Emily had finished mopping up the kitchen floor at New Moon and was absorbed in sanding it in the beautiful and complicated “herring-bone pattern” which was one of the New Moon traditions, having been invented, so it was said, by great-great-grandmother of “Here I stay” fame. Aunt Laura had taught Emily how to do it and Emily was proud of her skill. Even Aunt Elizabeth had condescended to say that Emily sanded the famous pattern very well, and when Aunt Elizabeth praised, further comment was superfluous. New Moon was the only place in Blair Water where the old custom of sanding the floor was kept up; other housewives had long ago begun to use “new-fangled” devices and patent cleaners for making their floors white. But Dame Elizabeth Murray would none of such; as long as she reigned at New Moon so long should candles burn and sanded floors gleam whitely.
Aunt Elizabeth had exasperated Emily somewhat by insisting that the latter should put on Aunt Laura s old “Mother Hubbard” while she was scrubbing the floor. A “Mother Hubbard,” it may be necessary to explain to those of this generation, was a loose and shapeless garment which served principally as a sort of morning gown and was liked in its day because it was cool and easily put on. Aunt Elizabeth, it is quite unnecessary to say, disapproved entirely of Mother Hubbards. She considered them the last word in slovenliness, and Laura was never permitted to have another one. But the old one, though its original pretty lilac tint had faded to a dingy white, was still too “good” to be banished to the rag bag; and it was this which Emily had been told to put on.
Emily detested Mother Hubbards as heartily as Aunt Elizabeth herself did. They were worse she considered, even than the hated “baby aprons” of her first summer at New Moon. She knew she looked ridiculous in Aunt Laura’s Mother Hubbard, which came to her feet, and hung in loose, unbeautiful lines from her thin young shoulders; and Emily had a horror of being “ridiculous.” She had once shocked Aunt Elizabeth by coolly telling her that she would “rather be bad than ridiculous.” Emily had scrubbed and sanded with one eye on the door, ready to run if any stranger loomed up while she had on that hideous wrapper.
It was not, as Emily very well knew, a Murray tradition to “run.” At New Moon you stood your ground, no matter what you had on—the presupposition being that you were always neatly and properly habited for the occupation of the moment. Emily recognised the propriety of this, yet was, nevertheless, foolish and young enough to feel that she would die of shame if seen by any one in Aunt Laura’s Mother Hubbard. It was neat—it was clean—but it was “ridiculous.” There you were!
Just as Emily finished sanding and turned to place her can of sand in the niche under the kitchen mantel, where it had been kept from time immemorial, she heard strange voices in the kitchen yard. A hasty glimpse through the window revealed to her the owners of the voices—Miss Beulah Potter, and Mrs. Ann Cyrilla Potter, calling, no doubt, in regard to the projected Ladies’ Aid Social. They were coming to the back door as was the Blair Water custom when running in to see your neighbours, informally or on business; they were already past the gay platoons of hollyhocks with which Cousin Jimmy had flanked the stone path to the dairy, and of all the people in Blair Water and out of it they were the two whom Emily would least want to see her in any ridiculous plight whatever. Without stopping to think, she darted into the boot closet and shut the door.
Mrs. Ann Cyrilla knocked twice at the kitchen door, but Emily did not budge. She knew Aunt Laura was weaving in the garret—she could hear the dull thud of the treadles overhead—but she thought Aunt Elizabeth was concocting pies in the cook-house and would see or hear the callers. She would take them into the sitting-room and then Emily could make her escape. And on one thing she was determined—they should not see her in that Mother Hubbard. Miss Potter was a thin, venomous, acidulated gossip who seemed to dislike everybody in general and Emily in particular; and Mrs. Ann Cyrilla was a plump, pretty, smooth, amiable gossip who, by very reason of her smoothness and amiability, did more real harm in a week than Miss Potter did in a year. Emily distrusted her even while she could not help liking her. She had so often heard Mrs. Ann Cyrilla make smiling fun of people, to whose “faces” she had been very sweet and charming, and Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, who had been one of the “dressy Wallaces” from Derry Pond, was especially fond of laughing over the peculiarities of other people’s clothes.
