Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/69

 horror of Mad Mr. Morrison’s pursuit—her rapture of relief at Teddy’s voice—the brief little moonlit idyll in the graveyard—of all places for an idyll!—the tragicomic advent of poor morbid, jealous Mrs. Kent.

“I hope I wasn’t too hard on her,” thought Emily as she drifted into slumber. “If I was I’m sorry. I'll have to write it down as a bad deed in my diary. I feel somehow as if I’d grown up all at once tonight—yesterday seems years away. But what a chapter it will make for my diary. I'll write it all down—all but Teddy’s saying I was the sweetest girl in the world. too—dear—to write. I’ll—just— it.”  

MILY had finished mopping up the kitchen floor at New Moon and was absorbed in sanding it in the beautiful and complicated “herring-bone pattern” which was one of the New Moon traditions, having been invented, so it was said, by great-great-grandmother of “Here I stay” fame. Aunt Laura had taught Emily how to do it and Emily was proud of her skill. Even Aunt Elizabeth had condescended to say that Emily sanded the famous pattern very well, and when Aunt Elizabeth praised, further comment was superfluous. New Moon was the only place in Blair Water where the old custom of sanding the floor was kept up; other housewives had long ago begun to use “new-fangled” devices and patent cleaners for making their floors white. But Dame Elizabeth Murray would none of such; as long as she reigned at New Moon so long should candles burn and sanded floors gleam whitely.

Aunt Elizabeth had exasperated Emily somewhat by insisting that the latter should put on Aunt Laura sLaura’s [sic] old “Mother Hubbard” while she was scrubbing the floor.