Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/74

 “You mightn’t find it so easy. I understand she has always been a difficult girl to manage—so very pig-headed, Murray-like. The whole clamjamfry of them are as stubborn as mules.”

(Emily, wrathfully: “What a disrespectful way to speak of us! Oh, if I only hadn’t on this Mother Hubbard I’d fling this door open and confront them.”)

“She needs a tight rein, if know anything of human nature,” said Miss Potter. “She’s going to be a flirt—any one can see that. She'll be Juliet over again. You'll see. She makes eyes at every one and her only fourteen!”

(Emily, sarcastically: “I do ! And Mother wasn’t a flirt. She have been, but she wasn’t.  couldn’t flirt, even if you wanted to—you respectable old female!”)

“She isn’t pretty as poor Juliet was, and she’s very sly—sly and deep. Mrs. Dutton says she’s the slyest child she ever saw. But still there are things I like about poor Emily.”

Mrs. Ann Cyrilla’s tone was very patronising. “Poor” Emily writhed among the boots.

“The thing don’t like in her is that she is always trying to be smart,” said Miss Potter decidedly. “She says clever things she has read in books and passes them off as her own”

(Emily, outraged: “I don’t!”)

“And she’s very sarcastic and touchy, and of course as proud as Lucifer,” concluded Miss Potter.

Mrs. Ann Cyrilla laughed pleasantly and tolerantly again.

“Oh, that goes without saying in a Murray. But their worst fault is that they think nobody can do anything right but themselves, and Emily is full of it. Why, she even thinks she can preach better than Mr. Johnson.”

(Emily: “That is because I said he contradicted himself in one of his sermons—and he . And I’ve heard criticise dozens of sermons, Mrs. Ann Cyrilla.”)

“She’s jealous, too,” continued Mrs, Ann Cyrilla. “She can’t bear to-be beaten—she wants to be first in every-