Lucy Montgomery - Emily Climbs

"'Things like that don't happen,' I said. 'They are foreordained.'

"June 3, 19...

"The Land of Uprightness is a thing of beauty. I can go to the Fern Pool to write again. Aunt Ruth is very suspicious of this performance. She has never forgotten that I 'met Perry' there one evening. The pool is very lovely now under its new young ferns. I look into it and imagine it is the legendary pool in which one could see the future. I picture myself tiptoeing to it at midnight by full o' moon... casting something precious into it... then looking timidly at what I saw.

"What would it show me? The Alpine Path gloriously climbed? Or failure?

"No, never failure!

"June 9, 19...

"Last week Aunt Ruth had a birthday and I gave her a centre-piece which I had embroidered. She thanked me rather stiffly and didn't seem to care anything about it.

"To-night I was sitting in the bay window recess of the dining- room, doing my algebra by the last light. The folding-doors were open and Aunt Ruth was talking to Mrs. Ince in the parlour. I thought they knew I was in the bay, but I suppose the curtains hid me. All at once I heard my name. Aunt Ruth was showing the centre-piece to Mrs. Ince... quite proudly.

"'My niece Em'ly gave me this on my birthday. See how beautifully it is done... she is very skilful with her needle.'

"Could this be Aunt Ruth? I was so petrified with amazement that I could neither move nor speak.

"'She is clever with more than her needle,' said Mrs. Ince. 'I hear Principal Hardy expects her to head her class in the terminal examinations.'

"'Her mother... my sister Juliet... was a VERY clever girl,' said Aunt Ruth.

"'And she's quite pretty, too," said Mrs. Ince.

"'Her father, Douglas Starr, was a remarkably handsome man,' said Aunt Ruth.

"They went out then. For once an eavesdropper heard something good of herself!

"But from Aunt Ruth!!

"June 17, 19...

"My 'candle goeth not out by night' now... at least not until quite late. Aunt Ruth lets me sit up because the terminal examinations are on. Perry infuriated Mr. Travers by writing at the end of his algebra paper, Matthew 7:5. When Mr. Travers turned it up he read: 'Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.' Mr. Travers is credited with knowing much less about mathematics than he pretends to. So he was furious and threw Perry's paper out 'as a punishment for impertinence.' The truth is poor Perry made a mistake. He MEANT to write Matthew 5:7. 'Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.' He went and explained to Mr. Travers but Mr. Travers wouldn't listen. Then Ilse bearded the lion in his den... that is, went to Principal Hardy, told him the tale and induced him to intercede with Mr. Travers. As a result Perry got his marks, but was warned not to juggle with Scripture texts again.

"June 28, 19...

"School's out. I have won my star pin. It has been a great old year of fun and study and STINGS. And now I'm going back to dear New Moon for two splendid months of freedom and happiness.

"I'm going to write a Garden Book in vacation. The idea has been sizzling in my brain for some time and since I can't write stories I shall try my hand at a series of essays on Cousin Jimmy's garden, with a poem for a tail-piece to each essay. It will be good practice and will please Cousin Jimmy."

"WHY do you want to do a thing like that?" said Aunt Ruth... sniffing, of course. A sniff may always be taken for granted with each of Aunt Ruth's remarks, even when the present biographer omits mention of it.

"To poke some dollars into my slim purse," said Emily.

Holidays were over... the Garden Book had been written and read in instalments to Cousin Jimmy, in the dusks of July and August, to his great delight; and now it was September, with its return to school and studies, the Land of Uprightness, and Aunt Ruth. Emily, with skirts a fraction longer and her hair clubbed up so high in the "Cadogan Braid" of those days, that it really was almost "up," was back in Shrewsbury for her Junior year; and she had just told Aunt Ruth what she meant to do on her Shrewsbury Saturdays, for the autumn.

The editor of the Shrewsbury Times was planning a special illustrated Shrewsbury edition and Emily was going to canvass as much of the country as she could cover for subscriptions to it. She had wrung a rather reluctant consent from Aunt Elizabeth... a consent which could never have been extorted if Aunt Elizabeth had been paying all Emily's expenses at school. But there was Wallace paying for her books and tuition fees, and occasionally hinting to Elizabeth that he was a very fine, generous fellow to do so. Elizabeth, in her secret heart, was not overfond of her brother Wallace and resented his splendid airs over the little help he was extending to Emily. So, when Emily pointed out that she could easily earn, during the fall, at least half enough to pay for her books for the whole year, Elizabeth yielded. Wallace would have been offended, if SHE, Elizabeth, had insisted on paying Emily's expenses when HE took a notion to do it, but he could not reasonably resent Emily earning part for herself. He was always preaching that girls should be self-reliant, and able to earn their own way in life.

Aunt Ruth could not refuse when Elizabeth had assented, but she did not approve.

"The idea of your wandering over the country alone!"

"Oh, I'll not be alone. Ilse is going with me," said Emily.

Aunt Ruth did not seem to consider this much of an improvement.

"We're going to begin Thursday," said Emily. "There is no school Friday, owing to the death of Principal Hardy's father, and our classes are over at three on Thursday afternoon. We are going to canvass the Western Road that evening."

"May I ask if you intend to camp on the side of the road?"

"Oh, no. We'll spend the night with Ilse's aunt at Wiltney. Then, on Friday, we'll cut back to the Western Road, finish it that day and spend Friday night with Mary Carswell's people at St. Clair... then work home Saturday by the River Road."

"It's perfectly absurd," said Aunt Ruth. "No Murray ever did such a thing. I'm surprised at Elizabeth. It simply isn't decent for two young girls like you and Ilse to be wandering alone over the country for three days."

"What do you suppose could happen to us?' asked Emily.

"A good many things might happen," said Aunt Ruth severely.

She was right. A good many things might... and did... happen in that excursion; but Emily and Ilse set off in high spirits Thursday afternoon, two graceless schoolgirls with an eye for the funny side of everything and a determination to have a good time. Emily especially was feeling uplifted. There had been another thin letter in the mail that day, with the address of a third-rate magazine in the corner, offering her three subscriptions to the said magazine for her poem Night in the Garden, which had formed the conclusion of her Garden Book and was considered both by herself and Cousin Jimmy to be the gem of the volume. Emily had left the Garden Book locked up in the mantel cupboard of her room at New Moon, but she meant to send copies of its "tail pieces" to various publications during the fall. It augured well that the first one sent had been accepted so promptly.

"Well, we're off," she said, "'over the hills and far away'... what an alluring old phrase! ANYTHING may be beyond those hills ahead of us."

"I hope we'll get lots of material for our essays," said Ilse practically.

Principal Hardy had informed the Junior English class that he would require several essays from them during the fall term and Emily and Ilse had decided that one at least of their essays should recount their experiences in canvassing for subscriptions, from their separate points of view. Thus they had two strings to their bow.