could not imagine. The sanded floor was spotlessly white, but the boards had been scrubbed away through the years until the knots in them stuck up all over in funny little bosses, and in front of the stove they had sagged, making a queer, shallow little hollow. In one corner of the ceiling was a large square hole which looked black and spookish in the candlelight, and made her feel creepy. Something might pop down out of a hole like that if one hadn’t behaved just right, you know. And candles cast such queer wavering shadows. Emily didn’t know whether she liked the New Moon kitchen or not. It was an interesting place — and she rather thought she would like to describe it in the old account-book, if it hadn’t been burned — but Emily suddenly found herself trembling on the verge of tears.
“Cold?” said Aunt Laura kindly. “These June evenings are chilly yet. Come into the sitting-room — Jimmy has kindled a fire in the stove there.”
Emily, fighting desperately for self-control, went into the sitting-room. It was much more cheerful than the kitchen. The floor was covered with gay-striped homespun, the table had a bright crimson cloth, the walls were hung with pretty, diamond-patterned paper, the curtains were of wonderful palered damask with a design of white ferns scattered all over them. They looked very rich and imposing and Murray-like. Emily had never seen such curtains before. But best of all were the friendly gleams and flickers from the jolly hardwood fire in the open stove that mellowed the ghostly candlelight with something warm and rosy-golden. Emily toasted her toes before it and felt reviving interest in her surroundings. What lovely little leaded glass doors closed the china closets on either side of the high, black, polished mantel! What a funny, delightful shadow the carved ornament on the sideboard cast on the wall behind it — just like a negro’s side-face, Emily decided. What mysteries might lurk behind the chintz-lined glass doors of the bookcase! Books were Emily’s friends wherever she found them. She flew over to the bookcase and opened the door. But before she could see more than the backs of rather ponderous volumes, Aunt Elizabeth came in, with a mug of milk and a plate whereon lay two little oatmeal cakes.
“Emily,” said Aunt Elizabeth sternly, “shut that door. Remember that after this you are not to meddle with things that don’t belong to you.”
“I thought books belonged to everybody,” said Emily.
“Ours don’t,” said Aunt Elizabeth, contriving to convey the impression that New Moon books were in a class by themselves. “Here is your supper, Emily. We are all so tired that we are just having a lunch. Eat it and then we will go to bed.”
Emily drank the milk and worried down the oatcakes, still gazing about her. How pretty the wallpaper was, with the garland of roses inside the gilt diamond! Emily wondered if she could “see it in the air.” She tried — yes, she could — there it hung, a yard from her eyes, a little fairy pattern, suspended in mid-air like a screen. Emily had discovered that she possessed this odd knack when she was six. By a certain movement of the muscles of her eyes, which she could never describe, she could produce a tiny replica of the wallpaper in the air before her — could hold it there and look at it as long as she liked — could shift it back and forth, to any distance she chose, making it larger or smaller as it went farther away or came nearer. It was one of her secret joys when she went into a new room anywhere to “see the paper in the air.” And this New Moon paper made the prettiest fairy paper she had ever seen.
“What are you staring at nothing in that queer way for?” demanded Aunt Elizabeth, suddenly returning.
Emily shrank into herself. She couldn’t explain to Aunt Elizabeth — Aunt Elizabeth would be like Ellen Greene and say she was “crazy.”
“I — I wasn’t staring at anything.”
“Don’t contradict. I say you were,” retorted Aunt Elizabeth. “Don’t do it again. It gives your face an unnatural expression. Come now — we will go upstairs. You are to sleep with me.”
Emily gave a gasp of dismay. She had hoped it might be with Aunt Laura. Sleeping with Aunt Elizabeth seemed a very formidable thing. But she dared not protest. They went up to Aunt Elizabeth’s big, sombre bedroom where there was dark, grim wallpaper that could never be transformed into a fairy curtain, a high black bureau, topped with a tiny swing-mirror, so far above her that there could be no Emily-in-the-glass, tightly closed windows with dark-green curtains, a high bedstead with a dark-green canopy, and a huge, fat, smothering featherbed, with high, hard pillows.
Emily stood still, gazing about her.
“Why don’t you get undressed?” asked Aunt Elizabeth.
“I — I don’t like to undress before you,” faltered Emily.
Aunt Elizabeth looked at Emily through her cold, spectacled eyes.
“Take off your clothes, at once,” she said.
Emily obeyed, tingling with anger and shame. It was abominable — taking off her clothes while Aunt Elizabeth stood and watched her. The outrage of it was unspeakable. It was even harder to say her prayers before Aunt Elizabeth. Emily felt that it was not much good to pray under such circumstances. Father’s God seemed very far away and she suspected that Aunt Elizabeth’s was too much like Ellen Greene’s.
“Get into bed,” said Aunt Elizabeth, turning down the clothes.
Emily glanced at the shrouded window.
“Aren’t you going to open the window, Aunt Elizabeth?”
Aunt Elizabeth looked at Emily as if the latter had suggested removing the roof.
“Open the window — and let in the night air!” she exclaimed. “Certainly not!”
“Father and I always had our window open,” cried Emily.
“No wonder he died of consumption,” said Aunt Elizabeth. “Night air is poison.”
“What air is there at night but night air?” asked Emily.
“Emily,” said Aunt Elizabeth icily, “get — into — bed.”
Emily got in.
But it was utterly impossible to sleep, lying there in that engulfing bed that seemed to swallow her up, with that cloud of blackness above her and not a gleam of light anywhere — and Aunt Elizabeth lying beside her, long and stiff and bony.
“I feel as if I was in bed with a griffin,” thought Emily. “Oh — oh — oh — I’m going to cry — I know I am.”
Desperately and vainly she strove to keep the tears back — they would come. She felt utterly alone and lonely — there in that darkness, with an alien, hostile world all around her — for it seemed hostile now. And there was such a strange, mysterious, mournful sound in the air — far away, yet clear. It was the murmur of the sea, but Emily did not know that and it frightened her. Oh, for her little bed at home — oh, for Father’s soft breathing in the room — oh, for the dancing friendliness of well-known stars shining down through her open window! She must go back — she couldn’t stay here — she would never be happy here! But there wasn’t any “back” to go to — no home — no father — . A great sob burst from her — another followed and then another. It was no use to clench her hands and set her teeth — and chew the inside of her cheeks — nature conquered pride and determination and had her way.
“What are you crying for?” asked Aunt Elizabeth.
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