been so happy! She had thought she was going to live for years and write great poems and be famous like Mrs Hemans. She had had a fight with Ilse the night before and hadn’t made it up yet — never could make it up now. And Ilse would feel so terribly. She must write her a note and forgive her. Was there time for that much? Oh, how cold her hands were! Perhaps that meant she was dying already. She had heard or read that your hands turned cold when you were dying. She wondered if her face was turning black. She grasped her candle and hurried up the stairs to the spare-room. There was a looking-glass there — the only one in the house hung low enough for her to see her reflection if she tipped the bottom of it back. Ordinarily Emily would have been frightened to death at the mere thought of going into that spare-room by dim, flickering candlelight. But the one great terror had swallowed up all lesser ones. She looked at her reflection, amid the sleek, black flow of her hair, in the upward-striking light on the dark background of the shadowy room. Oh, she was pale as the dead already. Yes, that was a dying face — there could be no doubt of it.
Something rose up in Emily and took possession of her — some inheritance from the good old stock behind her. She ceased to tremble — she accepted her fate — with bitter regret, but calmly.
“I don’t want to die but since I have to I’ll die as becomes a Murray,” she said. She had read a similar sentence in a book and it came pat to the moment. And now she must hurry. That letter to Ilse must be written. Emily went to Aunt Elizabeth’s room first, to assure herself that her righthand top bureau drawer was quite tidy; then she flitted up the garret stairs to her dormer corner. The great place was full of lurking, pouncing shadows that crowded about the little island of faint candlelight, but they had no terrors for Emily now.
“And to think I was feeling so bad to-day because my petticoat was bunchy,” she thought, as she got one of her dear letterbills — the last she would ever write on. There was no need to write to Father — she would see him soon — but Ilse must have her letter — dear, loving, jolly, hot-tempered Ilse, who, just the day before had shrieked insulting epithets after her and who would be haunted by remorse all her life for it.
“Dearest Ilse,” wrote Emily, her hand shaking a little but her lips firmly set. “I am going to die. I have been poisoned by an apple Lofty John had put for rats. I will never see you again, but I am writing this to tell you I love you and you are not to feel bad because you called me a skunk and a bloodthirsty mink yesterday. I forgive you, so do not worry over it. And I am sorry I told you that you were beneath contemt because I didn’t mean a word of it. I leave you all my share of the broken dishes in our playhouse and please tell Teddy goodbye for me. He will never be able to teach me how to put worms on a fish-hook now. I promised him I would learn because I did not want him to think I was a coward but I am glad I did not for I know what the worm feels like now. I do not feel sick yet but I don’t know what the simptoms of poisoning are and Lofty John said there was enough to kill a dozen of me so I cant have long to live. If Aunt Elizabeth is willing you can have my necklace of Venetian beads. It is the only valuable possession I have. Don’t let anybody do anything to Lofty John because he did not mean to poison me and it was all my own fault for being so greedy. Perhaps people will think he did it on purpose because I am a Protestant but I feel sure he did not and please tell him not to be hawnted by remorse. I think I feel a pain in my stomach now so I guess that the end draws ni. Fare well and remember her who died so young.
“Your own devoted,
“Emily.”
As Emily folded up her letterbill she heard the sound of wheels in the yard below. A moment later Elizabeth and Laura Murray were confronted in the kitchen by a tragic-faced little creature, grasping a guttering candle in one hand and a red letterbill in the other.
“Emily, what is the matter?” cried Aunt Laura.
“I’m dying,” said Emily solemnly. “I et an apple Lofty John had poisoned for rats. I have only a few minutes to live, Aunt Laura.”
Laura Murray dropped down on the black bench with her hand at her heart. Elizabeth turned as pale as Emily herself.
“Emily, is this some play-acting of yours?” she demanded sternly.
“No,” cried Emily, quite indignantly. “It’s the truth. Do you suppose a dying person would be play-acting? And oh, Aunt Elizabeth, please will you give this letter to Ilse — and please forgive me for being naughty — though I wasn’t always naughty when you thought I was — and don’t let any one see after I’m dead if I turn black — especially Rhoda Stuart.”
By this time Aunt Elizabeth was herself again.
“How long ago is it since you ate that apple, Emily?”
“About an hour.”
“If you’d eaten a poisoned apple an hour ago you’d be dead or sick by now—”
“Oh,” cried Emily transformed in a second. A wild, sweet hope sprang up in her heart — was there a chance for her after all? Then she added despairingly, “But I felt another pain in my stomach just as I came downstairs.”
“Laura,” said Aunt Elizabeth, “take this child out to the cookhouse and give her a good dose of mustard and water at once. It will do no harm and may do some good, if there’s anything in this yarn of hers. I’m going down to the doctor’s — he may be back — but I’ll see Lofty John on the way.”
Aunt Elizabeth went out — and Aunt Elizabeth went out very quickly — if it had been any one else it might have been said she ran. As for Emily — well, Aunt Laura gave her that emetic in short order and two minutes later Emily had no doubt at all that she was dying then and there — and the sooner the better. When Aunt Elizabeth returned Emily was lying on the sofa in the kitchen, as white as the pillow under her head, and as limp as a faded lily.
“Wasn’t the doctor home?” cried Aunt Laura desperately.
“I don’t know — there’s no need of the doctor. I didn’t think there was from the first. It was just one of Lofty John’s jokes. He thought he’d give Emily a fright — just for fun — his idea of fun. March you off to bed, Miss Emily. You deserve all you’ve got for going over there to Lofty John’s at all and I don’t pity you a particle. I haven’t had such a turn for years.”
“I did have a pain in my stomach,” wailed Emily, in whom fright and mustard-and-water combined had temporarily extinguished all spirit.
“Any one who eats apples from dawn to dark must expect a few pains in her stomach. You won’t have any more tonight, I reckon — the mustard will remedy that. Take your candle and go.”
“Well,” said Emily, getting unsteadily to her feet. “I hate that dodgasted Lofty John.”
“Emily!” said both aunts together.
“He deserves it,” said Emily vindictively.
“Oh, Emily — that dreadful word you used!” Aunt Laura seemed curiously upset about something.
“Why, what’s the matter with dodgasted?” said Emily, quite mystified. “Cousin Jimmy uses it often, when things vex him. He used it to-day — he said that dodgasted heifer had broken out of the graveyard pasture again.”
“Emily,” said Aunt Elizabeth, with the air of one impaling herself on the easiest horn of a dilemma, “your Cousin Jimmy is a man — and men sometimes use expressions, in the heat of anger, that are not proper for little
