often criticized Aunt Elizabeth in secret, but it was intolerable that an outsider should do it. And that little sneer at the Murrays! Emily could imagine the shrewish glint in Miss Potter’s eye as she uttered it. As for the candles——
“The Murrays can see farther by candle-light than you can by sunlight, Miss Potter,” thought Emily disdainfully—or at least as disdainfully as it is possible to think when a river of perspiration is running down your back, and you have nothing to breathe but the aroma of old leather.
“I suppose it’s because of the expense that she won’t send Emily to school any longer than this year,” said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. “Most folks think she ought to give her a year at Shrewsbury, anyhow—you’d think she would for pride’s sake, if nothing else. But I am told she has decided against it.”
Emily’s heart sank. She hadn’t been quite sure till now that Aunt Elizabeth wouldn’t send her to Shrewsbury. The tears sprang to her eyes—burning, stinging tears of disappointment.
“Emily ought to be taught something to earn a living by,” said Miss Potter. “Her father left nothing.”
“He left me,” said Emily below her breath, clenching her fists. Anger dried up her tears.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, laughing with tolerant derision, “I hear that Emily is going to make a living by writing stories—not only a living but a fortune, I believe.”
She laughed again. The idea was so exquisitely ridiculous. Mrs. Ann Cyrilla hadn’t heard anything so funny for a long time.
“They say she wastes half her time scribbling trash,” agreed Miss Potter. “If I was her Aunt Elizabeth I would soon cure her of that nonsense.”
“You mightn’t find it so easy. I understand she has always been a difficult girl to manage—so very pig-headed, Murray-like. The whole clamjamfry of them are as stubborn as mules.”
(Emily, wrathfully: “What a disrespectful way to speak of us! Oh, if I only hadn’t on this Mother Hubbard I’d fling this door open and confront them.”)
“She needs a tight rein, if I know anything of human nature,” said Miss Potter. “She’s going to be a flirt—anyone can see that. She’ll be Juliet over again. You’ll see. She makes eyes at every one and her only fourteen!”
(Emily, sarcastically: “I do not! And Mother wasn’t a flirt. She could have been, but she wasn’t. You couldn’t flirt, even if you wanted to—you respectable old female!”)
“She isn’t pretty as poor Juliet was, and she’s very sly—sly and deep. Mrs. Dutton says she’s the slyest child she ever saw. But still there are things I like about poor Emily.”
Mrs. Ann Cyrilla’s tone was very patronizing. “Poor” Emily writhed among the boots.
“The thing I don’t like in her is that she is always trying to be smart,” said Miss Potter decidedly. “She says clever things she has read in books and passes them off as her own——”
(Emily, outraged: “I don’t!”)
“And she’s very sarcastic and touchy, and of course as proud as Lucifer,” concluded Miss Potter.
Mrs. Ann Cyrilla laughed pleasantly and tolerantly again.
“Oh, that goes without saying in a Murray. But their worst fault is that they think nobody can do anything right but themselves, and Emily is full of it. Why, she even thinks she can preach better than Mr. Johnson.”
(Emily: “That is because I said he contradicted himself in one of his sermons—and he did. And I’ve heard you criticize dozens of sermons, Mrs. Ann Cyrilla.”)
“She’s jealous, too,” continued Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. “She can’t bear to be beaten—she wants to be first in everything. I understand she actually shed tears of mortification the night of the concert because Ilse Burnley carried off the honours in the dialogue. Emily did very poorly—she was a perfect stick. And she contradicts older people continually. It would be funny if it weren’t so ill-bred.”
“It’s odd Elizabeth doesn’t cure her of that. The Murrays think their breeding is a little above the common,” said Miss Potter.
(Emily, wrathfully, to the boots: “It is, too.”)
“Of course,” said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, “I think a great many of Emily’s faults come from her intimacy with Ilse Burnley. She shouldn’t be allowed to run about with Ilse as she does. Why, they say Ilse is as much an infidel as her father. I have always understood she doesn’t believe in God at all—or the Devil either.”
(Emily: “Which is a far worse thing in your eyes.”)
“Oh, the doctor’s training her a little better now since he found out his precious wife didn’t elope with Leo Mitchell,” sniffed Miss Potter. “He makes her go to Sunday-school. But she’s no fit associate for Emily. She swears like a trooper, I’m told. Mrs. Mark Burns was in the doctor’s office one day and heard Ilse in the parlour say distinctly ‘out, damned Spot!’ probably to the dog.”
“Dear, dear,” moaned Mrs. Ann Cyrilla.
“Do you know what I saw her do one day last week—saw her with my own eyes!” Miss Potter was very emphatic over this. Ann Cyrilla need not suppose that she had been using any other person’s eyes.
“You couldn’t surprise me,” gurgled Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. “Why, they say she was at the charivari at Johnson’s last Tuesday night, dressed as a boy.”
“Quite likely. But this happened in my own front yard. She was there with Jen Strang, who had come to get a root of my Persian rose-bush for her mother. I asked Ilse if she could sew and bake and a few other things that I thought she ought to be reminded of. Ilse said ‘No’ to them all, quite brazenly, and then she said—what do you think that girl said?”
“Oh, what?” breathed Mrs. Ann Cyrilla eagerly.
“She said, ‘Can you stand on one foot and lift your other to a level with your eyes, Miss Potter? I can.’ And”—Miss Potter hushed her tone to the proper pitch of horror—“she did it!”
The listener in the closet stifled a spasm of laughter in Cousin Jimmy’s grey juniper. How madcap Ilse did love to shock Miss Potter!
“Good gracious, were there any men around?” entreated Mrs. Ann Cyrilla.
“No—fortunately. But it’s my belief she would have done it just the same no matter who was there. We were close to the road—anybody might have been passing. I felt so ashamed. In my time a young girl would have died before she would have done a thing like that.”
“It’s no worse than her and Emily bathing by moonlight up on the sands without a stitch on,” said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla. “That was the most scandalous thing. Did you hear about it?”
“Oh, yes, that story’s all over Blair Water. Everybody’s heard it but Elizabeth and Laura. I can’t find out how it started. Were they seen?”
“Oh, dear no, not so bad as that. Ilse told it herself. She seemed to think it was quite a matter of course. I think some one ought to tell Laura and Elizabeth.”
“Tell
