Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/117

Rh brilliant child. Emily idolized him from his birth and only after days of stricken silence recovered from the blow sufficiently to write his mother:

And during these years of increasing isolation it was to her work she turned for relief and renewal. She admitted she was besieged for poems, but held her peace, working because "it kept the awe away," though in other mood she confessed it "a bleak redeeming."

From the time of her father's death she never left the house, except to flit about the porch at dusk to water her frail plants—set just outside in summer—looking in her white dress like just another moth fluttering in the twilights. The red army blanket that was thrown down on the dewy grass to prevent her taking cold was the only bit of color associated with her, and the origin of the