Miss Emily Read Online Free PDF Page B

miss,’ she said. ‘It’s a coffin. It means a death before long.’ And she was so crushed by the idea that I had to go along with it and console her for a demise that has not yet taken place!”
    â€œOh, the Irish,” Sue says. “Everything is low and sad with them. Those Pocumtuc girls make adequate domestics, and they don’t talk much. And certainly not out of turn. You should hire one of them instead.”
    â€œI like Ada. She brings spirit with her. She enlivens me. And the entire house.”
    Sue waves her hand. “Emily, you want for company—that is why this girl amuses you. You must go forth from this house on occasion. Come to me, to one of my soirées.”
    I see a crowded room in my mind, and I feel dizzy. “I think not.”
    â€œPeople ask after you all the time.” She whisks her hand over her hair. “And it injures me a little, Emily, that you do not come anymore.”
    I do not wish to wound Susan, but one as sociable as she perhaps cannot fully understand why strangers discombobulate me so much. I simply do not feel comfortable in a throng; my head gets addled, and I long for peace. And Sue may not comprehend either the writer’s absolute need for quiet and retreat, the solace of it. I am so entirely happy in my own company that I rarely feel the need for anyone else, and when I do, I like to choose my companions wisely.
    Sue looks at me, expecting a response. Though her face is the gentle one I love, there is a firmness to her, too, an insistence.
    â€œYou know that I quake before prying, inquiring eyes,” I say. “It has always been so. Even when I seemed gay and giddy as a girl, I was uncomfortable. Deeply.”
    Sue softens. “People are not necessarily prying when they look at you, dear Emily. The average man is interested in his fellow man and in conversation, nothing more.”
    I slip from my chair and kneel before her. “When I talk too much, everything I think and feel is wrung from me. I have nothing to write about when all is spent. It takes me so long to restore myself. It is as if I must heal a wound after each party where all is chitchat and glances and fun. ”
    â€œI do not wish you to be upset, Emily. I merely want to introduce you to people. I would like my guests to experience you, not only the poems of yours I share with them.”
    â€œI know you mean your invitation kindly, Dollie. But we arehere together now.” I put my lips to her cheek and tell the curl of her ear, “I prefer to have you alone. That way you are all mine.”
    Sue dips her head to my breast, and I place my hand to the back of her sweet neck. I study the chevrons of tiny hairs that grow there, pointing their way down into her bodice.

Miss Ada Is Upset by a Visitor to the Homestead

    T HE D ICKINSON KITCHEN IS PAINTED GREEN AND YELLOW. E VERY time I walk into it, I think of apples and daffodils. It is bright and calm, the very opposite of the soot-blackened clutter that makes up my mammy’s fireplace and table at home in Tigoora. And here the entire house is mine: I am cook and housekeeper and lady’s maid, all in one. If Mrs. Rathcliffe could see me!
    Yesterday Mrs. Dickinson came in and asked if I was able to read and then seemed affronted when I said I was. She handed me a neat, whey-colored book.
    â€œThink of this as your second Bible,” she said.
    I looked at the cover: The Frugal Housewife by Mrs. Child. I opened it and recited, “ ‘Dedicated to those who are not ashamed of economy.’ I will read it, ma’am.”
    Mrs. Dickinson looked at me solemnly. “Mrs. Child urges prudence at all times and for every person.” The twin sets of sausage curls below her ears jigged up and down as she spoke. I wanted to slip my finger into one of her shiny ringlets, to see what it would feel like. “Economy, Ada,” she said, nodded and went away.
    Like her husband, the missus is