New Moon

      Table of Contents

      Emily found the drive through the blossomy June world pleasant. Nobody talked much; even Saucy Sal had subsided into the silence of despair; now and then Cousin Jimmy made a remark, more to himself, as it seemed, than to anybody else. Sometimes Aunt Elizabeth answered it, sometimes not. She always spoke crisply and used no unnecessary words.

      They stopped in Charlottetown and had dinner. Emily, who had had no appetite since her father’s death, could not eat the roast beef which the boardinghouse waitress put before her. Whereupon Aunt Elizabeth whispered mysteriously to the waitress who went away and presently returned with a plateful of delicate cold chicken — fine white slices, beautifully trimmed with lettuce frills.

      “Can you eat that?” said Aunt Elizabeth sternly, as to a culprit at the bar.

      “I’ll — try,” whispered Emily.

      She was too frightened just then to say more, but by the time she had forced down some of the chicken she had made up her small mind that a certain matter must be put right.

      “Aunt Elizabeth,” she said.

      “Hey, what?” said Aunt Elizabeth, directing her steel-blue eyes straight at her niece’s troubled ones.

      “I would like you to understand,” said Emily, speaking very primly and precisely so that she would be sure to get things right, “that it was not because I did not like the roast beef I did not eat it. I was not hungry at all; and I just et some of the chicken to oblige you, not because I liked it any better.”

      “Children should eat what is put before them and never turn up their noses at good, wholesome food,” said Aunt Elizabeth severely. So Emily felt that Aunt Elizabeth had not understood after all and she was unhappy about it.

      After dinner Aunt Elizabeth announced to Aunt Laura that they would do some shopping.

      “We must get some things for the child,” she said.

      “Oh, please don’t call me ‘the child,’” exclaimed Emily. “It makes me feel as if I didn’t belong anywhere. Don’t you like my name, Aunt Elizabeth? Mother thought it so pretty. And I don’t need any ‘things.’ I have two whole sets of underclothes — only one is patched—”

      “S-s-sh!” said Cousin Jimmy, gently kicking Emily’s shins under the table.

      Cousin Jimmy only meant that it would be better if she let Aunt Elizabeth buy “things” for her when she was in the humour for it; but Emily thought he was rebuking her for mentioning such matters as underclothes and subsided in scarlet confusion. Aunt Elizabeth went on talking to Laura as if she had not heard.

      “She must not wear that cheap black dress in Blair Water. You could sift oatmeal through it. It is nonsense expecting a child of ten to wear black at all. I shall get her a nice white dress with a black sash for good, and some black-and-white-check gingham for school. Jimmy, we’ll leave the child with you. Look after her.”

      Cousin Jimmy’s method of looking after her was to take her to a restaurant down street and fill her up with ice-cream. Emily had never had many chances at ice-cream and she needed no urging, even with lack of appetite, to eat two saucerfuls. Cousin Jimmy eyed her with satisfaction.

      “No use my getting anything for you that Elizabeth could see,” he said. “But she can’t see what is inside of you. Make the most of your chance, for goodness alone knows when you’ll get any more.”

      “Do you never have ice-cream at New Moon?”

      Cousin Jimmy shook his head.

      “Your Aunt Elizabeth doesn’t like new-fangled things. In the house, we belong to fifty years ago, but on the farm she has to give way. In the house — candles; in the dairy, her grandmother’s big pans to set the milk in. But, pussy, New Moon is a pretty good place after all. You’ll like it some day.”

      “Are there any fairies there?” asked Emily, wistfully.

      “The woods are full of ‘em,” said Cousin Jimmy. “And so are the columbines in the old orchard. We grow columbines there on purpose for the fairies.”

      Emily sighed. Since she was eight she had known there were no fairies anywhere nowadays; yet she hadn’t quite given up the hope that one or two might linger in old-fashioned, out-of-the-way spots. And where so likely as at New Moon?”

      “Really-truly fairies?” she questioned.

      “Why, you know, if a fairy was really-truly it wouldn’t be a fairy,” said Cousin Jimmy seriously. “Could it, now?”

      Before Emily could think this out the aunts returned and soon they were all on the road again. It was sunset when they came to Blair Water — a rosy sunset that flooded the long, sandy sea-coast with colour and brought red road and fir-darkened hill out in fleeting clearness of outline. Emily looked about her on her new environment and found it good. She saw a big house peering whitely through a veil of tall old trees — no mushroom growth of yesterday’s birches but trees that had loved and been loved by three generations — a glimpse of silver water glistening through the dark spruces — that was the Blair Water itself, she knew — and a tall, golden-white church spire shooting up above the maple woods in the valley below. But it was none of these that brought her the flash — that came with the sudden glimpse of the dear, friendly, little dormer window peeping through vines on the roof — and right over it, in the opalescent sky, a real new moon, golden and slender. Emily was tingling all over with it as Cousin Jimmy lifted her from the buggy and carried her into the kitchen.

      She sat on a long wooden bench that was satin-smooth with age and scrubbing, and watched Aunt Elizabeth lighting candles here and there, in great, shining, brass candlesticks — on the shelf between the windows, on the high dresser where the row of blue and white plates began to wink her a friendly welcome, on the long table in the corner. And as she lighted them, elvish “rabbits’ candles” flashed up amid the trees outside the windows.

      Emily had never seen a kitchen like this before. It had dark wooden walls and low ceiling, with black rafters crossing it, from which hung hams and sides of bacon and bunches of herbs and new socks and mittens, and many other things, the names and uses of which Emily could not imagine. The sanded floor was spotlessly white, but the boards had been scrubbed away through the years until the knots in them stuck up all over in funny little bosses, and in front of the stove they had sagged, making a queer, shallow little hollow. In one corner of the ceiling was a large square hole which looked black and spookish in the candlelight, and made her feel creepy. Something might pop down out of a hole like that if one hadn’t behaved just right, you know. And candles cast such queer wavering shadows. Emily didn’t know whether she liked the New Moon kitchen or not. It was an interesting place — and she rather thought she would like to describe it in the old account-book, if it hadn’t been burned — but Emily suddenly found herself trembling on the verge of tears.

      “Cold?” said Aunt Laura kindly. “These June evenings are chilly yet. Come into the sitting-room — Jimmy has kindled a fire in the stove there.”

      Emily, fighting desperately for self-control, went into the sitting-room. It was much more cheerful than the kitchen. The floor was covered with gay-striped homespun, the table