Again the knock came—Miss Potter’s this time, as Emily knew by the staccato raps. They were getting impatient. Well, they might knock there till the cows come home, vowed Emily. She would not go to the door in the Mother Hubbard. Then she heard Perry’s voice outside explaining that Miss Elizabeth was away in the stumps behind the barn picking raspberries, but that he would go and get her if they would walk in and make themselves at home. To Emily’s despair, this was just what they did. Miss Potter sat down with a creak and Mrs. Ann Cyrilla with a puff, and Perry’s retreating footsteps died away in the yard. Emily realised that she was by way of being in a plight. It was very hot and stuffy in the tiny boot closet—where Cousin Jimmy’s working clothes were kept as well as boots. She hoped earnestly that Perry would not be long in finding Aunt Elizabeth.
“My, but it’s awful hot,” said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, with a large groan.
Poor Emily—no, no, we must not call her poor Emily; she does not deserve pity—she has been very silly and is served exactly right; Emily, then, al ready violently perspiring in her close quarters, agreed wholly with her.
“I don’t feel the heat as fat people do,” said Miss Potter. “I hope Elizabeth won’t keep us waiting long. Laura’s weaving—I hear the loom going in the garret. But there would be no use in seeing her—Elizabeth would override anything Laura might promise, just because it wasn’t her arrangement. I see somebody has just finished sanding the floor. Look at those worn boards, will you? You'd think Elizabeth Murray would have a new floor laid down; but she is too mean, of course. Look at that row of candles on the chimney-piece—all that trouble and poor light because of the little extra coal-oil would cost. Well, she can’t take her money with her—she’ll have to leave it all behind at the golden gate even if she is a Murray.”
Emily experienced a shock. She realised that not only was she being half suffocated in the boot closet, but that she was an eavesdropper—something she had never been since the evening at Maywood when she had hidden under the table to hear her aunts and uncles discussing her fate. To be sure, that had been voluntary, while this was compulsory—at least, the Mother Hubbard had made it compulsory. But that would not make Miss Potter’s comments any pleasanter to hear. What business had she to call Aunt Elizabeth mean? Aunt Elizabeth wasn’t mean. Emily was suddenly very angry with Miss Potter. She, herself, often criticised Aunt Elizabeth in secret, but it was intolerable that an outsider should do it. And that little sneer at the Murrays! Emily could imagine the shrewish glint in Miss Potter’s eye as she uttered it. As for the candles
“The Murrays can see farther by candlelight than you can by sunlight, Miss Potter,” thought Emily disdainfully—or at least as disdainfully as it is possible to think when a river of perspiration is running down your back, and you have nothing to breathe but the aroma of old leather.
“I suppose it’s because of the expense that she won’t send Emily to school any longer than this year,” said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. “Most folks think she ought to give her a year at Shrewsbury, anyhow—you’d think she would for pride’s sake, if nothing else. But I am told she has decided against it.”
Emily’s heart sank. She hadn’t been quite sure till now that Aunt Elizabeth wouldn’t send her to Shrewsbury. The tears sprang to her eyes—burning, stinging tears of disappointment.
“Emily ought to be taught something to earn a living by,” said Miss Potter. “Her Father left nothing.”
“He left me,” said Emily below her breath, clenching her fists. Anger dried up her tears.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, laughing with tolerant derision, “I hear that Emily is going to make a living by writing stories—not only a living but a fortune, I believe.”
She laughed again. The idea was so exquisitely ridiculous. Mrs. Ann Cyrilla hadn’t heard anything so funny for a long time.
“They say she wastes half her time scribbling trash,” agreed Miss Potter. “If I was her Aunt Elizabeth I would soon cure her of that nonsense.”
“You mightn’t find it so easy. I understand she has always been a difficult girl to manage—so very pig-headed, Murray-like. The whole clamjamfry of them are as stubborn as mules.”
(Emily, wrathfully: “What a disrespectful way to speak of us! Oh, if I only hadn’t on this Mother Hubbard I’d fling this door open and confront them.”)
