Lucy Montgomery - Emily Climbs

"Perry won the mile race in the school sports and broke the record. He bragged too much about it and Ilse raged at him.

"November 11, 19...

"Last night Aunt Ruth found me reading David Copperfield and crying over Davy's alienation from his mother, with a black rage against Mr. Murdstone in my heart. She must know WHY I was crying and wouldn't believe me when I told her.

"'Crying over people who never existed!' said my Aunt Ruth incredulously.

"'Oh, but they DO exist,' I said. 'Why, they are as real as YOU are, Aunt Ruth. Do you mean to say that Miss Betsy Trotwood is a delusion?'

"I thought perhaps I could have REAL tea when I came to Shrewsbury, but Aunt Ruth says it is not healthy. So I drink cold water for I will NOT drink cambric tea any longer. As if I were a child!

"November 30, 19...

"Andrew was in to-night. He always comes the Friday night I don't go to New Moon. Aunt Ruth left us alone in the parlour and went out to a meeting of the Ladies' Aid. Andrew, being a Murray, can be trusted.

"I don't dislike Andrew. It would be impossible to dislike so harmless a being. He is one of those good, talkative, awkward dears who goad you irresistibly into tormenting them. Then you feel remorseful afterwards because they ARE so good.

"To-night, Aunt Ruth being out, I tried to discover how little I could really say to Andrew, while I pursued my own train of thought. I discovered that I could get along with very few words... 'Yes'... 'No'... in several inflections, with or without a little laugh... 'I don't know'... 'Really?'... 'Well, well'... 'How wonderful!'... especially the last. Andrew talked on, and when he stopped for breath I stuck in 'How wonderful.' I did it exactly eleven times. Andrew liked it. I know it gave him a nice, flattering feeling that HE was wonderful, and his conversation wonderful. Meanwhile I was living a splendid imaginary dream-life by the River of Egypt in the days of Thotmes I.

"So we were both very happy. I think I'll try it again. Andrew is too stupid to catch me at it.

"When Aunt Ruth came home she asked, 'Well, how did you and Andrew get along?'

"She asks that every time he comes down. I KNOW WHY. I know the little scheme that is understood among the Murrays, even though I don't believe any of them have ever put it into words.

"'Beautifully,' I said. 'Andrew is improving. He said ONE interesting thing to-night, and he hadn't so many feet and hands as usual.'

"I don't know WHY I say things like that to Aunt Ruth occasionally. It would be so much better for me if I didn't. But SOMETHING... whether it's Murray or Starr or Shipley or Burnley, or just pure cussedness I know not... MAKES me say them before I've time to reflect.

"'No doubt you would find more congenial company in Stovepipe Town,' said Aunt Ruth."

Emily regretfully left the "Booke Shoppe," where the aroma of books and new magazines was as the savour of sweet incense in her nostrils, and hastened down cold and blustery Prince Street. Whenever possible she slipped into the Booke Shoppe and took hungry dips into magazines she could not afford to buy, avid to learn what kind of stuff they published... especially poetry. She could not see that many of the verses in them were any better than some of her own, yet editors sent hers back religiously. Emily had already used a considerable portion of the American stamps she had bought with Cousin Jimmy's dollar in paying the homeward way of her fledgelings, accompanied by only the cold comfort of rejection slips. Her Owl's Laughter had already been returned six times, but Emily had not wholly lost faith in it yet. That very morning she had dropped it again into the letter-box at the Shoppe.

"The seventh time brings luck," she thought as she turned down the street leading to Ilse's boarding-house. She had her examination in English at eleven o'clock and she wanted to glance over Ilse's note-book before she went for it. The Preps were almost through their terminal examinations, taking them by fits and starts when the class-rooms were free from Seniors and Juniors... a thing that always made the Preps furious. Emily felt comfortably certain she would get her star pin. The examinations in her hardest subjects were over and she did not believe she had fallen below eighty in any of them. To-day was English, in which she ought to go well over ninety. Remained only history, which she also loved. Everybody expected her to win the star pin. Cousin Jimmy was intensely excited over it, and Dean had sent her premature congratulations from the top of a pyramid, so sure was he of her success. His letter had come the previous day, along with the packet containing his Christmas gift.

"I send you a little gold necklace that was taken from the mummy of a dead princess of the nineteenth dynasty," wrote Dean. "Her name was Mena and it said in her epitaph that she was 'sweet of heart.' So I think she fared well in the Hall of Judgment and that the dread old gods smiled indulgently upon her. This little amulet lay on her dead breast for thousands of years. I send it to you weighted with centuries of love. I think it must have been a love gift. Else why should it have rested on her heart all this time? It must have been her own choice. Others would have put a finer thing on the neck of a king's daughter."

The little trinket intrigued Emily with its charm and mystery, yet she was almost afraid of it. She gave a slight ghostly shudder as she clasped it around her slim white throat and wondered about the royal girl who had worn it in those days of a dead empire. What was its history and its secret?

Naturally Aunt Ruth had disapproved. What business had Emily to be getting Christmas presents from Jarback Priest?

"At least he might have sent you something NEW if he had to send anything," she said.

"A souvenir of Cairo, made in Germany," suggested Emily gravely.

"Something like that," agreed Aunt Ruth unsuspiciously. "Mrs. Ayers has a handsome, gold-mounted glass paper-weight with a picture of the Sphinx in it that her brother brought HER from Egypt. That battered thing looks positively cheap."

"Cheap! Aunt Ruth, do you realize that this necklace was made by hand and worn by an Egyptian princess before the days of Moses?"

"Oh, well... if you want to believe Jarback Priest's fairy tales," said Aunt Ruth, much amused. "I wouldn't wear it in public if I were you, Em'ly. The Murrays never wear shabby jewellery. You're not going to leave it on to-night, child?"

"Of course I am. The last time it was worn was probably at the court of Pharaoh in the days of the oppression. Now, it will go to Kit Barrett's snow-shoe dance. What a difference! I hope the ghost of Princess Mena won't haunt me to-night. She may resent my sacrilege... who knows? But it was not I who rifled her tomb, and somebody would have this if I didn't... somebody who mightn't think of the little princess at all. I'm sure she would rather that it was warm and shining about my neck than in some grim museum for thousands of curious, cold eyes to stare at. She was 'sweet of heart,' Dean says... she won't grudge me her pretty pendant. Lady of Egypt, whose kingdom has been poured on the desert sands like spilled wine, I salute you across the gulf of time."

Emily bowed deeply and waved her hand adown the vistas of dead centuries.

"Such high-falutin' language is very foolish," sniffed Aunt Ruth.

"Oh, most of that last sentence was a quotation from Dean's letter," said Emily candidly.

"Sounds like him," was Aunt Ruth's contemptuous agreement. "Well, I think your Venetian beads would be better than that heathenish- looking thing. Now, mind you don't stay too late, Em'ly. Make Andrew bring you home not later than twelve."