“Well, do you think me handsome?” he said, sitting down on another stone and smiling at her. His voice was beautiful—musical and caressing.
Emily blushed. She knew staring was not etiquette, and she did not think him at all handsome, so she was very thankful that he did not press his question, but asked another.
“Do you know who your knightly rescuer is?”
“I think you must be Jar—Mr. Dean Priest.” Emily flushed again with vexation. She had come so near to making another terrible hole in her manners.
“Yes, Jarback Priest. You needn’t mind the nickname.I’ve heard it often enough. It’s a Priest idea of humour.” He laughed rather unpleasantly. “The reason for it is obvious enough, isn’t it? I never got anything else at school. How came you to slide over that cliff?”
“I wanted this,” said Emily, waving her farewell-summer.
“And you have it! Do you always get what you go after, even with death slipping a thin wedge between? I think you’re born lucky. I see the signs. If that big aster lured you into danger it saved you as well, for it was through stepping over to investigate it that I saw you. Its size and colour caught my eye. Otherwise I should have gone on and you—what would have become of you? Whom do you belong to that you are let risk your life on these dangerous banks? What is your name—if you have a name! I begin to doubt you—I see you have pointed ears. Have I been tricked into meddling with fairies, and will I discover presently that twenty years have passed and that I am an old man long since lost to the living world with nothing but the skeleton of my dog for company?”
“I am Emily Byrd Starr of New Moon,” said Emily, rather coldly. She was beginning to be sensitive about her ears. Father Cassidy had remarked on them—and now Jarback Priest. Was there really something uncanny about them?
And yet there was a flavour about the said Jarback that she liked—liked decidedly. Emily never was long in doubt about anyone she met. In a few minutes she always knew whether she liked, disliked, or was indifferent to them. She had a queer feeling that she had known Jarback Priest for years—perhaps because it had seemed so long when she was lying on that crumbling earth waiting for him to return. He was not handsome but she liked that lean, clever face of his with its magnetic green eyes.
“So you’re the young lady visitor at the Grange!” said Dean Priest, in some astonishment. “Then my dear Aunt Nancy should look after you better—my very dear Aunt Nancy.”
“You don’t like Aunt Nancy, I see,” said Emily coolly.
“What is the use of liking a lady who won’t like me?You have probably discovered by this time that my Lady Aunt detests me.”
“Oh, I don’t think it’s as bad as that,” said Emily. “She must have some good opinions about you—she says you’re the only Priest who will ever go to heaven.”
“She doesn’t mean that as a compliment, whatever you in your innocence believe it to be. And you are Douglas Starr’s daughter? I knew your father. We were boys together at Queen’s Academy—we drifted apart after we left it—he went into journalism, I to McGill. But he was the only friend I had at school—the only boy who would bother himself about Jarback Priest, who was lame and hunchbacked and couldn’t play football or hockey. Emily Byrd Starr—Starr should be your first name. You look like a star—you have a radiant sort of personality shining through you—your proper habitat should be the evening sky just after sunset—or the morning sky just before sunrise. Yes. You’d be more at home in the morning sky. I think I shall call you Star.”
“Do you mean that you think me pretty?” asked Emily directly.
“Why, it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder whether you were pretty or not. Do you think a star should be pretty?”
Emily reflected.
“No,” she said finally, “the word doesn’t suit a star.”
“I perceive you are an artist in words. Of course it doesn’t. Stars are prismatic—palpitating—elusive. It is not often we find one made flesh and blood. I think I’ll wait for you.”
“Oh, I’m ready to go now,” said Emily, standing up.
“H’m. That wasn’t what I meant. Never mind. Come along, Star—if you don’t mind walking a bit slowly. I’ll take you back from the wilderness at least—I don’t know that I’ll venture to Wyther Grange tonight. I don’t want Aunt Nancy to take the edge off you. And so you don’t think me handsome?”
“I didn’t say so,” cried Emily.
“Not in words. But I can read your thoughts, Star—it won’t ever do to think anything you don’t want me to know. The gods gave me that gift—when they kept back everything else I wanted. You don’t think me handsome but you think me nice. Do you think you are pretty yourself?”
“A little—since Aunt Nancy lets me wear my bang,” said Emily frankly.
Jarback Priest made a grimace.
“Don’t call it by such a name. It’s a worse name even than bustle. Bangs and bustles—they hurt me. I like that black wave breaking on your white brows—but don’t call it a bang—ever again.”
“It is a very ugly word. I never use it in my poetry, of course.”
Whereby Dean Priest discovered that Emily wrote poetry. He also discovered pretty nearly everything else about her in that charming walk back to Priest Pond in the fir-scented dusk, with Tweed walking between them, his nose touching his master’s hand softly every now and then, while the robins in the trees above them whistled blithely in the afterlight.
With nine out of ten people Emily was secretive and reserved, but Dean Priest was sealed of her tribe
