Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/104

 at sight. The door wouldn’t shut tight; the slanting ceiling was rain stained, and came down so close to the bed that she could touch it with her hand. On the bare floor was a large “hooked” mat which made Emily’s eyes ache. It was not in Murray taste—nor in Ruth Dutton’s taste either, to be just. A country cousin of the deceased Mr. Dutton had given it to her. The centre, of a crude, glaring scarlet, was surrounded by scrolls of militant orange and violent green. In the corners were bunches of purple ferns and blue roses.

The woodwork was painted a hideous chocolate brown, and the walls were covered with paper of still more hideous design. The pictures were in keeping, especially a chromo of Queen Alexandra, gorgeously bedizened with jewels, hung at such an angle that it seemed the royal lady must certainly fall over on her face. Not even a chromo could make Queen Alexandra ugly or vulgar, but it came piteously near it. On a narrow, chocolate shelf sat a vase filled with paper flowers that had been paper flowers for twenty years. One couldn’t believe that could be as ugly and depressing as they were.

“This room is unfriendly—it doesn’t want me—I can feel at home here,” said Emily.

She was horribly homesick. She wanted the New Moon candle-lights shining out on the birch trees—the scent of hop-vines in the dew—her purring pussy cats—her own dear room, full of dreams—the silences and shadows of the old garden—the grand anthems of wind and billow in the gulf—that sonorous old music she missed so much in this inland silence. She missed even the little graveyard where slept the New Moon dead.

“I’m going to cry.” Emily clenched her hands. “Aunt Ruth will laugh at me. There’s nothing this room I can ever love. Is there anything of it?”

She pushed up the window. It looked south into the fir grove and its balsam blew in to her like a caress. To the left there was an opening in the trees like a green, arched window, and one saw an enchanting little moonlit