Lucy Montgomery - Emily Climbs

"This evening after school Dean and I began to read The Alhambra over again, sitting on the stone bench in the garden. That book always makes me feel as if I had opened a little door and stepped straight into fairyland.

"'How I would love to see the Alhambra!' I said.

"'We will go to see it sometime... together,' said Dean.

"'Oh, that would be LOVELY,' I cried. 'Do you think we can ever manage it, Dean?'

"Before Dean could answer I heard Teddy's whistle in Lofty John's bush... the dear little whistle of two short high notes and one long low one, that is OUR SIGNAL.

"'Excuse me... I must go... Teddy's calling me,' I said.

"'Must you always go when Teddy calls?' asked Dean.

"I nodded and explained, "'He only calls like that when he wants me ESPECIALLY and I have promised I will always go if I possibly can.'

"' I want you ESPECIALLY!' said Dean. 'I came up this evening on purpose to read The Alhambra with you.'

"Suddenly I felt very unhappy. I wanted to stay with Dean dreadfully, and yet I felt as if I must go to Teddy. Dean looked at me piercingly. Then he shut up The Alhambra.

"'Go,' he said.

"I went... but things seemed spoiled, somehow.

"May 10, 19...

"I have been reading three books Dean lent me this week. One was like a rose garden... very pleasant, but just a little too sweet. And one was like a pine wood on a mountain... full of balsam and tang... I loved it, and yet it filled me with a sort of despair. It was written so beautifully... I can NEVER write like that, I feel sure. And one... it was just like a pigsty. Dean gave me that one by mistake. He was very angry with himself when he found it out... angry and distressed.

"'Star... Star... I would NEVER have given you a book like that... my confounded carelessness... forgive me. That book is a faithful picture of one world... but not your world, thank God... nor any world you will ever be a citizen of. Star, promise me you will forget that book.'

"'I'll forget it if I can,' I said.

"But I don't know if I can. It was so ugly. I have not been so happy since I read it. I feel as if my hands were soiled somehow and I couldn't wash them clean. And I have another queer feeling, as if SOME GATE HAD BEEN SHUT BEHIND ME, shutting me into a new world I don't quite understand or like, but through which I must travel.

"To-night I tried to write a description of Dean in my Jimmy-book of character sketches. But I didn't succeed. What I wrote seemed like a photograph... not a portrait. There is something in Dean that is beyond me.

"Dean took a picture of me the other day with his new camera, but he wasn't pleased with it.

"'It doesn't look like you,' he said, 'but of course one can never photograph starlight.'

"Then he added, quite sharply, I thought,

"'Tell that young imp of a Teddy Kent to keep your face out of his pictures. He has no business to put YOU into every one he draws.'

"'He doesn't!' I cried. 'Why, Teddy never made but the one picture of me... the one Aunt Nancy STOLE.'

"I said it quite viciously and unashamed, for I've never forgiven Aunt Nancy for keeping that picture.

"'He's got SOMETHING of you in every picture,' said Dean stubbornly... 'your eyes... the curve of your neck... the tilt of your head... your personality. That's the worst... I don't mind your eyes and curves so much, but I won't have that cub putting a bit of your soul into everything he draws. Probably he doesn't know he's doing it... which makes it all the worse.'

"'I don't understand you,' I said, QUITE HAUGHTILY. 'But Teddy is WONDERFUL... Mr. Carpenter says so.'

"'And Emily of New Moon echoes it! Oh, the kid has talent... he'll do something some day if his morbid mother doesn't ruin his life. But let him keep his pencil and brush off MY property.'

"Dean laughed as he said it. But I held my head high. I am not anybody's 'property,' not even in fun. And I NEVER will be.

"May 12, 19...

"Aunt Ruth and Uncle Wallace and Uncle Oliver were all here this afternoon. I like Uncle Oliver, but I am not much fonder of Aunt Ruth and Uncle Wallace than I ever was. They held some kind of family conclave in the parlour with Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Laura. Cousin Jimmy was allowed in but I was excluded, although I feel perfectly certain that it had something to do with me. I think Aunt Ruth didn't get her own way, either, for she snubbed me continually all through supper, and said I was growing weedy! Aunt Ruth generally snubs me and Uncle Wallace patronizes me. I prefer Aunt Ruth's snubs because I don't have to look as if I liked them. I endured them to a certain point, and then the lid flew off. Aunt Ruth said to me,

"'Em'ly, don't contradict,' just as she might have spoken to a MERE CHILD. I looked her right in the eyes and said COLDLY,

"'Aunt Ruth, I think I am too old to be spoken to in that fashion now.'

"'You are not too old to be very rude and impertinent,' said Aunt Ruth, with a sniff, 'and if I were in Elizabeth's place I would give you a sound box on the ear, Miss.'

"I hate to be Em'ly'd and Miss'd and sniffed at! It seems to me that Aunt Ruth has ALL the Murray faults, and NONE of their virtues.

"Uncle Oliver's son Andrew came with him and is going to stay for a week. He is four years older than I am.

"May 19, 19...

"This is my birthday. I am fourteen years old today. I wrote a letter 'From myself at fourteen to myself at twenty-four,' sealed it up and put it away in my cupboard, to be opened on my twenty- fourth birthday. I made some predictions in it. I wonder if they will have come to pass when I open it.

"Aunt Elizabeth gave me back all Father's books today. I was so glad. It seems to me that a part of Father is in those books. His name is in each one in his own handwriting, and the notes he made on the margins. They seem like little bits of letters from him. I have been looking over them all the evening, and Father seems so NEAR to me again, and I feel both happy and sad.

"One thing spoiled the day for me. In school, when I went up to the blackboard to work a problem, everybody suddenly began to titter. I could not imagine why. Then I discovered that some one had pinned a sheet of foolscap to my back, on which was printed in big, black letters: 'Emily Byrd Starr, Authoress of The Four- Legged Duck.' They laughed more than ever when I snatched it off and threw it in the coal-scuttle. It infuriates me when anyone ridicules my ambitions like that. I came home angry and sore. But when I had sat on the steps of the summer-house and looked at one of Cousin Jimmy's big purple pansies for five minutes all my anger went away. Nobody can keep on being angry if she looks into the heart of a pansy for a little while.

"Besides, THE TIME WILL COME WHEN THEY WILL NOT LAUGH AT ME!

"Andrew went home yesterday. Aunt Elizabeth asked me how I liked him. She never asked me how I liked anyone before... my likings were not important enough. I suppose she is beginning to realize that I am no LONGER A CHILD.

"I said I thought he was good and kind and stupid and uninteresting.

"Aunt Elizabeth was so annoyed she would not speak to me the whole evening. Why? I had to tell the truth. And Andrew IS.

"May 21, 19...

"Old Kelly was here to-day for the first time this spring, with a load of shining new tins. He brought me a bag of candies as usual... and teased me about getting married, also as usual. But he seemed to have something on his mind, and when I went to the dairy to get him the drink of milk he had asked for, he followed me.

"'Gurrl dear,' he said mysteriously. 'I met Jarback Praste in the lane. Does he be coming here much?'

"I cocked my head at the Murray angle.