Emily Climbs Read Online Free PDF Page A

earnest.
    “I didn’t tear that poem up, though – I couldn’t – it really
was
too good to destroy. I put it away in my literary cupboard to read over once in a while for my own enjoyment, but I will never show it to anybody.
    “Oh, how I wish I hadn’t hurt Mr. Carpenter!
    “April 1, 19–
    “Something I heard a visitor in Blair Water say today annoyed me very much. Mr. and Mrs. Alec Sawyer, who live in Charlottetown, were in the Post Office when I was there. Mrs. Sawyer is very handsome and fashionable and condescending. I heard her say to her husband,
‘How
do the natives of this sleepy place continue to live here year in and year out?
I
should go mad.
Nothing
ever happens here.’
    “I would dearly have liked to tell her a few things about Blair Water. I could have been sarcastic with a vengeance. But, of course, New Moon people
do not make scenes in public
. So I contented myself with bowing
very coldly
when she spoke to me and
sweeping past
her. I heard Mr. Sawyer say, ‘Who is that girl?’ and Mrs. Sawyer said, ‘She must be that Starr puss – she has the Murray trick of holding her head, all right.’
    “The idea of saying ‘nothing ever happens here’! Why, things are happening right along –
thrilling
things. I think lifehere is
extremely
wonderful. We have always so much to laugh and cry and talk about.
    “Look at all the things that have happened in Blair Water in just the last three weeks – comedy and tragedy all mixed up together. James Baxter has suddenly stopped speaking to his wife and
nobody knows why. She
doesn’t, poor soul, and she is breaking her heart about it. Old Adam Gillian, who hated pretence of any sort, died two weeks ago and his last words were, ‘See that there isn’t any howling and sniffling at my funeral.’ So nobody howled or sniffled. Nobody wanted to, and since he had forbidden it nobody pretended to. There never was such a cheerful funeral in Blair Water. I’ve seen weddings that were more melancholy – Ella Brice’s, for instance. What cast a cloud over hers was that she forgot to put on her white slippers when she dressed, and went down to the parlor in a pair of old, faded, bedroom shoes with holes in the toes. Really, people couldn’t have talked more about it if she had gone down without
anything
on. Poor Ella cried all through the wedding supper about it.
    “Old Robert Scobie and his half-sister have quarrelled, after living together for thirty years without a fuss, although she is said to be a very aggravating woman. Nothing she did or said ever provoked Robert into an outburst, but it seems that there was just one doughnut left from supper one evening recently, and Robert is very fond of doughnuts. He put it away in the pantry for a bedtime snack, and when he went to get it he found that Matilda had eaten it. He went into a terrible rage, pulled her nose, called her a
she-deviless
and ordered her out of his house. She has gone to live with her sister at Derry Pond, and Robert is going to bach it. Neither of them will ever forgive the other, Scobie-like, and neither will ever be happy or contented again.
    “George Lake was walking home from Derry Pond one moonlit evening two weeks ago, and
all at once
he saw another
very black
shadow going along beside his, on the moonlight snow.
    “
And there was nothing to cast that shadow
.
    “He rushed to the nearest house, nearly dead with fright, and they say he will never be the same man again.
    “This is the most
dramatic
thing that has happened. It makes me shiver as I write of it. Of course George
must
have been mistaken. But he is a truthful man, and he doesn’t drink. I don’t know what to think of it.
    “Arminius Scobie is a
very mean man
and always buys his wife’s hats for her, lest she pay too much for them. They know this in the Shrewsbury stores, and laugh at him. One day last week he was in Jones and McCallum’s, buying her a hat, and Mr. Jones told him that if he would
wear the hat
from