“She needs a tight rein, if I know anything of human nature,” said Miss Potter. “She’s going to be a flirt—any one can see that. She'll be Juliet over again. You'll see. She makes eyes at every one and her only fourteen!”
(Emily, sarcastically: “I do not! And Mother wasn’t a flirt. She could have been, but she wasn’t. You couldn’t flirt, even if you wanted to—you respectable old female!”)
“She isn’t pretty as poor Juliet was, and she’s very sly—sly and deep. Mrs. Dutton says she’s the slyest child she ever saw. But still there are things I like about poor Emily.”
Mrs. Ann Cyrilla’s tone was very patronising. “Poor” Emily writhed among the boots.
“The thing I don’t like in her is that she is always trying to be smart,” said Miss Potter decidedly. “She says clever things she has read in books and passes them off as her own”
(Emily, outraged: “I don’t!”)
“And she’s very sarcastic and touchy, and of course as proud as Lucifer,” concluded Miss Potter.
Mrs. Ann Cyrilla laughed pleasantly and tolerantly again.
“Oh, that goes without saying in a Murray. But their worst fault is that they think nobody can do anything right but themselves, and Emily is full of it. Why, she even thinks she can preach better than Mr. Johnson.”
(Emily: “That is because I said he contradicted himself in one of his sermons—and he did. And I’ve heard you criticise dozens of sermons, Mrs. Ann Cyrilla.”)
“She’s jealous, too,” continued Mrs, Ann Cyrilla. “She can’t bear to-be beaten—she wants to be first in everything. I understand she actually shed tears of mortification the night of the concert because Ilse Burnley carried of the honours in the dialogue. Emily did very poorly—she was a perfect stick. And she contradicts older people continually. It would be funny if it weren’t so ill-bred.”
“It’s odd Elizabeth doesn’t cure her of that. The Murrays think their breeding is a little above the common,” said Miss Potter.
(Emily, wrathfully, to the boots: “It is, too.”)
“Of course,” said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, “I think a great many of Emily’s faults come from her intimacy with Ilse Burnley. She shouldn’t be allowed to run about with Ilse as she does. Why, they say Ilse is as much an infidel as her father. I have always understood she doesn’t believe in God at all—or the Devil either.”
(Emily: “Which is a far worse thing in your eyes.’’)
“Oh, the doctor’s training her a little better now since he found out his precious wife didn’t elope with Leo Mitchell,” sniffed Miss Potter. “He makes her go to Sunday School. But she’s no fit associate for Emily. She swears like a trooper, I’m told. Mrs. Mark Burns was in the doctor’s office one day and heard Ilse in the parlour say distinctly ‘out, damned Spot!’ probably to the dog.”
“Dear, dear,” moaned Mrs. Ann Cyrilla.
“Do you know what I saw her do one day last week—saw her with my own eyes!” Miss Potter was very emphatic over this. Ann Cyrilla need not suppose that she had been using any other person’s eyes.
“You couldn’t surprise me,” gurgled Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. “Why, they say she was at the charivari at Johnson’s last Tuesday night, dressed as a boy.”
“Quite likely. But this happened in my own front yard. She was there with Jen Strang, who had come to get a root of my Persian rose-bush for her mother. I asked Ilse if she could sew and bake and a few other things that I thought she ought to be reminded of. Ilse said ‘No’ to them all, quite brazenly, and then she said—what do you think that girl said?”
“Oh, what?” breathed Mrs. Ann Cyrilla eagerly.
“She said, ‘Can you stand on one foot and lift your other to a level with your eyes, Miss Potter? I can.’ And”—Miss Potter hushed her tone to the proper pitch of horror—“she did it!”
The listener in the closet stifled a spasm of laughter in Cousin Jimmy’s grey jumper. How madcap Ilse did love to shock Miss Potter!
“Good gracious, were there any men around?” entreated Mrs. Ann Cyrilla.
“No—fortunately. But it’s my belief she would have done it just the same no matter who was there. We were close to the road—anybody might have been passing. I felt so ashamed. In my time a young girl would have died before she would have done a thing like that.”
“It’s no worse than her and Emily bathing by moonlight up on the sands without a stitch on,” said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. “That was the most scandalous thing. Did you hear about it?”
