writing stories. If Aunt Elizabeth had asked her to give up crocheting lace or making molasses taffy, or eating Aunt Laura’s delicious drop cookies, Emily would have done so wholly and cheerfully, though she loved these things. But to give up writing stories—why, Aunt Elizabeth might as well have asked her to give up breathing. Why couldn’t she understand? It seemed so simple and indisputable to Emily.
“Teddy can’t help making pictures and Ilse can’t help reciting and I can’t help writing. Don’t you see, Aunt Elizabeth?”
“I see that you are an ungrateful and disobedient child,” said Aunt Elizabeth.
This hurt Emily horribly, but she could not give in; and there continued to be a sense of soreness and disapproval between her and Aunt Elizabeth in all the little details of daily life that poisoned existence more or less for the child, who was so keenly sensitive to her environment and to the feelings with which her kindred regarded her. Emily felt it all the time—except when she was writing her stories. Then she forgot everything, roaming in some enchanted country between the sun and moon, where she saw wonderful beings whom she tried to describe and wonderful deeds which she tried to record, coming back to the candle-lit kitchen with a somewhat dazed sense of having been years in No-Man’s Land.
She did not even have Aunt Laura to back her up in the matter. Aunt Laura thought Emily ought to yield in such an unimportant matter and please Aunt Elizabeth.
“But it’s not unimportant,” said Emily despairingly. “It’s the most important thing in the world to me, Aunt Laura. Oh, I thought you would understand.”
“I understand that you like to do it, dear, and I think it’s a harmless enough amusement. But it seems to annoy Elizabeth some way and I do think you might give it up on that account. It is not as if it was anything that mattered much—it is really a waste of time.”
