was something about Ilse Burnley that one liked; and as for the rest of the girls Emily got square with them by pretending she saw them all being hanged in a row for frightening her to death with a snake, and felt no more resentment towards them, although some of the things that had been said to her rankled bitterly in her heart for many a day. She had no father to tell them to, and no account book to write them out in, so she could not exorcise them.
She had no speedy chance to ask for a bang, for there was company at New Moon and her aunts were busy getting ready an elaborate supper. But when the preserves were brought on Emily snatched the opportunity of a lull in the older conversation.
“Aunt Elizabeth,” she said, “can I have a bang?”
Aunt Elizabeth looked her disdain.
“No,” she said, “I do not approve of bangs. Of all the silly fashions that have come in now-a-days, bangs are the silliest.”
“Oh, Aunt Elizabeth, do let me have a bang. It would make a beauty of me,—Rhoda says so.”
“It would take a good deal more than a bang to do that, Emily. We will not have bangs at New Moon—except on the Molly cows. They are the only creatures that should wear bangs.”
Aunt Elizabeth smiled triumphantly around the table—Aunt Elizabeth did smile sometimes when she thought she had silenced some small person by exquisite ridicule. Emily understood that it was no use to hope for bangs. Loveliness did not lie that way for her. It was mean of Aunt Elizabeth—mean. She heaved a sigh of disappointment and dismissed the idea for the present. There was something else she wanted to know.
“Why doesn’t Ilse Burnley’s father believe in God?” she asked.
“’Cause of the trick her mother played him,” said Mr. Slade, with a chuckle. Mr. Slade was a fat, jolly-
