Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/91

 so set on going to Shrewsbury that she would do anything that might be asked of her in order to go—especially such a trifling thing as this—which, so Aunt Elizabeth thought, involved only a surrender of stubbornness.

“Do you mean to say you won’t give up your foolish scribbling for the sake of the education you’ve always pretended to want so much?” she demanded.

“Not that I —it’s just that I ,” said Emily despairingly. She knew Aunt Elizabeth could not understand—Aunt Elizabeth never had understood. “I help writing, Aunt Elizabeth. It’s in my blood. There’s no use in asking me. I want an education—it isn’t pretending—but I can’t give up my writing to get it. I couldn’t keep such a promise—so what use would there be in making it?”

“Then you can stay home,” said Aunt Elizabeth angrily.

Emily expected to see her get up and walk out of the room. Instead, Aunt Elizabeth picked up her stocking and wrathfully resumed her knitting. To tell the truth, Aunt Elizabeth was absurdly taken aback. She really wanted to send Emily to Shrewsbury. Tradition required so much of her, and all the clan were of opinion she should be sent. This condition had been her own idea. She thought it a good chance to break Emily of a silly un-Murray-like habit of wasting time and paper, and she had never doubted that her plan would succeed, for she knew how much Emily wanted to go. And now this senseless, unreasoning, ungrateful obstinacy—“the Starr coming out,” thought Aunt Elizabeth rancorously, forgetful of the Shipley inheritance! What was to be done? She knew too well from past experience that there would be no moving Emily once she had taken up a position, and she knew that Wallace and Oliver and Ruth, though they thought Emily’s craze for writing as silly and untraditional as she did, would not back her—Elizabeth—up in her demand. Elizabeth Murray foresaw a complete right-about-face before her, and Elizabeth Murray did not like the prospect. She could have shaken, with a