“Oh, yes, that story’s all over Blair Water. Everybody’s heard it but Elizabeth and Laura. I can’t find out how it started. Were they seen?”
“Oh, dear no, not so bad as that. Ilse told it herself. She seemed to think it was quite a matter of course. I think some one ought to tell Laura and Elizabeth.”
“Tell them yourself,” suggested Miss Potter.
“Oh, no, I don’t want to get in wrong with my neighbours. I am not responsible for Emily Starr’s training, thank goodness. If I were I wouldn’t let her have so much to do with Jarback Priest, either. He’s the queerest of all those queer Priests. I’m sure he must have a bad influence over her. Those green eyes of his positively give me the creeps. I can’t find out that he believes in anything.”
(Emily, sarcastically again: “Not even the Devil?”)
“There’s a queer story going around about him and Emily,” said Miss Potter. “I can’t make head or tail of it. They were seen on the big hill last Wednesday evening at sunset, behaving in a most extraordinary fashion. They would walk along with their eyes fixed on the sky—then suddenly stop—grasp each other by the arm and point upward. They did it time and again. Mrs. Price was watching them from the window and she can’t imagine what they were up to. It was too early for stars, and she couldn’t see a solitary thing in the sky. She laid awake all night wondering about it.”
“Well, it all comes to this—Emily Starr needs looking after,” said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. “I sometimes feel that it would be wiser to stop Muriel and Gladys from going about so much with her.”
(Emily, devoutly: “I wish you would. They are so stupid and silly and they just stick around Ilse and me all the time.”)
“When all is said and done, I pity her,” said Miss Potter. “She’s so foolish and high-minded that she’ll get in wrong with every one, and no decent, sensible man will ever be bothered with her. Geoff North says he went home with her once and that was enough for him.”
(Emily, emphatically: “I believe you! Geoff showed almost human intelligence in that remark.”)
“But then she probably won’t live through her teens. She looks very consumptive. Really, Ann Cyrilla, I do feel sorry for the poor thing.”
This was the proverbial last straw for Emily. She, whole Starr and half Murray, to be pitied by Beulah Potter! Mother Hubbard or no Mother Hubbard, it could not be borne! The closet door suddenly opened wide and Emily stood revealed, Mother Hubbard and all, against a background of boots and jumpers. Her cheeks were crimson, her eyes black. The mouths of Mrs. Ann Cyrilla and Miss Beulah Potter fell open and stayed open; their faces turned dull red; they were dumb.
Emily looked at them steadily for a minute of scornful, eloquent silence. Then, with the air of a queen, she swept across the kitchen and vanished through the sitting-room door, just as Aunt Elizabeth came up the sandstone steps with dignified apologies for keeping them waiting. Miss Potter and Mrs. Ann Cyrilla were so dumbfounded that they were hardly able to talk about the Ladies’ Aid, and got themselves confusedly away after a few jerky questions and answers. Aunt Elizabeth did not know what to make of them and thought they must have been unreasonably offended over having to wait. Then she dis- missed the matter from her mind. A Murray did not care what Potters thought or did. The open closet door told no tales, and she did not know that up in the lookout chamber Emily was lying face downward across the bed crying passionately for shame and anger and humiliation. She felt degraded and hurt. It had all been the outcome of her own silly vanity in the beginning—she acknowledged that—but her punishment had been too severe.
She did not mind so much what Miss Potter had said, but Mrs. Ann Cyrilla’s tiny barbs of malice did sting. She had liked pretty, pleasant Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, who had always seemed kind and friendly and had paid her many compliments. She had thought Mrs. Ann Cyrilla had really liked her. And now to find out that she would talk about her like this!
“Couldn’t they have said one good thing of me?” she sobbed. “Oh, I feel soiled, somehow—between my own silliness and their malice—and all dirty and messed-up mentally. Will I ever feel clean again?”
She did not feel “clean” until she had written it all out in her diary. Then she took a less distorted view of it and summoned philosophy to her aid.
