"No," said Cousin Jimmy thoughtfully. "High... but not TOO high."
"She says I'm always displacing things... if I look out of a window she'll trot across the room and mathematically match the corners of the curtains again. And it's 'Why... why... why'... all the time, ALL the time, Cousin Jimmy."
"I know you feel a lot better now that you've got all that out of your system," said Cousin Jimmy. "'Nother doughnut?"
Emily, with a sigh of surrender, took her feet off the stove and moved over to the table. The crock of doughnuts was between her and Cousin Jimmy. She WAS very hungry.
"Ruth give you enough to eat?" queried Cousin Jimmy anxiously.
"Oh, yes. Aunt Ruth keeps up one New Moon tradish at least. She has a good table. But there are no snacks."
"And you always liked a tasty bite at bed-time, didn't you? But you took a box back last time you were home?"
"Aunt Ruth confiscated it. That is, she put it in the pantry and served its contents up at meal times. These doughnuts ARE good. And there is always something exciting and lawless about eating at unearthly hours like this, isn't there? How did you happen to be up, Cousin Jimmy?"
"A sick cow. Thought I'd better sit up and look after her."
"It was lucky for me you were. Oh, I'm in my proper senses again, Cousin Jimmy. Of course, I know you think I've been a little fool."
"Everybody's a fool in some particular," said Cousin Jimmy.
"Well, I'll go back and bite the sour apple without a grimace."
"Lie down on the sofa and have a nap. I'll hitch up the grey mare and drive you back as soon as it begins to be daylight."
"No, that won't do at all. Several reasons. In the first place, the roads aren't fit for wheels or runners. In the second place we couldn't drive away from here without Aunt Elizabeth hearing us, and then she'd find out all about it and I don't want her to. We'll keep my foolishness a dark and deadly secret between you and me, Cousin Jimmy."
"Then how are you going to get back to Shrewsbury?"
"Walk."
"Walk? To Shrewsbury? At this hour of the night?"
"Haven't I just walked from Shrewsbury at this hour? I can do it again and it won't be any harder than bumping over those awful roads behind the grey mare. Of course, I'll put something on my feet that will be a little more protection than kid slippers. I've ruined your Christmas present in my brain-storm. There is a pair of my old boots in the closet there. I'll put them on... and my old ulster. I'll be back in Shrewsbury by daylight. I'll start as soon as we finish the doughnuts. Let's lick the platter clean, Cousin Jimmy."
Cousin Jimmy yielded. After all, Emily was young and wiry, the night was fine, and the less Elizabeth knew about some things the better for all concerned. With a sigh of relief that the affair had turned out so well... he had really been afraid at first that Emily's underlying "stubbornness" had been reached and then, whew!... Cousin Jimmy settled down to doughnuts.
"How's the writing coming on?" he asked.
"I've written a good deal lately... though it's pretty cold in my room mornings, but I love it so... it's my dearest dream to do something worth while some day."
"So you will. YOU haven't been pushed down a well," said Cousin Jimmy.
Emily patted his hand. None realized better than she what Cousin Jimmy might have done if HE had not been pushed down a well.
When the doughnuts were finished Emily donned her old boots and ulster. It was a very shabby garment but her young-moon beauty shone over it like a star in the old, dim, candle-lighted room.
Cousin Jimmy looked up at her. He thought that she was a gifted, beautiful, joyous creature and that some things were a shame.
"Tall and stately... tall and stately like all our women," he murmured dreamily. "Except Aunt Ruth," he added.
Emily laughed... and "made a face."
"Aunt Ruth will make the most of her inches in our forthcoming interview. This will last her the rest of the year. But don't worry, Cousin darling, I won't do any more foolish things for quite a long time now. This has cleared the air. Aunt Elizabeth will think it was dreadful of you to eat a whole crockful of doughnuts yourself, you greedy Cousin Jimmy."
"Do you want another blank-book?"
"Not yet. The last one you gave me is only half-full yet. A blank-book lasts me quite a while when I can't write stories. Oh, I wish I could, Cousin Jimmy."
"The time will come... the time will come," said Cousin Jimmy encouragingly. "Wait a while... just wait a while. If we don't chase things... sometimes the things following us can catch up. 'Through wisdom is an house builded, and by understanding is it established. And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches'... all precious and pleasant riches, Emily. Proverbs twenty-fourth, third and fifth."
He let Emily out and bolted the door. He put out all the candles but one. He glared at it for a few moments, then, satisfied that Elizabeth could not hear him, Cousin Jimmy said fervently,
"Ruth Dutton can go to... to... to... " Cousin Jimmy's courage failed him, "... to heaven!"
Emily went back to Shrewsbury through the clear moonlight. She had expected the walk to be dreary and weary, robbed of the impetus anger and rebellion had given. But she found that it had become transmuted into a thing of beauty... and Emily was one of "the eternal slaves of beauty," of whom Carman sings, who are yet "masters of the world." She was tired, but her tiredness showed itself in a certain exaltation of feeling and imagination such as she often experienced when over-fatigued. Thought was quick and active. She had a series of brilliant imaginary conversations and thought out so many epigrams that she was agreeably surprised at herself. It was good to feel vivid and interesting and all-alive once more. She was alone but not lonely.
As she walked along she dramatized the night. There was about it a wild, lawless charm that appealed to a certain wild, lawless strain hidden deep in Emily's nature... a strain that wished to walk where it would with no guidance but its own... the strain of the gypsy and the poet, the genius and the fool.
The big fir-trees, released from their burden of snow, were tossing their arms freely and wildly and gladly across the moonlit fields. Was ever anything so beautiful as the shadows of those grey, clean- limbed maples on the road at her feet? The houses she passed were full of intriguing mystery. She liked to think of the people who lay there dreaming and saw in sleep what waking life denied them... of little children's dear hands folded in exquisite slumber... of hearts that, perhaps, kept sorrowful, wakeful vigils... of lonely arms that reached out in the emptiness of the night... all while she, Emily, flitted by like a shadowy wraith of the small hours.
And it was easy to think, too, that other things were abroad... things that were not mortal or human. She always lived on the edge of fairyland and now she stepped right over it. The Wind Woman was really whistling eerily in the reeds of the swamp... she was sure she heard the dear, diabolical chuckles of owls in the spruce copses... something frisked across her path... it might be a rabbit or it might be a Little Grey Person; the trees put on half-pleasing, half- terrifying shapes they never wore by day. The dead thistles of last year were goblin groups along the fences: that shaggy, old yellow birch was some satyr of the woodland: the footsteps of the old gods echoed around her: those gnarled stumps on the hill field were surely Pan piping through moonlight and shadow with his troop of laughing fauns. It was delightful to believe they were.
"One loses so much when one becomes incredulous," said Emily... and then thought that was a rather clever remark and wished she had a Jimmy-book to write it down.
So, having washed her soul free from bitterness in the aerial bath of the spring night and tingling from head to foot with the wild, strange, sweet life of the spirit, she came to Aunt Ruth's when the faint, purplish hills east of the harbour were growing clear under a whitening sky. She had expected to find the door still locked; but the knob turned as she tried it and she went in.