Cousin Jimmy seized the cold hands Emily held out to him.
"Emily, dear child, what has happened?"
"Well, just to jump into the middle of things... I've left Aunt Ruth's and I'm not going back."
Cousin Jimmy didn't say anything for a few moments. But he did a few things. First he tiptoed across the kitchen and carefully shut the sitting-room door; then he gently filled the stove up with wood, drew a chair up to it, pushed Emily into it and lifted her cold, ragged feet to the hearth. Then he lighted two more candles and put them on the chimney-piece. Finally he sat down in his chair again and put his hands on his knees.
"Now, tell me all about it."
Emily, still in the throes of rebellion and indignation, told it pretty fully.
As soon as Cousin Jimmy got an inkling of what had really happened he began to shake his head slowly... continued to shake it... shook it so long and gravely that Emily began to feel an uncomfortable conviction that instead of being a wronged, dramatic figure she was by way of being a bit of a little fool. The longer Cousin Jimmy shook his head the smaller grew her heroics. When she had finished her story with a defiant, conclusive "I'm NOT going back to Aunt Ruth's, anyhow," Cousin Jimmy gave a final wag to his head and pushed the crock across the table.
"Have a doughnut, pussy."
Emily hesitated. She was very fond of doughnuts... and it had been a long time since she had her supper. But doughnuts seemed out of keeping with rebellion and tumult. They were decidedly reactionary in their tendencies. Some vague glimmering of this made Emily refuse the doughnut.
Cousin Jimmy took one himself.
"So you're not going back to Shrewsbury?"
"Not to Aunt Ruth's," said Emily.
"It's the same thing," said Cousin Jimmy.
Emily knew it was. She knew it was of no use to hope that Aunt Elizabeth would let her board elsewhere.
"And you walked all the way home over those roads." Cousin Jimmy shook his head. "Well, you HAVE spunk. Heaps of it," he added meditatively between bites.
"Do you blame me?" demanded Emily passionately... all the more passionately because she felt some inward support had been shaken away by Cousin Jimmy's head.
"No-o-o, it was a durn mean shame to lock you out... just like Ruth Dutton."
"And you see... don't you... that I can't go back after such an insult?"
Cousin Jimmy nibbled at the doughnut cautiously, as if bent on trying to see how near he could nibble to the hole without actually breaking through.
"I don't think any of your grandmothers would have given up a chance for an education so easily," he said. "Not on the Murray side, anyhow," he added after a moment's reflection, which apparently reminded him that he knew too little about the Starrs to dogmatize concerning them.
Emily sat very still. As Teddy would have said in cricket parlance, Cousin Jimmy had got her middle wicket with the first ball. She felt at once that when Cousin Jimmy, in that diabolical fit of inspiration, dragged her grandmothers in, everything was over but the precise terms of surrender. She could see them all around her... the dear, dead ladies of New Moon... Mary Shipley and Elizabeth Burnley, and all the rest... mild, determined, restrained, looking down with something of contemptuous pity on her, their foolish, impulsive descendant. Cousin Jimmy appeared to think there might be some weakness on the Starr side. Well, there wasn't... she would show him!
She HAD expected more sympathy from Cousin Jimmy. She had known Aunt Elizabeth would condemn her and even Aunt Laura would look disappointed question. But she had counted on Cousin Jimmy taking her part. He always had before.
"My grandmothers never had to put up with Aunt Ruth," she flung at him.
"They had to put up with your grandfathers." Cousin Jimmy appeared to think that this was conclusive... as anyone who had known Archibald and Hugh Murray might have very well thought.
"Cousin Jimmy, do you think I ought to go back and accept Aunt Ruth's scolding and go on as if this had never happened?"
"What do YOU think about it?" asked Cousin Jimmy. "DO take a doughnut, pussy."
This time Emily took the doughnut. She might as well have some comfort. Now, you can't eat doughnuts and remain dramatic. Try it.
Emily slipped from her peak of tragedy to the valley of petulance.
"Aunt Ruth has been ABOMINABLE these past two months... ever since her bronchitis has prevented her from going out. You don't know WHAT it's been like."
"Oh, I do... I do. Ruth Dutton never made anyone feel better pleased with herself. Feet getting warm, Emily?"
"I HATE her," cried Emily, still grasping after self-justification. "It's horrible to live in the same house with anyone you hate... "
"Poisonous," agreed Cousin Jimmy.
"And it ISN'T my fault. I HAVE tried to like her... tried to please her... she's always twitting me... she attributes mean motives to everything I do or say... or DON'T do or say. I've never heard the last of sitting in the corner of the pew... and failing to get a star pin. She's always HINTING insults to my father and mother. And she's always FORGIVING me for things I haven't done... or that don't need forgiveness."
"Aggravating... very," conceded Cousin Jimmy.
"Aggravating... you're right. I know if I go back she'll say 'I'll forgive you this time, but don't let it happen again.' And she will SNIFF... oh, Aunt Ruth's sniff is the hatefulest sound in the world!"
"Ever hear a dull knife sawing through thick cardboard?" murmured Cousin Jimmy.
Emily ignored him and swept on.
"I can't be ALWAYS in the wrong... but Aunt Ruth thinks I am... and says she has 'to make allowances' for me. She doses me with cod- liver oil... she never lets me go out in the evening if she can help it... 'consumptives should never be out after eight o clock.' If SHE is cold, I must put on an extra petticoat. She is always asking disagreeable questions and refusing to believe my answers. She believes and always will believe that I kept this play a secret from her because of slyness. I never thought of such a thing. Why, the Shrewsbury Times referred to it last week. Aunt Ruth doesn't often miss anything in the Times. She twitted me for days because she found a composition of mine that I had signed 'Emilie.' 'Better try to spell your name after some unheard-of-twist,' she sneered!"
"Well, wasn't it a bit silly, pussy?"
"Oh, I suppose my grandmothers wouldn't have done it! But Aunt Ruth needn't have kept it up as she did. THAT is what is so dreadful... if she'd speak her mind on a thing and have done with it. Why, I got a little spot of iron-rust on my white petticoat and Aunt Ruth harped on it for weeks. She was determined to find out WHEN it was rusted and HOW... and I hadn't the least idea. Really, Cousin Jimmy, when this had gone on for three weeks I thought I'd have to scream if she mentioned it again."
"ANY proper person would feel the same," said Cousin Jimmy to the beef ham.
"Oh, any ONE of these things is only a pin-prick, I know... and you think I'm silly to mind it... but... "
"No, no. A hundred pin-pricks would be harder to put up with than a broken leg. I'D sooner be knocked on the head and be done with it."
"Yes, that's it... nothing but pin-pricks all the time. She won't let Ilse come to the house... or Teddy, or Perry... nobody but that stupid Andrew. I'm so tired of him. She wouldn't let me go to the Prep dance. They had a sleigh drive and supper at the Brown Teapot Inn and a little dance... everybody went but me... it was the event of the winter. If I go for a walk in the Land of Uprightness at sunset she is sure there is something sinister in it... SHE never wants to walk in the Land of Uprightness, so why should I? She says I have got too high an opinion of myself. I HAVEN'T... HAVE I, Cousin Jimmy?"