“I shall excuse your conduct if you behave yourself in future, Emily,” she said coldly. “I feel that I have only done my duty in putting the matter before your aunt. No, thank you, Miss Murray, I cannot stay to supper—I want to get home before it is too dark.”
“God speed all travellers,” said Perry cheerfully, climbing down his ladder—this time with his clothes on.
Aunt Elizabeth ignored him—she was not going to have a scene with a hired boy before Miss Brownell. The latter switched herself out and Aunt Elizabeth looked at Emily.
“You will eat your supper alone to-night, Emily, in the pantry—you will have bread and milk only. And you will not speak one word to anyone until to-morrow morning.”
“But you won’t forbid me to think?” said Emily anxiously.
Aunt Elizabeth made no reply but sat haughtily down at the supper table. Emily went into the pantry and ate her bread and milk, with the odour of the delicious sausages the others were eating for savour. Emily liked sausages, and New Moon sausages were the last word in sausages. Elizabeth Burnley had brought the recipe out from the Old Country and its secret was carefully guarded. And Emily was hungry. But she had escaped the unbearable, and things might be worse. It suddenly occurred to her that she would write an epic poem in imitation of The Lay Of The Last Minstrel. Cousin Jimmy had read The Lay to her last Saturday. She would begin the first canto right off. When Laura Murray came into the pantry, Emily, her bread and milk only half eaten, was leaning her elbows on the dresser, gazing into space, with faintly moving lips and the light that never was on land or sea in her young eyes. Even the aroma of sausages was forgotten—was she not drinking from a fount of Castaly?
“Emily,” said Aunt Laura, shutting the door, and looking very lovingly upon Emily out of her kind blue eyes, “you can talk to me all you want to. I don’t like Miss Brownell and I don’t think you were altogether in the wrong—although of course you shouldn’t be writing poetry when you have sums to do. And there are some ginger cookies in that box.”
“I don’t want to talk to any one, dear Aunt Laura—I’m too happy,” said Emily dreamily. “I’m composing an epic—it is to be called The White Lady, and I’ve got twenty lines of it made already—and two of them are thrilling. The heroine wants to go into a convent and her father warns her that if she does she will never be able to
Come back to the life you gave
With all its pleasures to the grave.