Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/141

 very hilarious myself. Look here, Emily, I’ve got something to tell you. Shut up and listen. That day I met Evelyn at the Shoppe and we went back for some book she wanted and we found you sound asleep—so sound asleep that you never stirred when I pinched your cheek. Then, just for devilment I picked up a black crayon and said, ‘I’m going to draw a moustache on her’—shut up! Evelyn pulled a long face and said, ‘Oh, no! that would be, don’t you think?’ I hadn’t had the slightest intention of doing it—I’d only spoken in fun—but that shrimp Evelyn’s ungodly affectation of righteousness made me so mad that I decided I would do it—shut !—I meant to wake you right up and hold a glass before you, that was all. But before I could do it Kate Errol came in and wanted us to go along with her and I threw down the chalk and went out. That’s all, Emily, honest to Cæsar. But it made me feel ashamed and silly later on—I’d say a bit conscience-stricken if I had such a thing as a conscience, because I felt that must have put the idea into the head of whoever did do it, and so was responsible in a way. And then I saw you distrusted me—and that made me mad—not tempery-mad, you see, but a nasty, cold, sort of madness. I thought you had no business even to suspect that I could have done such a thing as let you go to class like that. And I thought, since you did, you could go on doing it— wouldn’t say one word to put matters straight. Golly, but I’m glad you’re through with seein’ things.”

“Do you think Evelyn Blake did it?”

“No. Oh, she’s quite capable of it, of course, but I don’t see how it could have been she. She went to the Shoppe with Kate and me and we left her there. She was in class fifteen minutes later, so I don’t think she’d have had time to go back and do it. I really think it was that little devil of a May Hilson. She’d do anything and she was in the hall when I was flourishing the crayon. She’d ‘take the suggestion as a cat laps milk.’ But it couldn’t have been Evelyn.”