Emily Climbs Read Online Free PDF

the store to the station he would let him have it for nothing. Arminius did. It was a quarter of a mile to the station and all the small boys in Shrewsbury ran after him and hooted him. But Arminius didn’t care. He had saved three dollars and forty-nine cents.
    “
And
one evening, right here at New Moon, I dropped a soft-boiled egg on Aunt Elizabeth’s second-best cashmere dress. That
was
a happening. A kingdom might have been upset in Europe, and it wouldn’t have made such a commotion at New Moon.
    “So, Mistress Sawyer, you are vastly mistaken. Besides, apart from all happenings, the folks here are interesting in themselves. I don’t
like
every one but I find every one interesting – Miss Matty Small, who is forty and wears
outrageous
colors – she wore an old-rose dress and a scarlet hat to church all last summer – old Uncle Reuben Bascom, who is solazy that he held an umbrella over himself all one rainy night in bed, when the roof began to leak, rather than get out and move the bed – Elder McCloskey, who thought it wouldn’t do to say ‘pants’ in a story he was telling about a missionary, at prayer-meeting, so always said politely ‘the clothes of his lower parts’ – Amasa Derry, who carried off four prizes at the Exhibition last fall, with vegetables he stole from Ronnie Bascom’s field, while Ronnie didn’t get one prize –Jimmy Joe Belle, who came here from Derry Pond yesterday to get some lumber ‘to beeld a henhouse for my leetle dog’ – old Luke Elliott, who is such a systematic fiend that he even draws up a schedule of the year on New Year’s day, and charts down all the days he means to get drunk on –
and sticks to it:
– they’re all interesting and amusing and delightful.
    “There, I’ve proved Mrs. Alec Sawyer to be so completely wrong that I feel quite kindly towards her, even though she did call me a puss.
    “Why don’t I like being called a puss, when cats are such nice things? And I like being called
pussy
.
    “April 28, 19–
    “Two weeks ago I sent my very best poem,
Wind Song
to a magazine in New York, and today it came back with just a little
printed slit
saying, ‘We regret we cannot Ilse this contribution.’
    “I feel dreadfully. I suppose I can’t really write anything that is any good.
    “I
can
. That magazine will be
glad
to print my pieces some day!
    “I didn’t tell Mr. Carpenter I sent it. I wouldn’t get any sympathy from him.
He
says that five years from now will be time enough to begin pestering editors. But I
know
that somepoems I’ve read in that very magazine were not a bit better than
Wind Song
.
    “I feel more like writing poetry in spring than at any other time. Mr. Carpenter tells me to fight against the impulse. He says spring has been responsible for more trash than anything else in the universe of God.
    “Mr. Carpenter’s way of talking has a
tang
to it.
    “May 1, 19–
    “Dean is home. He came to his sister’s yesterday and this evening he was here and we walked in the garden, up and down the sun-dial walk, and talked. It was splendid to have him back, with his mysterious green eyes and his nice mouth.
    “We had a long conversation. We talked of Algiers and the transmigration of souls and of being cremated and of profiles – Dean says I have a good profile – ‘pure Greek.’ I always like Dean’s compliments.
    “‘Star o’ Morning, how you have grown!’ he said. ‘I left a child last autumn – and I find a woman!’
    “(I will be fourteen in three weeks, and I am tall for my age. Dean seems to be glad of this – quite unlike Aunt Laura who always sighs when she lengthens my dresses, and thinks children grow up too fast.)
    “‘So goes time by’ I said, quoting the motto on the sundial, and feeling
quite sophisticated
.
    “‘You are almost as tall as I am,’ he said; and then added
bitterly
‘to be sure Jarback Priest is of no very stately height.’
    “I have always shrunk from referring to his shoulder in