isn’t a — a ladylike word,” said Aunt Laura.
“Well, then, I won’t use it any more,” said Emily resignedly, “but Lofty John is dodgasted.”
Aunt Laura laughed so much after Emily had gone upstairs that Aunt Elizabeth told her a woman of her age should have more sense.
“Elizabeth, you know it was funny,” protested Laura.
Emily being safely out of sight, Elizabeth permitted herself a somewhat grim smile.
“I told Lofty John a few plain truths — he’ll not go telling children they’re poisoned again in a hurry. I left him fairly dancing with rage.”
Worn out, Emily fell asleep as soon as she was in bed; but an hour later she awakened. Aunt Elizabeth had not yet come to bed so the blind was still up and Emily saw a dear, friendly star winking down at her. Far away the sea moaned alluringly. Oh, it was nice just to be alone and to be alive. Life tasted good to her again—”tasted like more,” as Cousin Jimmy said. She could have a chance to write more letterbills, and poetry — Emily already saw a yard of verses entitled “Thoughts of One Doomed to Sudden Death” — and play with Ilse and Teddy — scour the barns with Saucy Sal, watch Aunt Laura skim cream in the dairy and help Cousin Jimmy garden — read books in Emily’s Bower and trot along the To-day Road — but not visit Lofty John’s workshop. She determined that she would never have anything to do with Lofty John again after his diabolical cruelty. She felt so indignant with him for frightening her — after they had been such good friends, too — that she could not go to sleep until she had composed an account of her death by poison, of Lofty John being tried for her murder and condemned to death, and of his being hanged on a gibbet as lofty as himself, Emily being present at the dreadful scene, in spite of the fact that she was dead by his act. When she had finally cut him down and buried him with obloquy — the tears streaming down her face out of sympathy for Mrs Lofty John — she forgave him. Very likely he was not dodgasted after all.
She wrote it all down on a letterbill in the garret the next day.
Fancy Fed
In October Cousin Jimmy began to boil the pigs’ potatoes — unromantic name for a most romantic occupation — or so it appeared to Emily, whose love of the beautiful and picturesque was satisfied as it had never yet been on those long, cool, starry twilights of the waning year at New Moon.
There was a clump of spruce-trees in a corner of the old orchard, and under them an immense iron pot was hung over a circle of large stones — a pot so big that an ox could have been comfortably stewed in it. Emily thought it must have come down from the days of fairy tales and been some giant’s porridge pot; but Cousin Jimmy told her that it was only a hundred years old and old Hugh Murray had had it sent out from England.
“We’ve used it ever since to boil the potatoes for the New Moon pigs,” he said. “Blair Water folks think it old-fashioned; they’ve all got boiler-houses now, with built-in boilers; but as long as Elizabeth’s boss at New Moon we’ll use this.”
Emily was sure no built-in boiler could have the charm of the big pot. She helped Cousin Jimmy fill it full of potatoes, after she came from school; then, when supper was over, Cousin Jimmy lighted the fire under it and pottered about it all the evening. Sometimes he poked the fire — Emily loved that part of the performance — sending glorious streams of rosy sparks upward into the darkness; sometimes he stirred the potatoes with a long pole, looking, with his queer, forked grey beard and belted “jumper,” just like some old gnome or troll of northland story mixing the contents of a magical cauldron; and sometimes he sat beside Emily on the grey granite boulder near the pot and recited his poetry for her. Emily liked this best of all, for Cousin Jimmy’s poetry was surprisingly good — at least in spots — and Cousin Jimmy had “fit audience though few” in this slender little maiden with her pale eager face and rapt eyes.
They were an odd couple and they were perfectly happy together. Blair Water people thought Cousin Jimmy a failure and a mental weakling. But he dwelt in an ideal world of which none of them knew anything. He had recited his poems a hundred times thus, as he boiled the pigs’ potatoes; the ghosts of a score of autumns haunted the clump of spruces for him. He was an odd, ridiculous figure enough, bent and wrinkled and unkempt, gesticulating awkwardly as he recited. But it was his hour; he was no longer “simple Jimmy Murray” but a prince in his own realm. For a little while he was strong and young and splendid and beautiful, accredited master of song to a listening, enraptured world. None of his prosperous, sensible Blair Water neighbours ever lived through such an hour. He would not have exchanged places with one of them. Emily, listening to him, felt vaguely that if it had not been for that unlucky push into the New Moon well, this queer little man beside her might have stood in the presence of kings.
But Elizabeth had pushed him into the New Moon well and as a consequence he boiled pigs’ potatoes and recited poetry to Emily — Emily, who wrote poetry too, and loved these evenings so much that she could not sleep after she went to bed until she had composed a minute description of them. The flash came almost every evening over something or other. The Wind Woman swooped or purred in the tossing boughs above them — Emily had never been so near to seeing her; the sharp air was full of the pleasant tang of the burning spruce cones Cousin Jimmy shovelled under the pot; Emily’s furry kitten, Mike II, frisked and scampered about like a small, charming demon of the night; the fire glowed with beautiful redness and allure through the gloom; there were nice whispery sounds everywhere; the “great big dark” lay spread around them full of mysteries that daylight never revealed; and over all a purple sky powdered with stars.
Ilse and Teddy came, too, on some evenings. Emily always knew when Teddy was coming, for when he reached the old orchard he whistled his “call” — the one he used just for her — a funny, dear little call, like three clear bird notes, the first just medium pitch, the second higher, the third dropping away into lowness and sweetness long-drawn out — like the echoes in the Bugle Song that went clearer and further in their dying. That call always had an odd effect on Emily; it seemed to her that it fairly drew the heart out of her body — and she had to follow it. She thought Teddy could have whistled her clear across the world with those three magic notes. Whenever she heard it she ran quickly through the orchard and told Teddy whether Cousin Jimmy wanted him or not, because it was only on certain nights that Cousin Jimmy wanted anybody but her. He would never recite his poetry to Ilse or Teddy; but he told them fairy stories, and tales about the old dead-and-gone Murrays in the pond graveyard that were as queer, sometimes, as the fairy stories; and Ilse would recite too, doing better there than she ever did anywhere else; and sometimes Teddy lay sprawled out on the ground beside the big pot and drew pictures by the light of the fire — pictures of Cousin Jimmy stirring the potatoes — pictures of Ilse and Emily dancing hand in hand around it like two small witches, pictures of Mike’s cunning, little, whiskered face peering around the old boulder, pictures of weird, vague faces crowding in the darkness outside their enchanted circle. They had very wonderful evenings there, those four children.
“Oh, don’t you like the world at night, Ilse?” Emily once said rapturously.
Ilse glanced happily around her — poor little neglected Ilse, who found in Emily’s companionship what she had hungered for all her short life and who was, even now, being led by love into something of her rightful heritage.
“Yes,” she said. “And I always believe there is a God when I’m here like this.”
Then the potatoes were done — and Cousin
