Page:Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery.pdf/183

 side to side. The giggles became shouts of laughter.

“Oh,” thought Emily, clenching her hands, “I wish—I wish the bears that ate the naughty children in the Bible would come and eat .”

There were no nice, retributive bears in the school bush, however, and Miss Brownell read the whole “poem” through. She was enjoying herself hugely. To ridicule a pupil always gave her pleasure and when that pupil was Emily of New Moon, in whose heart and soul she had always sensed something fundamentally different from her own, the pleasure was exquisite.

When she reached the end she handed the slate back to the crimson-cheeked Emily.

“Take your—, Emily,” she said.

Emily snatched the slate. No slate “rag” was handy but Emily gave the palm of her hand a fierce lick and one side of the slate was wiped off. Another lick—and the rest of the poem went. It had been disgraced—degraded—it must be blotted out of existence. To the end of her life Emily never forgot the pain and humiliation of that experience.

Miss Brownell laughed again.

“What a pity to obliterate such—, Emily,” she said. “Suppose you do those sums now. They are not—, but I am in this school to teach arithmetic and I am not here to teach the art of writing—. Go to your own seat. Yes, Rhoda?”

For Rhoda Stuart was holding up her hand and snapping her fingers.

“Please, Miss Brownell,” she said, with distinct triumph in her tones, “Emily Starr has a whole bunch of poetry in her desk. She was reading it to Ilse Burnley this morning while you thought they were learning history.”

Perry Miller turned around and a delightful missile, compounded of chewed paper and known as a “spit pill,” flew across the room and struck Rhoda squarely in the