Emily decided that this was a good opportunity to find out something that had puzzled her.
“Old Mr. Kelly said I had come-hither eyes, Aunt Nancy. Have I? And what are come-hither eyes?”
“Jock Kelly’s an old ass. You haven’t come-hither eyes—it wouldn’t be a Murray tradish.” Aunt Nancy laughed. “The Murrays have keep-your-distance eyes—and so have you—though your lashes contradict them a bit. But sometimes eyes like that—combined with certain other points—are quite as effective as come-hither eyes. Men go by contraries oftener than not—if you tell them to keep off they’ll come on. My own Nathaniel now—the only way to get him to do anything was to coax him to do the opposite. Remember, Caroline? Have another cooky, Emily?”
“I haven’t had one yet,” said Emily, rather resentfully.
Those cookies looked very tempting and she had been wishing they might be passed. She didn’t know why Aunt Nancy and Caroline both laughed. Caroline’s laugh was unpleasant—a dry, rusty sort of laugh—“no juice in it,” Emily decided. She thought she would write in her description that Caroline had a “thin, rattling laugh.”
“What do you think of us?” demanded Aunt Nancy. “Come now, what do you think of us?”
Emily was dreadfully embarrassed. She had just been thinking of writing that Aunt Nancy looked “withered and shrivelled;” but one couldn’t say that—one couldn’t.
“Tell the truth and shame the devil,” said Aunt Nancy.
“That isn’t a fair question,” cried Emily.
“You think,” said Aunt Nancy, grinning, “that I’m a hideous old hag and that Caroline isn’t quite human. She isn’t. She never was—but you should have seen me seventy years ago. I was handsomest of all the handsome Murrays. The men were mad about me. When I married Nat Priest his three brothers could have cut his throat. One cut his own. Oh, I played havoc in my time. All I regret is I can’t live it over. ’Twas a grand life while it lasted. I queened it over them. The women hated me, of course—all but Caroline here. You worshipped me, didn’t you, Caroline? And you worship me yet, don’t you, Caroline? Caroline, I wish you didn’t have a wart on your nose.”
“I wish you had one on your tongue,” said Caroline waspishly.
Emily was beginning to feel tired and bewildered. It was interesting—and Aunt Nancy was kind enough in her queer way; but at home Ilse and Perry and Teddy would be foregathering in Lofty John’s bush for their evening revel, and Saucy Sal would be sitting on the dairy steps, waiting for Cousin Jimmy to give her the froth. Emily suddenly realized that she was as homesick for New Moon as she had been for Maywood her first night at New Moon.
“The child’s tired,” said Aunt Nancy. “Take her to bed, Caroline. Put her in the Pink Room.”
Emily followed Caroline through the back hall, through the kitchen, through the front hall, up the stairs, down a long hall, through a long side hall. Where on earth was she being taken? Finally they reached a large room. Caroline set down the lamp, and asked Emily if she had a nightgown.
“Of course I have. Do you suppose Aunt Elizabeth would have let me come without one?”
Emily was quite indignant.
“Nancy says you can sleep as long as you like in the morning,” said Caroline. “Good night. Nancy and I sleep in the old wing, of course, and the rest of us sleep well in our graves.”
With this cryptic remark Caroline trotted out and shut the door.
Emily sat down on an embroidered ottoman and looked about her. The window curtains were of faded pink brocade and the walls were hung with pink paper decorated with diamonds of rose chains. It made a very pretty fairy paper, as Emily found by cocking her eyes at it. There was a green carpet on the floor, so lavishly splashed with big pink roses that Emily was almost afraid to walk on it. She decided that the room was a very splendid one.
“But I have to sleep here alone, so I must say my prayers very carefully,” she reflected.
She undressed rather hastily, blew out the light and got into bed. She covered herself up to her chin and lay there, staring at the high, white ceiling. She had grown so used to Aunt Elizabeth’s curtained bed that she felt curiously unsheltered in this low, modern one. But at least the window was wide open—evidently Aunt Nancy did not share Aunt Elizabeth’s horror of night air. Through it Emily could see summer fields lying in the magic of a rising yellow moon. But the room was big and ghostly. She felt horribly far away from everybody. She was lonesome—homesick. She thought of Old Kelly and his toad ointment. Perhaps he did boil the toads alive after all. This hideous thought tormented her. It was awful to think of toads—or anything—being boiled alive. She had never slept alone before. Suddenly she was frightened. How the window rattled. It sounded terribly as if somebody—or something—were trying to get in. She thought of Ilse’s ghost—a ghost you couldn’t see but could hear and feel was something especially spooky in the way of ghosts—she thought of the stone dogs that went “Wo—or—oo—oo” at midnight. A dog did begin to howl somewhere. Emily felt a cold perspiration on her brow. What had Caroline meant about the rest of them sleeping well in their graves? The floor creaked. Wasn’t there somebody—or something—tiptoeing round outside the door? Didn’t something move in the corner? There were mysterious sounds in the long hall.
“I won’t be scared,” said Emily. “I won’t think of those things, and tomorrow I’ll write down all about how I feel now.”
And then—she did hear something—right behind the wall at the head of her bed. There was no mistake about it. It was not imagination. She heard distinctly strange uncanny rustles—as if stiff silk dresses were rubbing against each other—as if fluttering wings fanned the air—and there were soft, low, muffled sounds like tiny children’s
