Page:Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery.pdf/55

 “With wise and careful training many of her faults may be cured,” said Uncle Wallace, pompously.

(“I don’t them cured!” Emily was getting angrier and angrier all the time under the table. “I like  faults better than I do ——” she fumbled mentally for a word—then triumphantly recalled a phrase of her father’s—“your  virtues!”)

“I doubt it,” said Aunt Ruth, in a biting tone. “What’s bred in the bone comes out in the flesh. As for Douglas Starr, I think that it was perfectly disgraceful for him to die and leave that child without a cent.”

“Did he do it on purpose?” asked Cousin Jimmy blandly. It was the first time he had spoken.

“He was a miserable failure,” snapped Aunt Ruth.

“He wasn’t—he wasn’t!” screamed Emily, suddenly sticking her head out under the tablecloth, between the end legs of the table.

For a moment the Murrays sat as silent and motionless as if her outburst had turned them to stone. Then Aunt Ruth rose, stalked to the table, and lifted the cloth, behind which Emily had retired in dismay, realising what she had done.

“Get up and come out of that, Em’ly Starr!” said Aunt Ruth.

“Em’ly Starr” got up and came out. She was not specially frightened—she was too angry to be that. Her eyes had gone black and her cheeks crimson.

“What a little beauty—what a regular little beauty!” said Cousin Jimmy. But nobody heard him. Aunt Ruth had the floor.

“You shameless little eavesdropper!” she said. “There’s the Starr blood coming out—a Murray would never have done such a thing. You ought to be whipped!”

“Father wasn’t a failure!” cried Emily, choking with anger. “You had no right to call him a failure.