Page:Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery.pdf/291

 now Jarback Priest. Was there really something uncanny about them?

And yet there was a flavour about the said Jarback that she liked—liked decidedly. Emily never was long in doubt about any one she met. In a few minutes she always knew whether she liked, disliked, or was indifferent to them. She had a queer feeling that she had known Jarback Priest for years—perhaps because it had seemed so long when she was lying on that crumbling earth waiting for him to return. He was not handsome but she liked that lean, clever face of his with its magnetic green eyes.

“So you’re the young lady visitor at the Grange!” said Dean Priest, in some astonishment. “Then my dear Aunt Nancy should look after you better—my dear Aunt Nancy.”

“You don’t like Aunt Nancy, I see,” said Emily coolly.

“What is the use of liking a lady who won’t like me? You have probably discovered by this time that my Lady Aunt detests me.”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s as bad as that,” said Emily. “She must have some good opinions about you—she says you’re the only Priest who will ever go to heaven.”

“She doesn’t mean that as a compliment, whatever you in your innocence believe it to be. And you are Douglas Starr’s daughter? I knew your father. We were boys together at Queen’s Academy—we drifted apart after we left it—he went into journalism, I to McGill. But he was the only friend I had at school—the only boy who would bother himself about Jarback Priest, who was lame and hunchbacked and couldn’t play football or hockey. Emily Byrd Starr—Starr should be your first name. You look like a star—you have a radiant sort of personality shining through you—your proper habitat should be the evening sky just after sunset—or the morning sky just before sunrise. Yes. You’d be more at home in the morning sky. I think I shall call you Star.”