“Mr. Carpenter says we should make every experience teach us something,” she wrote. “He says every experience, no matter whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, has something for us if we are able to view it dispassionately. ‘That,’ he added bitterly, ‘is one of the pieces of good advice I have kept by me all my life and never been able to make any use of myself.’
“Very well, I shall try to view this dispassionately! I suppose the way to do it is to consider all that was said of me and decide just what was true and what false, and what merely distorted—which is worse than the false, I think.
“To begin with: hiding in the closet at all, just out of vanity, comes under my heading of bad deeds. And I suppose that appearing as I did, after I had stayed there so long, and covering them with confusion, was another. But if so, I can’t feel it ‘dispassionately’ yet, because I am sinfully glad I did it—yes, even if they did see me in the Mother Hubbard! I shall never forget their faces! Especially Mrs. Ann Cyrilla’s. Miss Potter won’t worry over it long—she will say it served me right—but Mrs. Ann Cyrilla will never, to her dying day, get over being found out like that.
“Now for a review of their criticisms of Emily Byrd Starr and the decision as to whether said Emily Byrd Starr deserved the said criticisms, wholly or in part. Be honest now, Emily, ‘look then into thy heart’ and try to see yourself, not as Miss Potter sees you or as you see yourself, but as you really are.
(“I think I’m going to find this interesting!)
“In the first place, Mrs. Ann Cyrilla said I was pig-headed.
“Am I pig-headed?
“I know I am determined, and Aunt Elizabeth says I am stubborn. But pig-headedness is worse than either of those. Determination is a good quality and even stubbornness has a saving grace in it if you have a little gumption as well. But a pig-headed person is one who is too stupid to see or understand the foolishness of a certain course and insists on taking it—insists, in short, on running full tilt into a stone wall.
“No, I am not pig-headed. I accept stone walls.
“But I take a good deal of convincing that they are stone walls and not cardboard imitations. Therefore, I am a little stubborn.
“Miss Potter said I was a flirt. This is wholly untrue, so I won’t discuss it. But she also said I ‘made eyes.’ Now do I? I don’t mean to—I know that; but it seems you can ‘make eyes’ without being conscious of it, so how am I going to prevent that? I can’t go about all the days of my life with my eyes dropped down. Dean said the other day:
“‘When you look at me like that, Star, there is nothing for me but to do as you ask.’
“And Aunt Elizabeth was quite annoyed last week because she said I was looking ‘improperly’ at Perry when I was coaxing him to go to the Sunday School picnic. (Perry hates Sunday School picnics.)
“Now, in both cases I thought I was only looking beseechingly.
“Mrs. Ann Cyrilla said I wasn’t pretty. Is that true?”
Emily laid down her pen, went over to the mirror and took a “dispassionate” stock of her looks. Black of hair—smoke-purple of eye—crimson of lip. So far, not bad. Her forehead was too high, but the new way of doing her hair obviated that defect. Her skin was very white and her cheeks, which had been so pale in childhood, were now as delicately hued as a pink pearl. Her mouth was too large, but her teeth were good. Her slightly pointed ears gave her a fawn-like charm. Her neck had lines that she could not help liking. Her slender, immature figure was graceful; she knew, for Aunt Nancy had told her, that she had the Shipley ankle and instep. Emily looked very earnestly at Emily-in-the-Glass from several angles, and returned to her diary.
“I have decided that I am not pretty,” she wrote. “I think I look quite pretty when my hair is done a certain way, but a really pretty girl would be pretty no matter how her hair was done, so Mrs. Ann Cyrilla was right. But I feel sure that I am not so plain as she implied, either.
“Then she said I was sly—and deep. I don’t think it is any fault to be ‘deep,’ though she spoke as if she thought it was. I would rather be deep than shallow. But am I sly? No. I am not. Then what is it about me that makes people think I am sly? Aunt Ruth always insists that I am. I think it is because I have a habit, when I am bored or disgusted with people, of stepping suddenly into my own world and shutting the door. People resent this—I suppose it is only natural to resent a door being shut in your face. They call it slyness when it is only self-defence. So I won’t worry over that.
