“Come you here and help me wash these dishes,” ordered Ellen. “It’ll do you good to have something to take up your mind and then you won’t be after putting curses on people who have worked their fingers to the bone for you.”
Emily, with an eloquent glance at Ellen’s hands, went and got a dish-towel.
“Your hands are fat and pudgy,” she said. “The bones don’t show at all.”
“Never mind sassing back! It’s awful, with your poor pa dead in there. But if your Aunt Ruth takes you she’ll soon cure you of that.”
“Is Aunt Ruth going to take me?”
“I don’t know, but she ought to. She’s a widow with no chick or child, and well-to-do.”
“I don’t think I want Aunt Ruth to take me,” said Emily, deliberately, after a moment’s reflection.
“Well, you won’t have the choosing likely. You ought to be thankful to get a home anywhere. Remember you’re not of much importance.”
“I am important to myself,” cried Emily proudly.
“It’ll be some chore to bring you up,” muttered Ellen. “Your Aunt Ruth is the one to do it, in my opinion. She won’t stand no nonsense. A fine woman she is and the neatest housekeeper on P. E. Island. You could eat off her floor.”
“I don’t want to eat off her floor. I don’t care if a floor is dirty as long as the tablecloth is clean.”
“Well, her tablecloths are clean too, I reckon. She’s got an elegant house in Shrewsbury with bow windows and wooden lace all round the roof. It’s very stylish. It would be a fine home for you. She’d learn you some sense and do you a world of good.”
“I don’t want to learn sense and be done a world of good to,” cried Emily with a quivering lip. “I — I want somebody to love me.”
“Well, you’ve got to behave yourself if you want people to like you. You’re not to blame so much — your pa has spoiled you. I told him so often enough, but he just laughed. I hope he ain’t sorry for it now. The fact is, Emily Starr, you’re queer, and folks don’t care for queer children.”
“How am I queer?” demanded Emily.
“You talk queer — and you act queer — and at times you look queer. And you’re too old for your age — though that ain’t your fault. It comes of never mixing with other children. I’ve always threaped at your father to send you to school — learning at home ain’t the same thing — but he wouldn’t listen to me, of course. I don’t say but what you are as far along in book learning as you need to be, but what you want is to learn how to be like other children. In one way it would be a good thing if your Uncle Oliver would take you, for he’s got a big family. But he’s not as well off as the rest, so it ain’t likely he will. Your Uncle Wallace might, seeing as he reckons himself the head of the family. He’s only got a grownup daughter. But his wife’s delicate — or fancies she is.”
“I wish Aunt Laura would take me,” said Emily. She remembered that Father had said Aunt Laura was something like her mother.
“Aunt Laura! She won’t have no say in it — Elizabeth’s boss at New Moon. Jimmy Murray runs the farm, but he ain’t quite all there, I’m told—”
“What part of him isn’t there?” asked Emily curiously.
“Laws, it’s something about his mind, child. He’s a bit simple — some accident or other when he was a youngster, I’ve heard. It addled his head, kind of. Elizabeth was mixed up in it some way — I’ve never heard the rights of it. I don’t reckon the New Moon people will want to be bothered with you. They’re awful set in their ways. You take my advice and try to please your Aunt Ruth. Be polite — and well-behaved — mebbe she’ll take a fancy to you. There, that’s all the dishes. You’d better go upstairs and be out of the way.”
“Can I take Mike and Saucy Sal?” asked Emily.
“No, you can’t.”
“They’d be company for me,” pleaded Emily.
“Company or no company, you can’t have them. They’re outside and they’ll stay outside. I ain’t going to have them tracking all over the house. The floor’s been scrubbed.”
“Why didn’t you scrub the floor when Father was alive?” asked Emily. “He liked things to be clean. You hardly ever scrubbed it then. Why do you do it now?”
“Listen to her! Was I to be always scrubbing floors with my rheumatiz? Get off upstairs and you’d better lie down awhile.”
“I’m going upstairs, but I’m not going to lie down,” said Emily. “I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.”
“There’s one thing I’d advise you to do,” said Ellen, determined to lose no chance of doing her duty, “and that is to kneel down and pray to God to make you a good and respectful and grateful child.”
Emily paused at the foot of the stairs and looked back.
“Father said I wasn’t to have anything to do with your God,” she said gravely.
Ellen gasped foolishly, but could not think of any reply to this heathenish statement. She appealed to the universe.
“Did any one ever hear the like!”
“I know what your God is like,” said Emily. “I saw His picture in that Adam-and-Eve book of yours. He has whiskers and wears a nightgown. I don’t like Him. But I like Father’s God.”
“And what is your father’s God like, if I may ask?” demanded Ellen sarcastically.
Emily hadn’t any idea what Father’s God was like, but she was determined not to be posed by Ellen.
“He is clear as the moon, fair as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners,” she said triumphantly.
“Well, you’re bound to have the last word, but the Murrays will teach you what’s what,” said Ellen, giving up the argument. “They’re strict Presbyterians and won’t hold by any of your father’s awful notions. Get off upstairs.”
Emily went up to the south room, feeling very desolate.
“There isn’t anybody in the world who loves me now,” she said, as she curled up on her bed by the window. But she was determined she would not cry. The Murrays, who had hated her father, should not see her crying. She felt that she detested them all — except perhaps Aunt Laura. How very big and empty the world had suddenly become. Nothing was interesting any more. It did not matter that the little squat apple-tree between Adam-and-Eve had become a thing of rose-and-snow beauty — that the hills beyond the hollow were of green silk, purple-misted — that the daffodils were out in the garden — that the birches were hung all over with golden tassels — that the Wind Woman was blowing white young clouds across the sky. None of these things had any charm or consolation for her now. In her inexperience she believed they never would have again.
“But I promised Father I’d be brave,” she whispered, clenching her little fists, “and I will. And I won’t let the Murrays see I’m afraid of them — I won’t be afraid of them!”
When the far-off whistle of the afternoon train blew beyond the hills, Emily’s heart began to beat. She clasped her hands and lifted her face.
“Please help me, Father’s God — not Ellen’s God,” she said. “Help me to be brave and not cry before the Murrays.”
Soon after there was the sound of wheels below — and voices — loud, decided voices. Then Ellen came puffing up the stairs with the black dress — a sleazy thing of cheap merino.
“Mrs