"'What use would such a dress be to you, Emily?'
"It mightn't be of any use, but I would feel in it as if it were a part of me... that it GREW on me and wasn't just bought and put on. I want ONE dress like that in my life-time. And a silk petticoat underneath it... and silk stockings!
"Ilse has a silk dress now... a bright pink one. Aunt Elizabeth says Dr. Burnley dresses Ilse far too old and rich for a child. But he wants to make up for all the years he didn't dress her at all. (I don't mean she went naked, but she might have as far as Dr. Burnley was concerned. Other people had to see to her clothes.) He does everything she wants him to do now, and gives her her own way in everything. Aunt Elizabeth says it is very bad for her, but there are times when I envy Ilse a little. I know it is wicked, but I cannot help it.
"Dr. Burnley is going to send Ilse to Shrewsbury High School next fall, and after that to Montreal to study elocution. That is why I envy her... not because of the silk dress. I wish Aunt Elizabeth would let me go to Shrewsbury, but I fear she never will. She feels she can't trust me out of her sight because my mother eloped. But she need not be afraid I will ever elope. I have made up my mind that I will never marry. I shall be WEDDED TO MY ART.
"Teddy wants to go to Shrewsbury next fall, but his mother won't let him go, either. Not that she is afraid of his eloping, but because she loves him so much she can't part with him. Teddy wants to be an artist, and Mr. Carpenter says he has genius and should have his chance, but everybody is afraid to say anything to Mrs. Kent. She is a little bit of a woman... no taller than I am, really, quiet and shy... and yet every one is afraid of her. I am... dreadfully afraid. I've always known she didn't like me... ever since those days long ago when Ilse and I first went up to the Tansy Patch, to play with Teddy. But now she hates me... I feel sure of it... just because Teddy likes me. She can't bear to have him like anybody or anything but her. She is even jealous of his pictures. So there is not much chance of his getting to Shrewsbury. Perry is going. He hasn't a cent, but he is going to work his way through. That is why he thinks he will go to Shrewsbury in place of Queen's Academy. He thinks it will be easier to get work to do in Shrewsbury, and board is cheaper there.
"'My old beast of an Aunt Tom has a little money,' he told me, 'but she won't give me any of it... unless... unless... '
"Then he looked at me SIGNIFICANTLY.
"I blushed because I couldn't help it, and then I was furious with myself for blushing, and with Perry... because he referred to something I didn't want to hear about... that time ever so long ago when his Aunt Tom met me in Lofty John's bush and nearly frightened me to death by demanding that I promise to MARRY PERRY WHEN WE GREW UP, in which case she would educate him. I never told anybody about it... being ashamed... except Ilse, and she said,
"'The idea of old Aunt Tom aspiring to a Murray for Perry!'
"But then, Ilse is awfully hard on Perry and quarrels with him half the time, over things I only smile at. Perry never likes to be outdone by anyone in anything. When we were at Amy Moore's party last week, her uncle told us a story of some remarkable freak calf he had seen, with three legs, and Perry said,
"'Oh, THAT'S nothing to a duck I saw once in Norway.'
"(Perry really was in Norway. He used to sail everywhere with his father when he was little. But I don't believe one word about that duck. He wasn't LYING... he was just ROMANCING. Dear Mr. Carpenter, I CAN'T get along without italics.)
"Perry's duck had four legs, according to him... two where a proper duck's legs should be, and two sprouting from its back. And when it got tired of walking on its ordinary pair it flopped over on its back and walked on the other pair!
"Perry told this yarn with a sober face, and everybody laughed, and Amy's uncle said, 'Go up head, Perry.' But Ilse was furious and wouldn't speak to him all the way home. She said he had made a fool of himself, trying to 'show off' with a silly story like that, and that NO GENTLEMAN would act so. "Perry said: 'I'm no gentleman, yet, only a hired boy, but some day, Miss Ilse, I'll be a finer gentleman than anyone YOU know.'
"'Gentlemen,' said Ilse in a nasty voice, 'have to be BORN. They can't be MADE, you know.'
"Ilse has almost given up calling names, as she used to do when she quarrelled with Perry or me, and taken to saying cruel, cutting things. They hurt far worse than the names used to, but I don't really mind them... much... or long... because I know Ilse doesn't mean them and really loves me as much as I love her. But Perry says they stick in his crop. They didn't speak to each other the rest of the way home, but next day Ilse was at him again about using bad grammar and not standing up when a lady enters the room.
"'Of course you couldn't be expected to know THAT,' she said in her nastiest voice, 'but I am sure Mr. Carpenter has done his best to teach you grammar.'
"Perry didn't say one word to Ilse, but he turned to me.
"'Will YOU tell me my faults?' he said. 'I don't mind YOU doing it... it will be YOU that will have to put up with me when we're grown up, not Ilse.'
"He said that to make Ilse angry, but it made me angrier still, for it was an allusion to a FORBIDDEN TOPIC. So we neither of us spoke to him for two days and he said it was a good rest from Ilse's slams anyway.
"Perry is not the only one who gets into disgrace at New Moon. I said something silly yesterday evening which makes me blush to recall it. The Ladies' Aid met here and Aunt Elizabeth gave them a supper and the husbands of the Aid came to it. Ilse and I waited on the table, which was set in the kitchen because the dining-room table wasn't long enough. It was exciting at first and then, when every one was served, it was a little dull and I began to compose some poetry in my mind as I stood by the window looking out on the garden. It was so interesting that I soon forgot everything else until suddenly I heard Aunt Elizabeth say, 'Emily,' very sharply, and then she looked significantly at Mr. Johnson, our new minister. I was confused and I snatched up the teapot and exclaimed,
"'Oh, Mr. CUP, will you have your JOHNSON filled?'
"Everybody roared and Aunt Elizabeth looked disgusted and Aunt Laura ashamed, and I felt as if I would sink through the floor. I couldn't sleep half the night for thinking over it. The strange thing was that I do believe I felt worse and more ashamed than I would have felt if I had done something really wrong. This is the 'Murray pride' of course, and I suppose it is very wicked. Sometimes I am afraid Aunt Ruth Dutton is right in her opinion of me after all.
"No, she isn't!
"But it is a tradition of New Moon that its women should be equal to any situation and always be graceful and dignified. Now, there was nothing graceful or dignified in asking such a question of the new minister. I am sure he will never see me again without thinking of it and I will always writhe when I catch his eye upon me.
"But now that I have written it out in my diary I don't feel so badly over it. NOTHING ever seems as big or as terrible... oh, nor as beautiful and grand, either, alas!... when it is written out, as it does when you are thinking or feeling about it. It seems to SHRINK directly you put it into words. Even the line of poetry I had made just before I asked that absurd question won't seem half as fine when I write it down:
"Where the velvet feet of darkness softly go.
"It DOESN'T. Some bloom seems gone from it. And yet, while I was standing there, behind all those chattering, eating people, and SAW darkness stealing so softly over the garden and the hills, like a beautiful woman robed in shadows, with stars for eyes, the FLASH came and I forgot everything but that I wanted to put something of the beauty I felt into the words of my poem. When that line came into my mind it didn't seem to me that I composed it at all... it seemed as if Something Else were trying to speak through me... and it was that Something Else that made the line seem wonderful... and now when it is gone the words seem flat and foolish and the picture I tried to draw in them not so wonderful after all.