncle Wallace said (this is another Murray tradishun) ‘Let us think for a few moments of those who have gone before.’ I liked the way he said it—very solemnly and kind. It was one of the times when I am glad the blood of the Murrays flows in my vains. And I thought of you, darling Father, and Mother and poor little Mike and Great-great-Grandmother Murray, and of my old account book that Aunt Elizabeth burned, because it seemed just like a person to me. And then we all joined hands and sung ‘For Auld Lang Syne’ before they went home. I didn’t feel like a stranger among the Murrays any more. Aunt Laura and I stood out on the porch to watch them go. Aunt Laura put her arm around me and said, ‘Your mother and I used to stand like this long ago, Emily, to watch the Christmas guests go away.’ The snow creaked and the bells rang back through the trees and the frost on the pighouse roof sparkled in the moonlight. And it was all so lovely (the bells and the frost and the big shining white night) that the flash came and that was best of all.”
XXI
Romantic but Not Comfortable
A certain thing happened at New Moon because Teddy Kent paid Ilse Burnley a compliment one day and Emily Starr didn’t altogether like it. Empires have been overturned for the same reason.
Teddy was skating on Blair Water and taking Ilse and Emily out in turns for “slides.” Neither Ilse nor Emily had skates. Nobody was sufficiently interested in Ilse to buy skates for her, and as for Emily, Aunt Elizabeth did not approve of girls skating. New Moon girls had never skated. Aunt Laura had a revolutionary idea that skating would be good exercise for Emily and would, moreover, prevent her from wearing out the soles of her boots sliding. But neither of these arguments was sufficient to convince Aunt Elizabeth, in spite of the thrifty streak that came to her from the Burnleys. The latter, however, caused her to issue an edict that Emily was not to “slide.” Emily took this very hardly. She moped about in a woebegone fashion and she wrote to her father, “I hate Aunt Elizabeth. She is so unjust. She never plays fair.” But one day Dr. Burnley stuck his head in at the door of the New Moon kitchen and said gruffly, “What’s this I hear about you not letting Emily slide, Elizabeth?”
“She wears out the soles of her boots,” said Elizabeth.
“Boots be—” the doctor remembered that ladies were present just in time. “Let the creature slide all she wants to. She ought to be in the open air all the time. She ought”—the doctor stared at Elizabeth ferociously—“she ought to sleep out of doors.”
Elizabeth trembled lest the doctor should go on to insist on this unheard-of proceeding. She knew he had absurd ideas about the proper treatment of consumptives and those who might become such. She was glad to appease him by letting Emily stay out-of-doors in daytime and do what seemed good to her, if only he would say no more about staying out all night too.
“He is much more concerned about Emily than he is about his own child,” she said bitterly to Laura.
“Ilse is too healthy,” said Aunt Laura with a smile. “If she were a delicate child Allan might forgive her for—for being her mother’s daughter.”
“S—s—h,” said Aunt Elizabeth. But she “s—s—s—h’d” too late. Emily, coming into the kitchen, had heard Aunt Laura and puzzled over what she had said
