How thankful she was that she hadn’t told Teddy anything about it—she had been so strongly tempted to, and only refrained because she didn’t want to spoil the dramatic surprise of the moment when she would show him the verses with her name signed to them. She had told Perry, and Perry was furious when he saw her tear-stained face later on in the dairy, as they strained the milk together. Ordinarily Emily loved this, but to-night the savour had gone out of the world. Even the milky splendour of the still, mild winter evening and the purple bloom over the hillside woods that presaged a thaw could not give her the accustomed soul-thrill.
“I’m going to Charlottetown if I have to walk and I’ll bust that Enterprise editor’s head,” said Perry, with the expression which, thirty years later, warned the members of his party to scatter for cover.
“That wouldn’t be any use,” said Emily drearily. “He didn’t think it good enough to print—that is what hurts me so, Perry—he didn’t think it any good. Busting his head wouldn’t change that.”
It took her a week to recover from the blow. Then she wrote a story in which the editor of the Enterprise played the part of a dark and desperate villain who found lodging eventually behind prison bars. This got the venom out of her system and she forgot all about him in the delight of writing a poem addressed to “Sweet Lady April.” But I question if she ever really forgave him—even when she discovered eventually that you must not write on both sides of the paper—even when she read over Evening Dreams a year later and wondered how she could ever have thought it any good.
This sort of thing was happening frequently now. Every time she read her little hoard of manuscripts over she found some of which the fairy gold had unaccountably turned to withered leaves, fit only for the burning. Emily burned them,—but it hurt her a little. Outgrowing things we love is never a pleasant process.
