Neither could she understand why he made red pencil corrections all over her compositions and rated her for split infinitives and too lavish adjectives and strode up and down the aisle and hurled objurgations at her because she didn’t know “a good place to stop when she saw it, by gad,” and then told Rhoda Stuart and Nan Lee that their compositions were very pretty and gave them back without so much as a mark on them. Yet, in spite of it all, she liked him more and more as time went on and autumn passed and winter came with its beautiful bare-limbed trees, and soft pearl-grey skies that were slashed with rifts of gold in the afternoons, and cleared to a jewelled pageantry of stars over the wide white hills and valleys around New Moon.
Emily shot up so that winter that Aunt Laura had to let down the tucks in her dresses. Aunt Ruth, who had come for a week’s visit, said she was outgrowing her strength—consumptive children always did.
“I am not consumptive,” Emily said. “The Starrs are tall,” she added, with a touch of subtle malice hardly to be looked for in near-thirteen.
Aunt Ruth, who was sensitive in regard to her dumpiness, sniffed.
“It would be well if that were the only thing in which you resemble them,” she said. “How are you getting on in school?”
“Very well. I am the smartest scholar in my class,” answered Emily composedly.
“You conceited child!” said Aunt Ruth.
“I’m not conceited.” Emily looked scornful indignation. “Mr. Carpenter said it and he doesn’t flatter. Besides, I can’t help seeing it myself.”
“Well, it is to be hoped you have some brains, because you haven’t much in the way of looks,” said Aunt Ruth. “You’ve no complexion to speak of—and that inky hair around your white face is startling. I see you’re going to be a plain girl.”
“You wouldn’t say that to a grown-up person’s face,” said Emily with a deliberate gravity which always exasperated Aunt Ruth because she could not understand it in a child. “I don’t think it would hurt you to be as polite to me as you are to other people.”
“I’m telling you your faults so you may correct them,” said Aunt Ruth frigidly.
“It isn’t my fault that my face is pale and my hair black,” protested Emily. “I can’t correct that.”
“If you were a different girl,” said Aunt Ruth, “I would—”
“But I don’t want to be a different girl,” said Emily decidedly. She had no intention of lowering the Starr flag to Aunt Ruth. “I wouldn’t want to be anybody but myself even if I am plain. Besides,” she added impressively as she turned to go out of the room, “though I may not be very good-looking now, when I go to heaven I believe I’ll be very beautiful.”
“Some people think Emily quite pretty,” said Aunt Laura, but she did not say it until Emily was out of hearing. She was Murray enough for that.
“I don’t know where they see it,” said Aunt Ruth. “She’s vain and pert and says things to be thought smart. You heard her just now. But the thing I dislike most in her is that she is unchildlike—and deep as the sea. Yes, she is, Laura—deep as the sea. You’ll find it out to your cost one day if you disregard my warning. She’s capable of anything. Sly is no word for it. You and Elizabeth don’t keep a tight enough rein over her.”
“I’ve done my best,” said Elizabeth stiffly. She herself did think she had been much too lenient with Emily—Laura and Jimmy were two to one—but it nettled her to have Ruth say so.
Uncle Wallace also had an attack of worrying over Emily that winter.
He looked at her one day when he was at New Moon and remarked that she was getting to be a big girl.
“How old are you, Emily?” He asked her that every time he came to New Moon.
“Thirteen in May.”
“H’m. What are you going to do with her, Elizabeth?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Aunt Elizabeth coldly—or as coldly as is possible to speak when one is pouring melted tallow into candle-moulds.
“Why, she’ll soon be grown up. She can’t expect you to provide for her indefinitely”—
“I don’t,” Emily whispered resentfully under her breath.
“—and it’s time we decided what is best to be done for her.”
“The Murray women have never had to work out for a living,” said Aunt Elizabeth, as if that disposed of the matter.
“Emily is only half Murray,” said Wallace. “Besides, times are changing. You and Laura will not live forever, Elizabeth, and when you are gone New Moon goes to Oliver’s Andrew. In my opinion Emily should be fitted to support herself if necessary.”
Emily did not like Uncle Wallace but she was very grateful to him at that moment. Whatever his motives were he was proposing the very thing she secretly yearned for.
“I would suggest,” said Uncle Wallace, “that she be sent to Queen’s Academy to get a teacher’s license. Teaching is a genteel, ladylike occupation. I will do my share in providing for the expense of it.”
A blind person might have seen that Uncle Wallace thought this very splendid of himself.
“If you do,” thought Emily, “I’ll pay every cent back to you as soon as I’m able to earn it.”
But Aunt Elizabeth was adamant.
“I do not believe in girls going out into the world,” she said. “I don’t mean Emily to go to Queen’s. I told Mr. Carpenter so when he came to see me about her taking up the Entrance work. He was very rude—schoolteachers knew their place better in my father’s time. But I made him understand, I think. I’m rather surprised at you, Wallace. You did not send your own daughter out to work.”
“My daughter had parents to provide for her,” retorted Uncle Wallace pompously. “Emily is an
