"'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 room. 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. But 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. Anyone 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 to-night. 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.
"To-night, 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 to-night, 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."
CHAPTER 8. NOT PROVEN
Emily regretfully left the "Booke Shoppe," where the aroma of books and new magazines was as the savour of sweet incense in her nostrils, and hastened down cold and blustery Prince Street. Whenever possible she slipped into the Booke Shoppe and took hungry dips into magazines she could not afford to buy, avid to learn what kind of stuff they published... especially poetry. She could not see that many of the verses in them were any better than some of her own, yet editors sent hers back religiously. Emily had already used a considerable portion of the American stamps she had bought with Cousin Jimmy's dollar in paying the homeward way of her fledgelings, accompanied by only the cold comfort of rejection slips. Her Owl's Laughter had already been returned six times, but Emily had not wholly lost faith in it yet. That very morning she had dropped it again into the letter-box at the Shoppe.
"The seventh time brings luck," she thought as she turned down the street leading to Ilse's boarding-house. She had her examination in English at eleven o'clock and she wanted to glance over Ilse's note-book before she went for it. The Preps were almost through their terminal examinations, taking them by fits and starts when the class-rooms were free from Seniors and Juniors... a thing that always made the Preps furious. Emily felt comfortably certain she would get her star pin. The examinations in her hardest subjects were over and she did not believe she had fallen below eighty in any of them. To-day was English, in which she ought to go well over ninety. Remained only history, which she also loved. Everybody expected her to win the star pin. Cousin Jimmy was intensely excited over it, and Dean had sent her premature congratulations from the top of a pyramid, so sure was he of her success. His letter had come the previous day, along with the packet containing his Christmas gift.