Page:Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery.pdf/269

 and any human being. It was cruel of Aunt Nancy to put her in a haunted room. Aunt Nancy must have known it was haunted—cruel old Aunt Nancy with her ghoulish pride in men who had killed themselves for her. Oh, if she were back in dear New Moon, with Aunt Elizabeth beside her. Aunt Elizabeth was not an ideal bedfellow but she was flesh-and-blood. And if the windows were hermetically sealed they kept out spooks as well as night air.

“Perhaps it won’t be so bad if I say my prayers over again,” thought Emily.

But even this didn’t help much.

To the end of her life Emily never forgot that first horrible night at Wyther Grange. She was so tired that sometimes she dozed fitfully off only to be awakened in a few minutes in panic horror, by the rustling and muffled moans behind her bed. Every ghost and groan, every tortured spirit and bleeding nun of the books she had read came into her mind.

“Aunt Elizabeth was right—novels aren’t fit to read,” she thought. “Oh, I will die here—of fright—I know I will. I know I’m a coward—I can’t be brave.”

When morning came the room was bright with sunshine and free from mysterious sounds. Emily got up, dressed and found her way to the old wing. She was pale, with black-ringed eyes, but resolute.

“Well, and how did you sleep?” asked Aunt Nancy graciously.

Emily ignored the question.

“I want to go home today,” she said.

Aunt Nancy stared.

“Home? Nonsense! Are you such a homesick baby as that?”

“I’m not homesick—not —but I must go home.”

“You can’t—there’s no one here to take you. You don’t expect Caroline can drive you to Blair Water, do you?”