“Miss Potter said an abominable thing—that I passed off clever speeches I had read in books, as my own—trying to be smart. That is utterly false. Honestly, I never ‘try to be smart.’ But—I do try often to see how a certain thing I’ve thought out sounds when it is put into words. Perhaps this is a kind of showing-off. I must be careful about it.
“Jealous: no, I’m not that. I do like to be first, I admit. But it wasn’t because I was jealous of Ilse that I cried that night at the concert. I cried because I felt I had made a mess of my part. I was a stick, just as Mrs. Ann Cyrilla said. I can’t act a part somehow. Sometimes a certain part seems to suit me and then I can be it, but if not I’m no good in a dialogue. I only went in it to oblige Mrs. Johnson, and I felt horribly mortified because I knew she was disappointed. And I suppose my pride suffered a bit, but I never thought of being jealous of Ilse. I was proud of her—she does magnificently in a play.
“Yes, I contradict. I admit that is one of my faults. But people do say such outrageous things! And why isn’t it as bad for people to contradict me? They do it continually—and I am right just as often as they are.
“Sarcastic? Yes, I’m afraid that is another of my faults. Touchy—no, I’m not. I’m only sensitive. And proud? Well, yes, I am a little proud—but not nearly as proud as people think me. I can’t help carrying my head at a certain angle and I can’t help feeling it is a great thing to have a century of good, upright people with fine traditions and considerable brains behind you. Not like the Potters—upstarts of yesterday!
“Oh, how those women garbled things about poor Ilse. We couldn’t, I suppose, expect a Potter or the wife of a Potter to recognize the sleep-walking scene from Lady Macbeth. I have told Ilse repeatedly that she ought to see that all doors are shut when she tries it over. She is quite wonderful in it. She never was at that charivari—she only said she’d like to go. And as for the moonlight bathing—that was true enough except that we had some stitches on. There was nothing dreadful about it. It was perfectly beautiful—though now it is all spoiled and degraded by being dragged about in common gossip. I wish Ilse hadn’t told about it.
“We had gone away up the sandshore for a walk. It was a moonlit night and the sandshore was wonderful. The Wind Woman was rustling in the grasses on the dunes and there was a long, gentle wash of little gleaming waves on the shore. We wanted to bathe, but at first we thought we couldn’t because we didn’t have our bathing dresses. So we sat on the sands and talked of a hundred things. It was real conversation—not just talk. The great gulf stretched out before us, silvery, gleaming, alluring, going farther and farther into the mists of the northern sky. It was like an ocean in ‘fairylands forlorn.’
“I said:
“‘I would like to get into a ship and sail straight out there—out—out—where would I land?’
“‘Anticosti, I expect,’ said Ilse—a bit too prosaically, I thought.
“‘No—no—Ultima Thule, I think,’ I said dreamily. ‘Some beautiful unknown shore where “the rain never falls, and the wind never blows.” Perhaps the country back of the North Wind where Diamond went. One could sail to it over that silver sea on a night like this.’
“‘That was heaven, I think,’ said Ilse.
“Then we talked about immortality, and Ilse said she was afraid of it—afraid of living for ever and for ever; she said she was sure she would get awfully tired of herself. I said I thought I liked Dean’s idea of a succession of lives—I can’t make out from him whether he really believes that or not—and Ilse said that might be all very well if you were sure of being born again as a decent person, but how about it if you weren’t?
“‘Well, you have to take some risk in any kind of immortality,’ I said.
‘Anyhow,’ said Ilse, ‘whether I am myself or somebody else next time, I do hope I won’t have such a dreadful temper. If I just go on being myself I’ll smash my harp and tear my halo to pieces and pull all the feathers out of the other angels’ wings half an hour after getting to heaven. You know I will, Emily. I can’t help it. I had a fiendish quarrel with Perry yesterday again. It was all my fault—but of course he vexed me by his boasting. I wish I could control my temper.’
“I don’t mind Ilse’s rages one bit now—I know she never means anything she says in them. I never say anything back. I just smile at her and if I’ve a bit of paper handy I jot down the things she says. This infuriates her so that she chokes with anger and can’t say anything more. At all other times Ilse is a darling and such good fun.
