“No—no,” said distressed Emily. “Why, some day, Aunt Laura, I’ll write real books—and make lots of money,” she added, sensing that the businesslike Murrays measured the nature of most things on a cash basis.
Aunt Laura smiled indulgently.
“I’m afraid you’ll never grow rich that way, dear. It would be wiser to employ your time preparing yourself for some useful work.”
It was maddening to be condescended to like this—maddening that nobody could see that she had to write—maddening to have Aunt Laura so sweet and loving and stupid about it.
“Oh,” thought Emily bitterly, “if that hateful Enterprise editor had printed my piece they’d have believed then.”
“At any rate,” advised Aunt Laura, “don’t let Elizabeth see you writing them.”
But somehow Emily could not take this prudent advice. There had been occasions when she had connived with Aunt Laura to hoodwink Aunt Elizabeth on some little matter, but she found she could not do it in this. This had to be open and above-board. She must write stories—and Aunt Elizabeth must know it—that was the way it had to be. She could not be false to herself in this—she could not pretend to be false.
She wrote her father all about it—poured out her bitterness and perplexity to him in what, though she did not suspect it at the time, was the last letter she was to write him. There was a large bundle of letters by now on the old sofa shelf in the garret—for Emily had written many letters to her father besides those which have been chronicled in this history. There were a great many paragraphs about Aunt Elizabeth in them, most of them very uncomplimentary and some of them, as Emily herself would have owned when her first bitterness was past, overdrawn and exaggerated. They had been written in moments when her hurt and angry soul demanded
