“No,” cried Emily, blushing violently and quite scandalized at the idea. “Why, I’m only eleven.”
“Oh, everybody in our class has a beau. Mine is Teddy Kent. I shook hands with him after I’d counted nine stars for nine nights without missing a night. If you do that the first boy you shake hands with afterwards is to be your beau. But it’s awful hard to do. It took me all winter. Teddy wasn’t in school to-day — he’s been sick all June. He’s the best-looking boy in Blair Water. You’ll have to have a beau, too, Emily.”
“I won’t,” declared Emily angrily. “I don’t know a thing about beaux and I won’t have one.”
Rhoda tossed her head.
“Oh, I s’pose you think there’s nobody good enough for you, living at New Moon. Well, you won’t be able to play Clap-in-and-clap-out if you haven’t a beau.”
Emily knew nothing of the mysteries of Clap-in-and-clap-out, and didn’t care. Anyway, she wasn’t going to have a beau and she repeated this in such decided tones that Rhoda deemed it wise to drop the subject.
Emily was rather glad when the bell rang. Miss Brownell granted Rhoda’s request quite graciously and Emily transferred her goods and chattels to Rhoda’s seat. Rhoda whispered a good deal during the last hour and Emily got scolded for it but did not mind.
“I’m going to have a birthday party the first week in July, and I’m going to invite you, if your aunts will let you come. I’m not going to have Ilse Burnley though.”
“Don’t you like her?”
“No. She’s an awful tomboy. And then her father is an infidel. And so’s she. She always spells ‘God’ with a little ‘g’ in her dictation. Miss Brownell scolds her for it, but she does it right along. Miss Brownell won’t whip her because she’s setting her cap for Dr Burnley. But Ma says she won’t get him because he hates women. I don’t think it’s proper to ‘sociate with such people. Ilse is an awful wild queer girl and has an awful temper. So has her father. She doesn’t chum with anybody. Isn’t it ridic’lus the way she wears her hair? You ought to have a bang, Emily. They’re all the rage and you’d look well with one because you’ve such a high forehead. It would make a real beauty of you. My, but you have lovely hair, and your hands are just lovely. All the Murrays have pretty hands. And you have the sweetest eyes, Emily.”
Emily had never received so many compliments in her life. Rhoda laid flattery on with a trowel. Her head was quite turned and she went home from school determined to ask Aunt Elizabeth to cut her hair in a bang. If it would make a beauty of her it must be compassed somehow. And she would also ask Aunt Elizabeth if she might wear her Venetian beads to school next day.
“The other girls may respect me more then,” she thought.
She was alone from the crossroads, where she had parted company with Rhoda, and she reviewed the events of the day with a feeling that, after all, she had kept the Starr flag flying, except for a temporary reverse in the matter of the snake. School was very different from what she had expected it to be, but that was the way in life, she had heard Ellen Greene say, and you just had to make the best of it. Rhoda was a darling; and there was something about Ilse Burnley that one liked; and as for the rest of the girls Emily got square with them by pretending she saw them all being hanged in a row for frightening her to death with a snake, and felt no more resentment towards them, although some of the things that had been said to her rankled bitterly in her heart for many a day. She had no father to tell them to, and no account-book to write them out in, so she could not exorcise them.
She had no speedy chance to ask for a bang, for there was company at New Moon and her aunts were busy getting ready an elaborate supper. But when the preserves were brought on Emily snatched the opportunity of a lull in the older conversation.
“Aunt Elizabeth,” she said, “can I have a bang?”
Aunt Elizabeth looked her disdain.
“No,” she said, “I do not approve of bangs. Of all the silly fashions that have come in nowadays, bangs are the silliest.”
“Oh, Aunt Elizabeth, do let me have a bang. It would make a beauty of me — Rhoda says so.”
“It would take a good deal more than a bang to do that, Emily. We will not have bangs at New Moon — except on the Molly cows. They are the only creatures that should wear bangs.”
Aunt Elizabeth smiled triumphantly around the table — Aunt Elizabeth did smile sometimes when she thought she had silenced some small person by exquisite ridicule. Emily understood that it was no use to hope for bangs. Loveliness did not lie that way for her. It was mean of Aunt Elizabeth — mean. She heaved a sigh of disappointment and dismissed the idea for the present. There was something else she wanted to know.
“Why doesn’t Ilse Burnley’s father believe in God?” she asked.
“‘Cause of the trick her mother played him,” said Mr Slade, with a chuckle. Mr Slade was a fat, jolly-looking old man with bushy hair and whiskers. He had already said some things Emily could not understand and which had seemed greatly to embarrass his very ladylike wife.
“What trick did Ilse’s mother play?” asked Emily, all agog with interest.
Now Aunt Laura looked at Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Elizabeth looked at Aunt Laura. Then the latter said: “Run out and feed the chickens, Emily.”
Emily rose with dignity.
“You might just as well tell me that Ilse’s mother isn’t to be talked about and I will obey you. I understand perfectly what you mean,” she said as she left the table.
A Special Providence
Emily was sure on that first day at school that she would never like it. She must go, she knew, in order to get an education and be ready to earn her own living; but it would always be what Ellen Greene solemnly called “a cross.” Consequently Emily felt quite astonished when, after going to school a few days, it dawned upon her that she was liking it. To be sure, Miss Brownell did not improve on acquaintance; but the other girls no longer tormented her — indeed, to her amazement, they seemed suddenly to forget all that had happened and hailed her as one of themselves. She was admitted to the fellowship of the pack and, although in some occasional tiff she got a dig about baby aprons and Murray pride, there was no more hostility, veiled or open. Besides, Emily was quite able to give “digs” herself, as she learned more about the girls and their weak points, and she could give them with such merciless lucidity and irony that the others soon learned not to provoke them. Chestnut-curls, whose name was Grace Wells, and the Freckled-one, whose name was Carrie King, and Jennie Strang became quite chummy with her, and Jennie sent chews of gum and tissue thumb-papers across the aisle instead of giggles. Emily allowed them all to enter the outer court of her temple of friendship but only Rhoda was admitted to the inner shrine. As for Ilse Burnley, she did not appear after that first day. Ilse, so Rhoda said, came to school or not, just as she liked. Her father never bothered about her. Emily always felt a certain hankering to know more of Ilse, but it did not seem likely to be gratified.
Emily was insensibly becoming happy again. Already she felt as if she belonged to this old cradle of her family. She thought a great deal about the old Murrays; she liked to picture them revisiting the glimpses of New Moon — Great-grandmother rubbing up her candlesticks and making cheeses; Great-aunt Miriam stealing about looking for her lost treasure; homesick Great-great-aunt Elizabeth stalking about in her bonnet; Captain George, the dashing, bronzed sea-captain, coming home with the spotted shells of the Indies;