the aroma of sausages was forgotten—was she not drinking from a fount of Castaly?
“Emily,” said Aunt Laura, shutting the door, and looking very lovingly upon Emily out of her kind blue eyes, “you can talk to me all you want to. I don’t like Miss Brownell and I don’t think you were altogether in the wrong—although of course you shouldn’t be writing poetry when you have sums to do. And there are some ginger cookies in that box.”
“I don’t want to talk to any one, dear Aunt Laura—I’m too happy,” said Emily dreamily. “I’m composing an epic—it is to be called The White Lady, and I’ve got twenty lines of it made already—and two of them are thrilling. The heroine wants to go into a convent and her father warns her that if she does she will never be able to
Come back to the life you gave
With all its pleasures to the grave.
Oh, Aunt Laura, when I composed those lines the flash came to me. And ginger cookies are nothing to me any more.”
Aunt Laura smiled again.
“Not just now perhaps, dear. But when the moment of inspiration has passed it will do no harm to remember that the cookies in the box have not been counted and that they are as much mine as Elizabeth’s.”
“Dear Father:
“O, I have such an exiting thing to tell you. I have been the heroin of an adventure. One day last week Ilse asked me if I would go and stay all night with her
