Emily Climbs/Chapter 7
“September 20, 19—
“I have been neglecting my diary of late. One does not have a great deal of spare time at Aunt Ruth’s. But it is Friday night and I couldn’t go home for the week-end so I come to my diary for comforting. I can spend only alternate week-ends at New Moon. Aunt Ruth wants me every other Saturday to help ‘houseclean.’ We go over this house from top to bottom whether it needs it or not, as the tramp said when he washed his
face every month, and then rest from our labours for Sunday.
“There is a hint of frost in the air tonight. I am afraid the garden at New Moon will suffer. Aunt Elizabeth will begin to think it is time to give up the cookhouse for the season and move the Waterloo back into the kitchen. Cousin Jimmy will be boiling the pigs’ potatoes in the old orchard and reciting his poetry. Likely Teddy and Ilse and Perry—who have all gone home, lucky creatures—will be there and Daff will be prowling about. But I must not think of it. That way homesickness lies.
“I am beginning to like Shrewsbury and Shrewsbury school and Shrewsbury teachers—though Dean was right when he said I would not find any one here like Mr. Carpenter. The Seniors and Juniors look down on the Preps and are very condescending. Some of them condescended to me, but I do not think they will try it again—except Evelyn Blake, who condescends every time we meet, as we do quite often, because her chum, Mary Carswell, rooms with Ilse at Mrs. Adamson’s boarding-house.
“I hate Evelyn Blake. There is no doubt at all about that. And there is as little doubt that she hates me. We are instinctive enemies—we looked at each other the first time we met like two strange cats, and that was enough. I never really hated any one before. I thought I did but now I know it was only dislike. Hate is rather interesting for a change. Evelyn is a Junior—tall, clever, rather handsome. Has long, bright, treacherous brown eyes and talks through her nose. She has literary ambitions, I understand, and considers herself the best dressed girl in High School. Perhaps she is; but somehow her clothes seem to make more impression on you than she does. People criticise Ilse for dressing too richly and too old but she dominates her clothes for all that. Evelyn doesn’t. You always think of her clothes before you think of her. The difference seems to be that Evelyn dresses for other people and Ilse dresses for herself. I must write a character sketch of her when I have studied her a little more. What a satisfaction that will be!
“I met her first in Ilse’s room and Mary Carswell introduced us. Evelyn looked down at me—she is a little taller, being a year older—and said,
“‘Oh, yes, Miss Starr? I’ve heard my aunt, Mrs. Henry Blake, talking about you.’
“Mrs. Henry Blake was once Miss Brownell. I looked straight into Evelyn’s eyes and said,
“‘No doubt Mrs. Henry Blake painted a very flattering picture of me.’
“Evelyn laughed—with a kind of laugh I don’t like. It gives you the feeling that she is laughing at you, not at what you've said.
“‘You didn’t get on very well with her, did you? I understand you are quite literary. What papers do you write for?’
“She asked the question sweetly but she knew perfectly well that I don’t write for any—yet.
“‘The Charlottetown Enterprise and the Shrewsbury Weekly Times,’ I said with a wicked grin. ‘I’ve just made a bargain with them. I’m to get two cents for every news item I send the Enterprise and twenty-five cents a week for a society letter for the Times.’
“My grin worried Evelyn. Preps aren’t supposed to grin like that at Juniors. It isn’t done.
“‘Oh, yes, I understand you are working for your board,’ she said. ‘I suppose every little helps. But I meant real literary periodicals.’
“‘The Quill?’ I asked with another grin.
“The Quill is the High School paper, appearing monthly. It is edited by the members of the Skull and Owl, a ‘literary society’ to which only Juniors and Seniors are eligible. The contents of The Quill are written by the students and in theory any student can contribute but in practice hardly anything is ever accepted from a Prep. Evelyn is a Skull and Owlite and her cousin is editor of The Quill. She evidently thought I was waxing sarcastic at her expense and ignored me for the rest of her call, except for one dear little jab when dress came up for discussion.
“‘I want one of the new ties,’ she said. ‘There are some sweet ones at Jones and McCallum’s and they are awfully smart. The little black velvet ribbon you are wearing around your neck, Miss Starr, is rather becoming. I used to wear one myself when they were in style.’
“I couldn’t think of anything clever to say in retort. I can think of clever things so easily when there is no one to say them to. So I said nothing but merely smiled very slowly and disdainfully. That seemed to annoy Evelyn more than speech, for I heard she said afterwards that ‘that Emily Starr’ had a very affected smile.
