Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/79

Rh winter cold outside. It opened from the dining-room, a tiny glass room, with white shelves running around it on which were grouped the loveliest ferns, rich purple heliotrope, the yellow jasmine, and one giant Daphne odora with its orange-bloom scent astray from the Riviera, and two majestic cape jasmines, exotics kin to her alien soul. She tolerated none of the usual variety of mongrel house plants. A rare scarlet lily, a resurrection calla, perhaps—and here it was always summer with the oxalis dripping from hanging baskets like humble incense upon the heads of the household and its frequenters.

When her brother's first son was born, named for his grandfather, her flying little greeting to him—delivered at her sister's pillow—was: Is it true, dear Sue? Are there Two? I shouldn't like to come For fear of joggling Him! If you could shut him up In a coffee cup, Or tie Him to a pin Till I got in, Or make Him fast To Pussy's fist, Hist! Whist! I'd come!

Later, with her little niece, and the golden-haired arch-darling of both houses—the transitory child, Gilbert, who only came and flashed a mere eight years and went on—Emily was just another child like them, only endowed with subtle powers of the high gods to produce unexpected rewards and avert disastrous consequences. No treat could be offered any one of the