Lucy Montgomery - Emily Climbs

"Ilse was up on the carpet in the principal's room yesterday for walking home from school with Guy Lindsay. Something Mr. Hardy said made her so furious that she snatched up a vase of chrysanthemums that was on his desk and hurled it against the wall, where of course it was smashed to pieces.

"'If I hadn't thrown it at the wall I'd have had to have thrown it at YOU,' she told him.

"It would have gone hard with some girls but Mr. Hardy is a friend of Dr. Burnley's. Besides, there is something about those yellow eyes of Ilse's that do things to you. I know exactly how she would look at Mr. Hardy after she had smashed the vase. All her rage would be gone and her eyes would be laughing and daring... impudent, Aunt Ruth would call it. Mr. Hardy merely told her she was acting like a baby and would have to pay for the vase, since it was school property. That rather squelched Ilse; she thought it a tame ending to her heroics.

"I scolded her roundly. Really, somebody HAS to bring Ilse up and nobody but me seems to feel any responsibility in the matter. Dr. Burnley will just roar with laughter when she tells him. But I might as well have scolded the Wind Woman. Ilse just laughed and hugged me.

"'Honey, it made such a jolly smash. When I heard it I wasn't a bit mad any more.'

"Ilse recited at our school concert last week and everybody thought her wonderful.

"Aunt Ruth told me to-day that she expected me to be a star pupil. She wasn't punning on my name... oh, no, Aunt Ruth hasn't a nodding acquaintance with puns. All the pupils who make ninety per cent average at the Christmas exams and do not fall below eighty in any subject are called 'Star' pupils and are given a gold star-pin to wear for the rest of the term. It is a coveted distinction and of course not many win it. If I fail Aunt Ruth will rub it in to the bone. I must NOT fail.

"October 30, 19...

"The November Quill came out to-day. I sent my owl poem in to the editor a week ago but he didn't use is. And he DID use one of Evelyn Blake's... a silly, simpering little rhyme about Autumn Leaves... very much the sort of thing I wrote three years ago.

"And Evelyn CONDOLED with me before the whole roomful of girls because MY poem hadn't been taken. I suppose Tom Blake had told her about it.

"'You mustn't feel badly about it, Miss Starr. Tom said it wasn't half bad but of course not up to The Quill's standard. Likely in another year or two you'll be able to get in. Keep on trying.'

"'Thanks,' I said. 'I'm not feeling badly. Why should I? I didn't make "beam" rhyme with "green" in my poem. If I had I'd be feeling very badly indeed.'

"Evelyn coloured to her eyes.

"'Don't show your disappointment so plainly, CHILD,' she said.

"But I noticed she dropped the subject after that.

"For my own satisfaction I wrote a criticism of Evelyn's poem in my Jimmy-book as soon as I came from school. I modelled it on Macaulay's essay on poor Robert Montgomery, and I got so much fun out of it that I didn't feel sore and humiliated any more. I must show it to Mr. Carpenter when I go home. He'll chuckle over it.

"November 6, 19...

"I noticed this evening in glancing over my journal that I soon gave up recording my good and bad deeds. I suppose it was because so many of my doings were half-and-half. I never could decide in what class they belonged.

"We are expected to answer roll-call with a quotation on Monday mornings. This morning I repeated a verse from my own poem A Window that Faces the Sea. When I left Assembly to go down to the Prep classroom Miss Aylmer, the Vice-Principal, stopped me.

"'Emily, that was a beautiful verse you gave at roll-call. Where did you get it? And do you know the whole poem?'

"I was so elated I could hardly answer,

"'Yes, Miss Aylmer,' VERY demurely.

"'I would like a copy of it,' said Miss Aylmer. 'Could you write me off one? And who is the author?'

"'The author,' I said laughing, 'is Emily Byrd Starr. The truth is, Miss Aylmer, that I forgot to look up a quotation for roll-call and couldn't think of any in a hurry, so just fell back on a bit of my own.'

"Miss Aylmer didn't say anything for a moment. She just looked at me. She is a stout, middle-aged woman with a square face and nice, wide, grey eyes. "'Do you still want the poem, Miss Aylmer?' I said, smiling.

"'Yes,' she said, still looking at me in that funny way, as if she had never seen me before. 'Yes... and autograph it, please.'

"I promised and went on down the stairs. At the foot I glanced back. She was still looking after me. Something in her look made me feel glad and proud and happy and humble... and... and... PRAYERFUL. Yes, that was just how I felt.

"Oh, this has been a wonderful day. What care I now for The Quill or Evelyn Blake?

"This evening Aunt Ruth marched up town to see Uncle Oliver's Andrew, who is in the bank here now. She made me go along. She gave Andrew lots of good advice about his morals and his meals and his underclothes and asked him to come down for an evening whenever he wished. Andrew is a Murray, you see, and can therefore rush in where Teddy and Perry dare not tread. He is quite good-looking, with straight, well-groomed, red hair. But he always looks as if he'd just been starched and ironed.

"I thought the evening not wholly wasted, for Mrs. Garden, his landlady, has an interesting cat who made certain advances to me. But when Andrew patted him and called him 'Poor pussy' the intelligent animal hissed at him.

"'You mustn't be too familiar with a cat,' I advised Andrew. 'And you must speak respectfully TO and OF him.'

"'Piffle!' said Aunt Ruth.

"But a cat's a cat for a' that.

"November 8, 19...

"The nights are cold now. When I came back Monday I brought one of the New Moon gin jars for my comforting. I cuddle down with it in bed and enjoy the contrasting roars of the storm wind outside in the Land of Uprightness, and the rain whirling over the room. Aunt Ruth worries for fear the cork will come out and deluge the bed. That would be almost as bad as what really did happen night before last. I woke up about midnight with the most wonderful idea for a story. I felt that I must rise at once and jot it down in a Jimmy- book before I forgot it. Then I could keep it until my three years are up and I am free to write it.

"I hopped out of bed and, in pawing around my table to find my candle, I upset my ink-bottle. Then of course I went mad and couldn't find ANYTHING! Matches... candles... everything had disappeared. I set the ink-bottle up, but I knew there was a pool of ink on the table. I had ink all over my fingers and dare not touch anything in the dark and couldn't find anything to wipe it off. And all the time I heard that ink drip-dripping on the floor.

"In desperation I opened the door... with my TOES because I dare not touch it with my inky hands... and went downstairs where I wiped my hands on the stove rag and got some matches. But this time, of course, Aunt Ruth was up, demanding whys and motives. She took my matches, lighted her candle, and marched me upstairs. Oh, 'twas a gruesome sight! How could a small stone ink-bottle hold a quart of ink? There MUST have been a quart to have made the mess it did.

"I felt like the old Scotch emigrant who came home one evening, found his house burned down and his entire family scalped by Indians and said, 'This is pairfectly redeeclous.' The table cover was ruined... the carpet was soaked... even the wall-paper was bespattered. But Queen Alexandra smiled benignly over all and Byron went on dying.

"Aunt Ruth and I had an hour's seance with salt and vinegar. Aunt Ruth wouldn't believe me when I said I got up to jot down the plot of a story. She knew I had some other motive and it was just some more of my deepness and slyness. She also said a few other things which I won't write down. Of course I deserved a scolding for leaving that ink-bottle uncorked; but I DIDN'T deserve all she said. However, I took it all very meekly. For one thing I HAD been careless: and for another I had my bedroom shoes on. Anyone can overcrow me when I'm wearing bedroom shoes. Then she wound up by saying she would forgive me this time, but it was not to happen again.