Page:Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery.pdf/359

 of the hungry world?—you in your New Moon seclusion of old trees and old maids—but it hungry. —the seasons are a sort of disease all young poets must have, it seems—ha! ‘Spring will not forget’— a good line—the only good line in it. H’m’m——

Have you— you learned that secret?”

“I think I’ve always known it,” said Emily dreamily. That flash of unimaginable sweetness that sometimes surprised her had just come and gone.

“—too didactic—too didactic. You’ve no right to try to teach until you’re old—and then you won’t want to—

Were you looking in the glass when you composed that line?”

“No—” indignantly.

“‘When the morning light is shaken like a banner on the hill’—a good line—a good line—

Too much like a faint echo of Wordsworth. —‘blue and austerely bright’—‘austerely bright’—child, how can you marry the right adjectives like that? —‘all the secret fears that haunt the night’—what do know of the fears that haunt the night?”

“I know something,” said Emily decidedly, remembering her first night at Wyther Grange.

“—