Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/63

 Ilse’s mother? Mr. Carpenter says I’m psychic—I don’t know just what that means, but think I’d rather not be it.”

She shivered again. Teddy thought she was cold and, having nothing else to put around her, put his arm—somewhat tentatively, since Murray pride and Murray dignity might be outraged. Emily was not cold in body, but a little chill had blown over her soul. Something supernatural—some mystery she could not understand—had brushed too near her in that strange summoning. Involuntarily she nestled a little closer to Teddy, acutely conscious of the boyish tenderness she sensed behind the aloofness of his boyish shyness. Suddenly she knew that she liked Teddy better than anybody—better even than Aunt Laura or Ilse or Dean.

Teddy’s arm tightened a little.

“Anyhow, I’m glad I got here in time,” he said. “If I hadn’t that crazy old man might have frightened you to death.”

They sat so for a few minutes in silence. Everything seemed very wonderful and beautiful—and a little unreal. Emily thought she must be in a dream, or in one of her own wonder tales. The storm had passed, and the moon was shining clearly once more. The cool fresh air was threaded with beguiling voices—the fitful voice of raindrops falling from the shaken boughs of the maple woods behind them—the freakish voice of the Wind Woman around the white church—the far-off, intriguing voice of the sea—and, still finer and rarer, the little, remote, detached voices of the night. Emily heard them all, more with the ears of her soul than of her body, it seemed, as she had never heard them before. Beyond were fields and groves and roads, pleasantly suggestive and elusive, as if brooding over elfish secrets in the moonlight. Silver-white daisies were nodding and swaying all over the graveyard above graves remembered and graves forgotten. An owl laughed delightfully to itself in the old pine. At the magical sound Emily’s mystic flash swept over her, swaying her like a strong wind. She