“Note:—One can do a great deal with appropriate smiles. I must study the subject carefully. The friendly smile—the scornful smile—the detached smile— the entreating smile—the common or garden grin.
“As for Miss Brownell—or rather Mrs. Blake—I met her on the street a few days ago. After she passed she said something to her companion and they both laughed. Very bad manners, I think.
“I like Shrewsbury and I like school but I shall never like Aunt Ruth’s house. It has a disagreeable personality. Houses are like people—some you like and some you don’t like—and once in a while there is one you love. Outside, this house is covered with frippery. I feel like getting a broom and sweeping it off. Inside, its rooms are all square and proper and soulless. Nothing you could put into them would ever seem to belong to them. There are no nice romantic corners in it, as there are at New Moon. My room hasn’t improved on acquaintance, either. The ceiling oppresses me—it comes down so low over my bed—and Aunt Ruth won’t let me move the bed. She looked amazed when I suggested it.
“‘The bed has always been in that corner,’ she said, just as she might have said, ‘The sun has always risen in the east.’
“But the pictures are really the worst thing about this room—chromos of the most aggravated description. Once I turned them all to the wall and of course Aunt Ruth walked in—she never knocks—and noticed them at once.
“‘Em’ly, why have you meddled with the pictures?’
“Aunt Ruth is always asking ‘why’ I do this and that. Sometimes I can explain and sometimes I can’t. This was one of the times I couldn’t. But of course I had to answer Aunt Ruth’s question. No disdainful smile would do here.
“‘Queen Alexandra’s dog collar gets on my nerves,’ I said, ‘and Byron’s expression on his death-bed at Missolonghi hinders me from studying.’
“‘Em’ly,’ said Aunt Ruth, ‘you might try to show a little gratitude.’
“I wanted to say,
“‘To whom—Queen Alexandra or Lord Byron?’ but of course I didn’t. Instead I meekly turned all the pictures right side out again.
“‘You haven’t told me the real reason why you turned those pictures,’ said Aunt Ruth sternly. ‘I suppose you don’t mean to tell me. Deep and sly—deep and sly—I always said you were. The very first time I saw you at Maywood I said you were the slyest child I had ever seen.’
“‘Aunt Ruth, why do you say such things to me?’ I said, in exasperation. ‘Is it because you love me and want to improve me—or hate me and want to hurt me—or just because you can’t help it?’
“‘Miss Impertinence, please remember that this is my house. And you will leave my pictures alone after this. I will forgive you for meddling with them this time but don’t let it happen again. I will find out yet your motive in turning them around, clever as you think yourself.’
“Aunt Ruth stalked out but I know she listened on the landing quite a while to find out if I would begin talking to myself. She is always watching me—even when she says nothing—does nothing—I know she is watching me. I feel like a little fly under a microscope. Not a word or action escapes her criticism, and, though she can’t read my thoughts, she attributes thoughts to me that I never had any idea of thinking. I hate that worse than anything else.
“Can’t I say anything good of Aunt Ruth? Of course I can.
“She is honest and virtuous and truthful and industrious and of her pantry she needeth not to be ashamed. But she hasn’t any lovable virtues—and she will never give up trying to find out why I turned the pictures. She will never believe that I told her the simple truth.
“Of course, things ‘might be worse.’ As Teddy says, it might have been Queen Victoria instead of Queen Alexandra.
“I have some pictures of my own pinned up that save me—some lovely sketches of New Moon and the old orchard that Teddy made for me, and an engraving Dean gave me. It is a picture in soft, dim colours of palms around a desert well and a train of camels passing across the sands against a black sky gemmed with stars. It is full of lure and mystery and when I look at it I forget Queen Alexandra’s jewelry and Lord Byron’s lugubrious face, and my soul slips out—out—through a little gateway into a great, vast world of freedom and dream.
“Aunt Ruth asked me where I got that picture. When I told her she sniffed and said,
“‘I can’t understand how you have such a liking for Jarback Priest. He’s a man I’ve no use for.’
“I shouldn’t think she would have.
“But if the house is ugly and my room unfriendly, the Land of Uprightness is beautiful and saves my soul alive. The Land of Uprightness is the fir grove behind the house. I call it that because the firs are all so exceedingly tall and slender and straight. There is a pool in it, veiled with ferns, with a big grey boulder beside it. It is reached by a little, winding, capricious path so narrow that only one can walk in it. When I’m tired or lonely or angry or too ambitious I go there and sit for a few minutes. Nobody can keep an upset mind looking at those slender, crossed tips against the sky. I go there to study on fine evenings, though Aunt Ruth is suspicious and thinks it is just another manifestation of my slyness. Soon it will be dark too early to study there and I’ll be so sorry. Somehow, my books have a meaning there they never have anywhere else.
