until Aunt Elizabeth put a stop to that. Emily could not understand why Mr. Carpenter would smile amiably and say, “Very good” when Neddy Gray rattled off a speech glibly, without any expression whatever, and then rage at Perry and denounce him as a dunce and a nincompoop, by gad, because he had failed to give just the proper emphasis on a certain word, or had timed his gesture a fraction of a second too soon.
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.
