Page:Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery.pdf/304

 Little Tommy, she suspected it was of the sterner sex. But rather than again provoke Aunt Elizabeth’s wrath by discussing tabooed subjects, she agreed.

“I can call it Daff,” she thought. “That sounds more .”

The kitten was a delicate bit of striped greyness that reminded Emily of her dear lost Mikes. And it smelled so nice—of warmth and clean furriness, with whiffs of the clover hay where Saucy Sal had made her mother-nest.

After supper she heard Teddy’s whistle in the old orchard—the same enchanting call. Emily flew out to greet him—after all, there was nobody just like Teddy in the world. They had an ecstatic scamper up to the Tansy Patch to see a new puppy that Dr. Burnley had given Teddy. Mrs. Kent did not seem very glad to see Emily—she was colder and more remote than ever, and she sat and watched the two children playing with the chubby little pup with a smouldering fire in her dark eyes that made Emily vaguely uncomfortable whenever she happened to glance up and encounter it. Never before had she sensed Mrs. Kent’s dislike for her so keenly as that night.

“Why doesn’t your mother like me?” she asked Teddy bluntly, when they carried little Leo to the barn for the night.

“Because do,” said Teddy briefly. “She doesn’t like I like. I’m afraid she’ll poison Leo very soon. I—I wish she wasn’t so fond of me,” he burst out, in the beginning of a revolt against this abnormal jealousy of love, which he felt rather than understood to be a fetter that was becoming galling. “She says she won’t let me take up Latin and Algebra this year—you know Miss Brownell said I might—because I’m not to go to college. She says she can’t bear to part from me—ever. I don’t care about the Latin and stuff—but I want to learn to be an artist—I want to go away some day to the