“There are so many dear, green corners in the Land of Uprightness, full of the aroma of sun-steeped ferns, and grassy, open spaces where pale asters feather the grass, swaying gently towards each other when the Wind Woman runs among them. And just to the left of my window there is a group of tall old firs that look, in moonlight or twilight, like a group of witches weaving spells of sorcery. When I first saw them, one windy night against the red sunset, with the reflection of my candle, like a weird, signal flame, suspended in the air among their boughs, the flash came—for the first time in Shrewsbury—and I felt so happy that nothing else mattered. I have written a poem about them.
“But oh, I burn to write stories. I knew it would be hard to keep my promise to Aunt Elizabeth but I didn’t know it would be so hard. Every day it seems harder—such splendid ideas for plots pop into my mind. Then I have to fall back on character studies of the people I know. I have written several of them. I always feel so strongly tempted to touch them up a bit—deepen the shadows—bring out the highlights a little more vividly. But I remember that I promised Aunt Elizabeth never to write anything that wasn’t true so I stay my hand and try to paint them exactly as they are.
“I have written one of Aunt Ruth. Interesting but dangerous. I never leave my Jimmy-book or my diary in my room. I know Aunt Ruth rummages through it when I’m out. So I always carry them in my book-bag.
“Ilse was up this evening and we did our lessons together. Aunt Ruth frowns on this—and, to be strictly just, I don’t know that she is wrong. Ilse is so jolly and comical that we laugh more than we study, I’m afraid. We don’t do as well in class next day—and besides, this house disapproves of laughter.
“Perry and Teddy like the High School. Perry earns his lodging by looking after the furnace and grounds and his board by waiting on the table. Besides, he gets twenty-five cents an hour for doing odd jobs. I don’t see much of him or Teddy, except in the week-ends home, for it is against the school rules for boys and girls to walk together to and from school. Lots do it, though. I had several chances to but I concluded that it would not be in keeping with New Moon traditions to break the rule. Besides, Aunt Ruth asks me every blessed night when I come home from school if I’ve walked with anybody. I think she’s sometimes a little disappointed when I say ‘No.’
“Besides, I didn’t much fancy any of the boys who wanted to walk with me.
| · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
“October 20, 19—
“My room is full of boiled cabbage smells tonight but I dare not open my window. Too much night air outside. I would risk it for a little while if Aunt Ruth hadn’t been in a very bad humor all day. Yesterday was my Sunday in Shrewsbury and when we went to church I sat in the corner of the pew. I did not know that Aunt Ruth must always sit there but she thought I did it on purpose. She read her Bible all the afternoon. I felt she was reading it at me, though I couldn’t imagine why. This morning she asked me why I did it.
“‘Did what?’ I said in bewilderment.
“‘Em’ly, you know what you did. I will not tolerate this slyness. What was your motive?’
“‘Aunt Ruth, I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean,’ I said—quite haughtily, for I felt I was not being treated fairly.
“‘Em’ly, you sat in the corner of the pew yesterday just to keep me out of it. Why did you do it?”
“I looked down at Aunt Ruth—I am taller than she is now and I can do it. She doesn’t like it, either. I was angry and I think I had a little of the Murray look on my face. The whole thing seemed so contemptible to be making a fuss over.
“‘If I did it to keep you out of it, isn’t that why?’ I said as contemptuously as I felt. I picked up my book-bag and stalked to the door. There I stopped. It occurred to me that, whatever the Murrays might or might not do, I was not behaving as a Starr should. Father wouldn’t have approved of my behaviour. So I turned and said, very politely,
“‘I should not have spoken like that, Aunt Ruth, and I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean anything by sitting in the corner. It was just because I happened to go into the pew first. I didn’t know you preferred the corner.’
“Perhaps I overdid the politeness. At any rate, my apology only seemed to irritate Aunt Ruth the more. She sniffed and said,
“‘I will forgive you this time, but don’t let it happen again. Of course I didn’t expect you would tell me your reason. You are too sly for that.’
“Aunt Ruth, Aunt Ruth! If you keep on calling me sly you'll drive me into being sly in reality and then watch out. If I choose to be sly I can twist you round my finger! It’s only because I’m straightforward that you can manage me at all.
