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.
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 cookhouse, 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 cookhouse 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 calfskin 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 playacting 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
