“H’m. That wasn’t what I meant. Never mind. Come along, Star—if you don’t mind walking a bit slowly. I’ll take you back from the wilderness at least—I don’t know that I’ll venture to Wyther Grange to-night. I don’t want Aunt Nancy to take the edge off you. And so you don’t think me handsome?”
“I didn’t say so,” cried Emily.
“Not in words. But I can read your thoughts, Star—it won’t ever do to think anything you don’t want me to know. The gods gave me that gift—when they kept back everything else I wanted. You don’t think me handsome but you think me nice. Do you think you are pretty yourself?”
“A little—since Aunt Nancy lets me wear my bang,” said Emily frankly.
Jarback Priest made a grimace.
“Don’t call it by such a name. It’s a worse name even than bustle. Bangs and bustles—they hurt me. I like that black wave breaking on your white brows—but don’t call it a bang—ever again.”
“It is a very ugly word. I never use it in my poetry, of course.”
Whereby Dean Priest discovered that Emily wrote poetry. He also discovered pretty nearly everything else about her in that charming walk back to Priest Pond in the fir-scented dusk, with Tweed walking between them, his nose touching his master’s hand softly every now and then, while the robins in the trees above them whistled blithely in the afterlight.
With nine out of ten people Emily was secretive and reserved, but Dean Priest was sealed of her tribe and she divined it instantly. He had a right to the inner sanctuary and she yielded it unquestioningly. She talked to him freely.
Besides, she felt alive again—she felt the wonderful thrill of living again, after that dreadful space when she had seemed to hang between life and death. She felt, as she wrote to her father afterwards, “as if a little bird was singing in my heart.” And oh, how good the green sod felt under her feet!