“I have to go to bed every night at nine o’clock—‘people who are threatened with consumption require a great deal of sleep.’ When I come from school there are chores to be done and I must study in the evenings. So I haven’t a moment of time for writing anything. I know Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Ruth have had a conference on the subject. But I have to write. So I get up in the morning as soon as it is daylight, dress, and put on a coat—for the mornings are cold now—sit down and scribble for a priceless hour. I didn’t choose that Aunt Ruth should discover it and call me sly so I told her I was doing it. She gave me to understand that I was mentally unsound and would make a bad end in some asylum, but she didn’t actually forbid me—probably because she thought it would be of no use. It wouldn't. I’ve got to write, that is all there is to it. That hour in the grey morning is the most delightful one in the day for me.
“Lately, being forbidden to write stories, I’ve been thinking them out. But one day it struck me that I was breaking my compact with Aunt Elizabeth in spirit if not in letter. So I have stopped it.
“I wrote a character study of Ilse today. Very fascinating. It is difficult to analyse her. She is so different and unexpectable. (I coined that word myself.) She doesn’t even get mad like anybody else. I enjoy her tantrums. She doesn’t say so many awful things in them as she used to but she is piquant. (Piquant is a new word for me. I like using a new word. I never think I really own a word until I’ve spoken or written it.)
“I am writing by my window. I love to watch the Shrewsbury lights twinkle out in the dusk over that long hill.
“I had a letter from Dean today. He is in Egypt—among ruined shrines of old gods and the tombs of old kings. I saw that strange land through his eyes—I seemed to go back with him through the old centuries—I knew the magic of its skies. I was Emily of Karnak or Thebes—not Emily of Shrewsbury at all. That is a trick Dean has.
“Aunt Ruth insisted on seeing his letter and when she read it she said it was impious!
“I should never have thought of that adjective.
| · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
“October 21, 19—
“I climbed the steep little wooded hill in the Land of Uprightness tonight and had an exultation on its crest. There’s always something satisfying in climbing to the top of a hill. There was a fine tang of frost in the air, the view over Shrewsbury Harbour was very wonderful, and the woods all about me were expecting something to happen soon—at least that is the only way I can describe the effect they had on me. I forgot everything—Aunt Ruth’s stings and Evelyn Blake’s patronage and Queen Alexandra’s dog collar—everything in life that isn’t just right. Lovely thoughts came flying to meet me like birds. They weren’t my thoughts. I couldn’t think anything half so exquisite. They came from somewhere.
“Coming back, on that dark little path, where the air was full of nice, whispering sounds, I heard a chuckle of laughter in a fir copse just behind me. I was startled—and a little bit alarmed. I knew at once it wasn’t human laughter—it was more like the Puckish mirth of fairy folk, with just a faint hint of malice in it. I can no longer believe in wood elves—alas, one loses so much when one becomes incredulous—so this laughter puzzled me—and, yes, a horrid, crawly feeling began in my spine. Then, suddenly, I thought of owls and knew it for what it was—a truly delightful sound, as if some survival of the Golden Age were chuckling to himself there in the dark. There were two of them, I think, and they were certainly having a good time over some owlish joke. I must write a poem about it—though I’ll never be able to put into words half the charm and devilry of it.
“Ilse was up on the carpet in the principal’s room yesterday for walking home from school with Guy Lindsay. Something Mr. Hardy said made her so furious that she snatched up a vase of chrysanthemums that was on his desk and hurled it against the wall, where of course it was smashed to pieces.
“‘If I hadn't thrown it at the wall I’d have had to have. thrown it at you,’ she told him.
“It would have gone hard with some girls but Mr. Hardy is a friend of Dr. Burnley’s. Besides, there is something about those yellow eyes of Ilse’s that do things to you. I know exactly how she would look at Mr. Hardy after she had smashed the vase. All her rage would be gone and her eyes would be laughing and daring—impudent, Aunt Ruth would call it. Mr. Hardy merely told her she was acting like a baby and would have to pay for the vase, since it was school property. That rather squelched Ilse; she thought it a tame ending to her heroics.
“I scolded her roundly. Really, somebody has to bring Ilse up and nobody but me seems to feel any responsibility in the matter. Dr. Burnley will just roar with laughter when she tells him. But I might as well have scolded the Wind Woman. Ilse just laughed and hugged me.
“‘Honey, it made such a jolly smash. When I heard it I wasn’t a bit mad any more.’
“Ilse recited at our school concert last week and everybody thought her wonderful.
