Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/101

 “And yet people call that man simple,” muttered Mr. Carpenter. “However, your ancestors don’t seem to have wished any special curse on you. They’ve simply laid it on you to aim for the heights and they'll give you no peace if you don’t. Call it ambition—aspiration—cacoëthes scribendi—any name you will. Under its sting—or allure—one has to go on climbing—until one fails—or”

“Succeeds,” said Emily, flinging back her dark head.

“Amen,” said Mr. Carpenter.

Emily wrote a poem that night——and shed tears over it. She felt every line of it. It was all very well to be going to school—but to leave dear New Moon! Everything at New Moon was linked with her life and thoughts—was a part of her.

“It’s not only that I love my room and trees and hills—they love me,” she thought.

Her little black trunk was packed. Aunt Elizabeth had seen that everything necessary was in it, and Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy had seen that one or two unnecessary things were in it. Aunt Laura had told Emily that she would find a pair of black lace stockings inside her strap slippers—even Laura did not dare go so far as silk stockings—and Cousin Jimmy had given her three Jimmy-books and an envelope with a five-dollar bill in it.

“To get anything you want with, Pussy. I’d have made it ten but five was all Elizabeth would advance me on next month’s wages. I think she suspected.”

“Can I spend a dollar of it for American stamps if I can find a way to get them?” whispered Emily anxiously.

“Anything you like,” repeated Cousin Jimmy loyally—though even to him it did appear an unaccountable thing that any one should want to buy American stamps. But if dear little Emily wanted American stamps, American stamps she should have.

The next day seemed rather dream-like to Emily—the bird she heard singing rapturously in Lofty John’s bush when she woke at dawn—the drive to Shrewsbury in the