Aunt Elizabeth got into bed again with a grunt. Emily took it for permission.
“Aunt Elizabeth, you remember that book I found in Dr. Burnley’s bookcase and brought home and asked you if I could read it? It was called ‘The History of Henry Esmond.’ You looked at it and said you had no objections to my reading history. So I read it. But, Aunt Elizabeth, it wasn’t history—it was a novel. And I knew it when I brought it home.”
“You know that I have forbidden you to read novels, Emily Starr. They are wicked books and have ruined many souls.”
“It was very dull,” pleaded Emily, as if dullness and wickedness were quite incompatible. “And it made me feel unhappy. Everybody seemed to be in love with the wrong person. I have made up my mind, Aunt Elizabeth, that I will never fall in love. It makes too much trouble.”
“Don’t talk of things you can’t understand, and that are not fit for children to think about. This is the result of reading novels. I shall tell Dr. Burnley to lock his bookcase up.”
“Oh, don’t do that, Aunt Elizabeth,” exclaimed Emily. “There are no more novels in it. But I’m reading such an interesting book over there. It tells about everything that’s inside of you. I’ve got as far along as the liver and its diseases. The pictures are so interesting. Please let me finish it.”
This was worse than novels. Aunt Elizabeth was truly horrified. Things that were inside of you were not to be read about.
“Have you no shame, Emily Starr? If you have not I am ashamed for you. Little girls do not read books like that.”
“But, Aunt Elizabeth, why not? I have a liver, haven’t I—and heart and lungs—and stomach—and—”