“Aunt Ruth told me today that she expected me to be a star pupil. She wasn’t punning on my name—oh, no, Aunt Ruth hasn’t a nodding acquaintance with puns. All the pupils who make ninety per cent. average at the Christmas exams and do not fall below eighty in any subject are called ‘Star’ pupils and are given a gold star-pin to wear for the rest of the term. It is a coveted distinction and of course not many win it. If I fail Aunt Ruth will rub it in to the bone. I must not fail.
| · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
“October 30, 19—
“The November Quill came out today. I sent my owl poem in to the editor a week ago but he didn’t use it. And he did use one of Evelyn Blake’s—a silly, simpering little rhyme about Autumn Leaves—very much the sort of thing I wrote three years ago.
“And Evelyn condoled with me before the whole roomful of girls because my poem hadn’t been taken. I suppose Tom Blake had told her about it.
“‘You mustn’t feel badly about it, Miss Starr. Tom said it wasn’t half bad but of course not up to The Quill’s standard. Likely in another year or two you'll be able to get in. Keep on trying.’
“‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m not feeling badly. Why should I? I didn’t make “beam” rhyme with “green” in my poem. If I had I’d be feeling very badly indeed.’
“Evelyn coloured to her eyes.
“Don’t show your disappointment so plainly, child,’ she said.
“But I noticed she dropped the subject after that.
“For my own satisfaction I wrote a criticism of Evelyn’s poem in my Jimmy-book as soon as I came from school. I modelled it on Macaulay’s essay on poor Robert Montgomery, and I got so much fun out of it that I didn’t feel sore and humiliated any more. I must show it to Mr. Carpenter when I go home. He'll chuckle over it.
| · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
“November 6, 19—
“I noticed this evening in glancing over my journal that I soon gave up recording my good and bad deeds. I suppose it was because so many of my doings were half-and-half. I never could decide in what class they belonged.
“We are expected to answer roll call with a quotation on Monday mornings. This morning I repeated a verse from my own poem A Window that Faces the Sea. When I left Assembly to go down to the Prep classroom Miss Aylmer, the Vice-Principal, stopped me.
“‘Emily, that was a beautiful verse you gave at roll call. Where did you get it? And do you know the whole poem?’
“I was so elated I could hardly answer,
“‘Yes, Miss Aylmer,’ very demurely.
“‘I would like a copy of it,’ said Miss Aylmer. ‘Could you write me off one? And who is the author?’
“‘The author,’ I said laughing, ‘is Emily Byrd Starr. The truth is, Miss Aylmer, that I forgot to look up a quotation for roll call and couldn’t think of any in a hurry, so just fell back on a bit of my own.’
“Miss Aylmer didn’t say anything for a moment. She just looked at me. She is a stout, middle-aged woman with a square face and nice, wide, grey eyes.
“‘Do you still want the poem, Miss Aylmer?’ I said, smiling.
“‘Yes,’ she said, still looking at me in that funny way, as if she had never seen me before. ‘Yes—and autograph it, please.’
“I promised and went on down the stairs. At the foot I glanced back. She was still looking after me. Something in her look made me feel glad and proud and happy and humble—and—and—prayerful. Yes, that was just how I felt.
“Oh, this has been a wonderful day. What care I now for The Quill or Evelyn Blake?
“This evening Aunt Ruth marched up town to see Uncle Oliver’s Andrew, who is in the bank here now. She made me go along. She gave Andrew lots of good advice about his morals and his meals and his underclothes and asked him to come down for an evening whenever he wished. Andrew is a Murray, you see, and can therefore rush in where Teddy and Perry dare not tread. He is quite good-looking, with straight, well-groomed, red hair. But he always looks as if he’d just been starched and ironed.
“I thought the evening not wholly wasted, for Mrs. Garden, his landlady, has an interesting cat who made certain advances to me. But when Andrew patted him and called him ‘Poor pussy’ the intelligent animal hissed at him.
“‘You mustn’t be too familiar with a cat,’ I advised Andrew. ‘And you must speak respectfully to and of him.’
“‘Piffle!’ said Aunt Ruth.
“But a cat’s a cat for a’ that.
| · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
“November 8, 19—
“The nights are cold now. When I came back Monday I brought one of the New Moon gin jars for my comforting. I cuddle down with it in bed and enjoy the contrasting roars of the storm wind outside in the Land of Uprightness, and the rain whirling over the roof. Aunt Ruth worries for fear the cork will come out and deluge the bed. That would be almost as bad as what really did happen night before last. I woke up about midnight with the most wonderful idea for a story. I felt that I must rise at once and jot it down in a Jimmy-book before I forgot it. Then I could keep it until my three years are up and I am free to write it.
