Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/168

 “Sometimes I think it really isn’t worth while to try to write anything when everything is already so well expressed in the Bible. That verse I’ve just quoted for instance—it makes me feel like a pigmy in the presence of a giant. Only twelve simple words—yet a dozen pages couldn’t have better expressed the feeling one has in spring.

“This afternoon Cousin Jimmy and I sowed our aster bed. The seeds came promptly. Evidently the firm has not gone bankrupt yet. But Aunt Elizabeth thinks they are old stock and won’t grow.

“Dean is home; he was down to see me last night—dear old Dean. He hasn’t changed a bit. His green eyes are as green as ever and his nice mouth as nice as ever and his interesting face as interesting as ever. He took both my hands and looked earnestly at me.

“‘ have changed, Star,’ he said. ‘You look more like spring than ever. But don’t grow any taller,’ he went on. ‘I don’t want to have you looking down on me.’

“I don’t want to, either. I’d hate to be taller than Dean. It wouldn’t seem right at all.

“Teddy is an inch taller than I am. Dean says he has improved greatly in his drawing this past year. Mrs. Kent still hates me. I met her tonight, when I was out for a walk with myself in the spring twilight, and she would not even stop to speak to me—just slipped by me like a shadow in the twilight. She looked at me for a second as she passed me, and her eyes were pools of hatred. I think she grows more unhappy every year.

“In my walk I went and said good-evening to the Disappointed House. I am always so sorry for it—it is a house that has never lived—that has not fulfilled its destiny. Its blind windows seem peering wistfully from its face as if seeking vainly for what they cannot find. No homelight has ever gleamed through them in summer dusk or winter darkness. And yet I feel, somehow, that the little house has kept its dream and that sometime it will come true.