“You lie,” said Blackeyes bluntly.
“A Starr does not lie,” retorted Emily. The flash was gone, but its uplift remained. She looked them all over with a cool detachment that quelled them temporarily.
“Why don’t you like me?” she asked directly.
There was no reply. Emily looked straight at Chestnut-curls and repeated her question. Chestnut-curls felt herself compelled to answer it.
“Because you ain’t a bit like us,” she muttered.
“I wouldn’t want to be,” said Emily scornfully.
“Oh, my, you are one of the Chosen People,” mocked Blackeyes.
“Of course I am,” retorted Emily.
She walked away to the schoolhouse, conqueror in that battle.
But the forces against her were not so easily cowed. There was much whispering and plotting after she had gone in, a conference with some of the boys, and a handing over of bedizened pencils and chews of gum for value received.
An agreeable sense of victory and the afterglow of the flash carried Emily through the afternoon in spite of the fact that Miss Brownell ridiculed her for her mistakes in spelling. Miss Brownell was very fond of ridiculing her pupils. All the girls in the class giggled except one who had not been there in the morning and was consequently at the tail. Emily had been wondering who she was. She was as unlike the rest of the girls as Emily herself, but in a totally different style. She was tall, oddly dressed in an overlong dress of faded, striped print, and barefooted. Her thick hair, cut short, fluffed out all around her head in a bushy wave that seemed to be of brilliant spun gold; and her glowing eyes were of a brown so light and translucent as to be almost amber. Her mouth was large, and she had a saucy, pronounced chin. Pretty she might not be called, but her face was so vivid and mobile that Emily could not drag her fascinated eyes from it. And she was the only girl in class who did not, sometime through the lesson, get a barb of sarcasm from Miss Brownell, though she made as many mistakes as the rest of them.
At recess one of the girls came up to Emily with a box in her hand. Emily knew that she was Rhoda Stuart and thought her very pretty and sweet. Rhoda had been in the crowd around her at the noon hour but she had not said anything. She was dressed in crispy pink gingham; she had smooth, lustrous braids of sugar-brown hair, big blue eyes, a rosebud mouth, doll-like features and a sweet voice. If Miss Brownell could be said to have a favourite it was Rhoda Stuart, and she seemed generally popular in her own set and much petted by the older girls.
“Here is a present for you,” she said sweetly.
Emily took the box unsuspectingly. Rhoda’s smile would have disarmed any suspicion. For a moment Emily was happily anticipant as she removed the cover. Then with a shriek she flung the box from her, and stood pale and trembling from head to foot. There was a snake in the box — whether dead or alive she did not know and did not care. For any snake Emily had a horror and repulsion she could not overcome. The very sight of one almost paralysed her.
A chorus of giggles ran around the porch. “Who’d be so scared of an old dead snake?” scoffed Blackeyes.
“Can you write poetry about that?” giggled Chestnut-curls.
“I hate you — I hate you!” cried Emily. “You are mean, hateful girls!”
“Calling names isn’t ladylike,” said the Freckled-one. “I thought a Murray would be too grand for that.”
“If you come to school tomorrow, Miss Starr,” said Blackeyes deliberately, “we are going to take that snake and put it around your neck.”
“Let me see you do it!” cried a clear, ringing voice. Into their midst with a bound came the girl with amber eyes and short hair. “Just let me see you do it, Jennie Strang!”
“This isn’t any of your business, Ilse Burnley,” muttered Jennie, sullenly.
“Oh, isn’t it? Don’t you sass me, Piggy-eyes.” Ilse walked up to the retreating Jennie and shook a sunburned fist in her face. “If I catch you teasing Emily Starr tomorrow with that snake again I’ll take it by the tail and you by your tail, and slash you across the face with it. Mind that, Piggy-eyes. Now you go and pick up that precious snake of yours and throw it down on the ash pile.”
Jennie actually went and did it. Ilse faced the others.
“Clear out, all of you, and leave the New Moon girl alone after this,” she said. “If I hear of any more meddling and sneaking I’ll slit your throats, and rip out your hearts and tear your eyes out. Yes, and I’ll cut off your ears and wear them pinned on my dress!”
Cowed by these ferocious threats, or by something in Ilse’s personality, Emily’s persecutors drifted away. Ilse turned to Emily.
“Don’t mind them,” she said contemptuously. “They’re jealous of you, that’s all — jealous because you live at New Moon and ride in a fringed-top buggy and wear buttoned boots. You smack their mugs if they give you any more of their jaw.”
Ilse vaulted the fence and tore off into the maple bush without another glance at Emily. Only Rhoda Stuart remained.
“Emily, I’m awful sorry,” she said, rolling her big blue eyes appealingly. “I didn’t know there was a snake in that box, cross my heart I didn’t. The girls just told me it was a present for you. You’re not mad at me, are you? Because I like you.”
Emily had been “mad” and hurt and outraged. But this little bit of friendliness melted her instantly. In a moment she and Rhoda had their arms around each other, parading across the playground.
“I’m going to ask Miss Brownell to let you sit with me,” said Rhoda. “I used to sit with Annie Gregg but she’s moved away. You’d like to sit with me, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d love it,” said Emily warmly. She was as happy as she had been miserable. Here was the friend of her dreams. Already she worshipped Rhoda.
“We ought to sit together,” said Rhoda importantly. “We belong to the two best families in Blair Water. Do you know that if my father had his rights he would be on the throne of England?”
“England!” said Emily, too amazed to be anything but an echo.
“Yes. We are descended from the kings of Scotland,” said Rhoda. “So of course we don’t ‘sociate with everybody. My father keeps store and I’m taking music lessons. Is your Aunt Elizabeth going to give you music lessons?”
“I don’t know.”
“She ought to. She is very rich, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know,” said Emily again. She wished Rhoda would not ask such questions. Emily thought it was hardly good manners. But surely a descendant of the Stuart kings ought to know the rules of breeding, if anybody did.
“She’s got an awful temper, hasn’t she?” asked Rhoda.
“No, she hasn’t!” cried Emily.
“Well, she nearly killed your Cousin Jimmy in one of her rages,” said Rhoda. “That’s true — Mother told me. Why doesn’t your Aunt Laura get married? Has she got a beau? What wages does your Aunt Elizabeth pay your Cousin Jimmy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well,” said Rhoda,