“I hopped out of bed and, in pawing around my table to find my candle, I upset my ink bottle. Then of course I went mad and couldn’t find anything! Matches—candles—everything had disappeared. I set the ink bottle up, but I knew there was a pool of ink on the table. I had ink all over my fingers and dare not touch anything in the dark and couldn’t find anything to wipe it off. And all the time I heard that ink drip-dripping on the floor.
“In desperation I opened the door—with my toes because I dare not touch it with my inky hands—and went downstairs where I wiped my hands on the stove rag and got some matches. By this time, of course, Aunt Ruth was up, demanding whys and motives. She took my matches, lighted her candle, and marched me upstairs. Oh, ’twas a gruesome sight! How could a small stone ink-bottle hold a quart of ink? There must have been a quart to have made the mess it did.
“I felt like the old Scotch emigrant who came home one evening, found his house burned down and his entire family scalped by Indians and said, ‘This is pairfectly redeeclous.’ The table cover was ruined—the carpet was soaked—even the wall paper was bespattered. But Queen Alexandra smiled benignly over all and Byron went on dying.
“Aunt Ruth and I had an hour’s seance with salt and vinegar. Aunt Ruth wouldn’t believe me when I said I got up to jot down the plot of a story. She knew I had some other motive and it was just some more of my deepness and slyness. She also said a few other things which I won’t write down. Of course I deserved a scolding for leaving that ink bottle uncorked; but I didn’t deserve all she said. However, I took it all very meekly. For one thing I had been careless: and for another I had my bedroom shoes on. Any one can overcrow me when I’m wearing bedroom shoes. Then she wound up by saying she would forgive me this time, but it was not to happen again.
“Perry won the mile race in the school sports and broke the record. He bragged too much about it and Ilse raged at him.
| · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
“November 11, 19—
“Last night Aunt Ruth found me reading David Copperfield and crying over Davy’s alienation from his mother, with a black rage against Mr. Murdstone in my heart. She must know why I was crying and wouldn’t believe me when I told her.
“‘Crying over people who never existed!’ said my Aunt Ruth incredulously.
“‘Oh, but they do exist,’ I said. ‘Why, they are as real as you are, Aunt Ruth. Do you mean to say that Miss Betsy Trotwood is a delusion?’
“I thought perhaps I could have real tea when I came to Shrewsbury, but Aunt Ruth says it is not healthy. So I drink cold water for I will not drink cambric tea any longer. As if I were a child!
| · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
“November 30, 19—
“Andrew was in tonight. He always comes the Friday night I don’t go to New Moon. Aunt Ruth left us alone in the parlour and went out to a meeting of the Ladies’ Aid. Andrew, being a Murray, can be trusted.
“I don’t dislike Andrew. It would be impossible to dislike so harmless a being. He is one of those good, talkative, awkward dears who goad you irresistibly into-tormenting them. Then you feel remorseful afterwards because they are so good.
“Tonight, Aunt Ruth being out, I tried to discover how little I could really say to Andrew, while I pursued my own train of thought. I discovered that I could get along with very few words—‘Yes’—‘No’—in several inflections, with or without a little laugh—‘I don’t know’— ‘Really?’—‘Well, well’—‘How wonderful!’—especially the last. Andrew talked on, and when he stopped for breath I stuck in ‘How wonderful.’ I did it exactly eleven times. Andrew liked it. I know it gave him a nice, flattering feeling that he was wonderful, and his conversation wonderful. Meanwhile I was living a splendid imaginary dream life by the River of Egypt in the days of Thotmes I.
“So we were both very happy. I think I’ll try it again. Andrew is too stupid to catch me at it.
“When Aunt Ruth came home she asked, ‘Well, how did you and Andrew get along?’
“She asks that every time he comes down. I know why. I know the little scheme that is understood among the Murrays, even though I don’t believe any of them have ever put it into words.
“‘Beautifully,’ I said. ‘Andrew is improving. He said one interesting thing tonight, and he hadn’t so many feet and hands as usual.’
“I don’t know why I say things like that to Aunt Ruth occasionally. It would be so much better for me if I didn’t. But something—whether it’s Murray or Starr or Shipley or Burnley, or just pure cussedness I know not—makes me say them before I’ve time to reflect.
“‘No doubt you would find more congenial company in Stovepipe Town,’ said Aunt Ruth.”