“Oh, please, Aunt Elizabeth, don’t make me wear that horrid thing.”
Aunt Elizabeth, wasting no further words, picked up the bonnet and tied it on Emily’s head. Emily had to yield. But from the depths of the sunbonnet issued a voice, defiant though tremulous.
“Anyway, Aunt Elizabeth, you can’t boss God,” it said.
Aunt Elizabeth was too cross to speak all the way to the schoolhouse. She introduced Emily to Miss Brownell, and drove away. School was already “in,” so Emily hung her sunbonnet on the porch nail and went to the desk Miss Brownell assigned her. She had already made up her mind that she did not like Miss Brownell and never would like her.
Miss Brownell had the reputation in Blair Water of being a fine teacher—due mainly to the fact that she was a strict disciplinarian and kept excellent “order.” She was a thin, middle-aged person with a colourless face, prominent teeth, most of which she showed when she laughed, and cold, watchful grey eyes—colder even than Aunt Ruth’s. Emily felt as if those merciless agate eyes saw clean through her to the core of her sensitive little soul. Emily could be fearless enough on occasion; but in the presence of a nature which she instinctively felt to be hostile to hers she shrank away in something that was more repulsion than fear.
She was a target for curious glances all the morning. The Blair Water school was large and there were at least twenty little girls of about her own age. Emily looked back curiously at them all and thought the way they whispered to each other behind hands and books when they looked at her very ill-mannered. She felt suddenly unhappy and homesick and lonesome—she wanted her father and her old home and the dear things she loved.
“The New Moon girl is crying,” whispered a black-eyed girl across the aisle. And then came a cruel little giggle.
