“No. I just love to write.”
“A better reason—but not enough—not enough. Tell me this—if you knew you would be poor as a church mouse all your life—if you knew you’d never have a line published—would you still go on writing—would you?”
“Of course I would,” said Emily disdainfully. “Why, I have to write—I can’t help it by times—I’ve just got to.”
“Oh—then I’d waste my breath giving advice at all. If it’s in you to climb you must—there are those who must lift their eyes to the hills—they can’t breathe properly in the valleys. God help them if there’s some weakness in them that prevents their climbing. You don’t understand a word I’m saying—yet. But go on—climb! There, take your book and go home. Thirty years from now I will have a claim to distinction in the fact that Emily Byrd Starr was once a pupil of mine. Go—go—before I remember what a disrespectful baggage you are to write such stuff about me and be properly enraged.”
Emily went, still a bit scared but oddly exultant behind her fright. She was so happy that her happiness seemed to irradiate the world with its own splendour. All the sweet sounds of nature around her seemed like the broken words of her own delight. Mr. Carpenter watched her out of sight from the old worn threshold.
“Wind—and flame—and sea!” he muttered. “Nature is always taking us by surprise. This child has—what I have never had and would have made any sacrifice to have. But ‘the gods don’t allow us to be in their debt’—she will pay for it—she will pay.”
At sunset Emily sat in the lookout room. It was flooded with soft splendour. Outside, in sky and trees, were delicate tintings and aerial sounds. Down in the garden Daffy was chasing dead leaves along the red walks. The sight of his sleek, striped sides, the grace of his movements, gave her pleasure—as did the beauti-
