imagine why. Then I discovered that some one had pinned a sheet of foolscap to my back, on which was printed in big, black letters: ‘Emily Byrd Starr, Authoress of The Four-Legged Duck.’ They laughed more than ever when I snatched it off and threw it in the coal-scuttle. It infuriates me when anyone ridicules my ambitions like that. I came home angry and sore. But when I had sat on the steps of the summer-house and looked at one of Cousin Jimmy’s big purple pansies for five minutes all my anger went away. Nobody can keep on being angry if she looks into the heart of a pansy for a little while.
“Besides, the time will come when they will not laugh at me!
“Andrew went home yesterday. Aunt Elizabeth asked me how I liked him. She never asked me how I liked anyone before—my likings were not important enough. I suppose she is beginning to realize that I am no longer a child.
“I said I thought he was good and kind and stupid and uninteresting.
“Aunt Elizabeth was so annoyed she would not speak to me the whole evening. Why? I had to tell the truth. And Andrew is.
* * * * *
“May 21, 19—
“Old Kelly was here to-day for the first time this spring, with a load of shining new tins. He brought me a bag of candies as usual—and teased me about getting married, also as usual. But he seemed to have something on his mind, and when I went to the dairy to get him the drink of milk he had asked for, he followed me.
“‘Gurrl dear,’ he said mysteriously. ‘I met Jarback Praste in the lane. Does he be coming here much?’
“I cocked my head at the Murray angle.
“‘If you mean Mr. Dean Priest,’ I said, ‘he comes often. He is a particular friend of mine.’
“Old Kelly shook his head.
“‘Gurrl dear—I warned ye—niver be after saying I didn’t warn ye. I towld ye the day I took ye to Praste Pond niver to marry a Praste. Didn’t I now?’
“‘Mr. Kelly, you’re too ridiculous,’ I said—angry and yet feeling it was absurd to be angry with Old Jock Kelly. ‘I’m not going to marry anybody. Mr. Priest is old enough to be my father, and I am just a little girl he helps in her studies.’
“Old Kelly gave his head another shake.
“‘I know the Prastes, gurrl dear—and when they do be after setting their minds on a thing ye might as well try to turn the wind. This Jarback now—they tell me he’s had his eye on ye iver since he fished ye up from the Malvern rocks—he’s just biding his time till ye get old enough for coorting. They tell me he’s an infidel, and it’s well known that whin he was being christened he rached up and clawed the spectacles off av the minister. So what wud ye ixpect? I nadn’t be telling ye he’s lame and crooked—ye can see that for yerself. Take foolish Ould Kelly’s advice and cut loose while there’s time. Now, don’t be looking at me like the Murrays, gurrl dear. Shure, and it’s for your own good I do be spaking.’
“I walked off and left him. One couldn’t argue with him over such a thing. I wish people wouldn’t put such ideas into my mind. They stick there like burrs. I won’t feel as comfortable with Dean for weeks now, though I know perfectly well every word Old Kelly said was nonsense.
“After Old Kelly went away I came up to my room and wrote a full description of him in a Jimmy-book.
“Ilse has got a new hat trimmed with clouds of blue tulle, and red cherries, with big blue tulle bows under the chin. I did not like it and told her so. She was furious and said I was jealous and hasn’t spoken to me for two days. I thought it all over. I knew I was not jealous, but I concluded I had made a mistake. I will never again tell anyone a thing like that. It was true but it was not tactful.
“I hope Ilse will have forgiven me by to-morrow. I miss her horribly when she is offended with me. She’s such a dear thing and so jolly, and splendid, when she isn’t vexed.
“Teddy is a little squiffy with me, too, just now. I think it is because Geoff North walked home with me from prayer-meeting last Wednesday night. I hope that is the reason. I like to feel that I have that much power over Teddy.
“I wonder if I ought to have written that down. But it’s true.
“If Teddy only knew it, I have been very unhappy and ashamed over that affair. At first, when Geoff singled me out from all the girls, I was quite proud of it. It was the very first time I had had an escort home, and Geoff is a town boy, very handsome and polished, and all the older girls in Blair Water are quite foolish about him. So I sailed away from the church door with him, feeling as if I had grown up all at once. But we hadn’t gone far before I was hating him. He was so condescending. He seemed to think I was a simple little country girl who must be quite overwhelmed with the honour of his company.
“And that was true at first! That was what stung me. To think I had been such a little fool!
“He kept saying, ‘Really, you surprise me,’ in an affected, drawling kind of way, whenever I made a remark. And he bored me. He couldn’t talk sensibly about anything. Or else he wouldn’t try to with me. I was quite savage by the time we got to New Moon. And then that insufferable creature asked me to kiss him!
“I drew myself up—oh, I was Murray clear through at that moment, all right. I felt I was looking exactly like Aunt Elizabeth.
“‘I do not kiss young men,’ I said disdainfully.
“Geoff laughed and caught my hand.
“‘Why, you little goose, what do you suppose I came home with you for?’ he said.
“I pulled my hand away from him, and walked into the house. But before I did that, I did something else.
“I slapped his face!
“Then I came up to my room and cried with shame over being insulted, and having been so undignified in resenting it. Dignity is a tradition of New Moon, and I felt that I had been false to it.
“But I think I ‘surprised’ Geoff North in right good earnest!
* * * * *
“May 24, 19—
“Jennie Strang told me to-day that Geoff North told her brother that I was ‘a regular spitfire’ and he had had enough of me.
“Aunt Elizabeth has found out that Geoff came home with me, and told me to-day that I would not be ‘trusted’ to go alone to prayer-meeting again.
* * * * *
“May 25, 19—
“I am sitting here in my room at twilight. The window is open and the frogs are singing of something that happened very long ago. All along the middle garden walk the Gay Folk are holding up great fluted cups of ruby and gold and pearl. It is not raining now, but it rained all day—a rain scented with lilacs. I like all kinds of weather and I like rainy days—soft, misty, rainy days when the Wind Woman just shakes the tops of the spruces gently; and wild, tempestuous, streaming rainy days. I like being shut in by the rain—I like to hear it thudding on the roof, and beating on the panes and pouring off the eaves, while the Wind Woman skirls like a mad old witch in the
