Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/119

 “‘I would like a copy of it,’ said Miss Aylmer. ‘Could you write me off one? And who is the author?’

“‘The author,’ I said laughing, ‘is Emily Byrd Starr. The truth is, Miss Aylmer, that I forgot to look up a quotation for roll call and couldn’t think of any in a hurry, so just fell back on a bit of my own.’

“Miss Aylmer didn’t say anything for a moment. She just looked at me. She is a stout, middle-aged woman with a square face and nice, wide, grey eyes.

“‘Do you still want the poem, Miss Aylmer?’ I said, smiling.

“‘Yes,’ she said, still looking at me in that funny way, as if she had never seen me before. ‘Yes—and autograph it, please.’

“I promised and went on down the stairs. At the foot I glanced back. She was still looking after me. Something in her look made me feel glad and proud and happy and humble—and—and—. Yes, that was just how I felt.

“Oh, this has been a wonderful day. What care I now for or Evelyn Blake?

“This evening Aunt Ruth marched up town to see Uncle Oliver’s Andrew, who is in the bank here now. She made me go along. She gave Andrew lots of good advice about his morals and his meals and his underclothes and asked him to come down for an evening whenever he wished. Andrew is a Murray, you see, and can therefore rush in where Teddy and Perry dare not tread. He is quite good-looking, with straight, well-groomed, red hair. But he always looks as if he’d just been starched and ironed.

“I thought the evening not wholly wasted, for Mrs. Garden, his landlady, has an interesting cat who made certain advances to me. But when Andrew patted him and called him ‘Poor pussy’ the intelligent animal hissed at him.

“‘You mustn’t be too familiar with a cat,’ I advised