“‘You can’t control your rages because you like going into them,’ I said.
“Ilse stared at me.
“‘I don’t—I don’t.’
“‘You do. You enjoy them,’ I insisted.
“‘Well, of course,’ said Ilse, grinning, ‘I do have a good time while they last. It’s awfully satisfying to say the most insulting things and call the worst names. I believe you’re right, Emily. I do enjoy them. Queer I never thought of it. I suppose if I really were unhappy in them I wouldn’t go into them. But after they’re over—I’m so remorseful. I cried for an hour yesterday after fighting with Perry.’
“‘Yes, and you enjoyed that, too—didn’t you?’
“Ilse reflected.
“‘I guess so, Emily; you’re an uncanny thing. I won't talk about it any more. Let’s go bathing. No dresses? What does it matter. There isn’t a soul for miles. I can’t resist those waves. They’re calling me.’
“I felt just as she did, and bathing by moonlight seemed such a lovely, romantic thing—and it is, when the Potters of the world don’t know of it. When they do, they smudge it. We undressed in a little hollow among the dunes—that was like a bowl of silver in the moonlight—but we kept our petticoats on. We had the loveliest time splashing and swimming about in that silver-blue water and those creamy little waves, like mermaids or sea nymphs. It was like living in a poem or a fairy tale. And when we came out I held out my hands to Ilse and said:
Curtseyed when we have and kissed,
The wild winds whist,
Foot it featly here and there
And, sweet sprites, the burden bear.’
“Ilse took my hands and we danced in rings over the moonlit sands, and then we went up to the silver bowl and dressed and went home perfectly happy. Only, of course, we had to carry our wet petticoats rolled up under our arms, so we looked rather slinky, but nobody saw us. And that is what Blair Water is so scandalised about.
“All the same, I hope Aunt Elizabeth won’t hear of it.
“It is too bad Mrs. Price lost so much sleep over Dean and me. We were not performing any weird incantations—we were simply walking over the Delectable Mountain and tracing pictures in the clouds. Perhaps it was childish—but it was great fun. That is one thing I like about Dean—he isn’t afraid of doing something harmless and pleasant just because it’s childish. One cloud he pointed out to me looked exactly like an angel flying along the pale, shining sky and carrying a baby in its arms. There was a filmy blue veil over its head with a faint, first star gleaming through it. Its wings were tipped with gold and its white robe flecked with crimson.
“‘There goes the Angel of the Evening Star with tomorrow in its arms,’ said Dean.
“It was so beautiful that it gave me one of my wonder moments. But ten seconds later it had changed into something that looked like a camel with an exaggerated hump!
“We had a wonderful half hour, even if Mrs. Price, who couldn’t see anything in the sky, did think us quite mad.
“Well, it all comes to this, there’s no use trying to live in other people’s opinions. The only thing to do is to live in your own. After all, I believe in myself. I’m not so bad and silly as they think me, and I’m not consumptive, and I can write. Now that I’ve written it all out I feel differently about it. The only thing that still aggravates me is that Miss Potter pitied me—pitied by a Potter!
“I looked out of my window just now and saw Cousin Jimmy’s nasturtium bed—and suddenly the flash came—and Miss Potter and her pity, and her malicious tongue seemed to matter not at all. Nasturtiums, who colored you, you wonderful, glowing things? You must have been fashioned out of summer sunsets.
“I help Cousin Jimmy a great deal with his garden this summer. I think I love it as much as he does. Every day we make new discoveries of bud and bloom.
“So Aunt Elizabeth won’t send me to Shrewsbury! Oh, I feel as disappointed as if I’d really hoped she would. Every door in life seems shut to me.
“Still, after all, I’ve lots to be thankful for. Aunt Elizabeth will let me go to school another year here, I think, and Mr. Carpenter can teach me heaps yet; I’m not hideous; moonlight is still a fair thing; I’m going to do something with my pen some day—and I’ve got a lovely, grey, moon-faced cat who has just jumped up on my table and poked my pen with his nose as a signal that I’ve written enough for one sitting.
“The only real cat is a grey cat!”