Emily Climbs (1925)

Chapter 7: Pot-pourri

"September 20, 19--

"I have been neglecting my diary of late. One does not have a great deal of spare time at Aunt Ruth's. But it is Friday night and I couldn't go home for the week-end so I come to my diary for comforting. I can spend only alternate week-ends at New Moon. Aunt Ruth wants me every other Saturday to help 'houseclean.' We go over this house from top to bottom whether it needs it or not, as the tramp said when he washed his face every month, and then rest from our labours for Sunday.

"There is a hint of frost in the air to-night. I am afraid the garden at New Moon will suffer. Aunt Elizabeth will begin to think it is time to give up the cookhouse for the season and move the Waterloo back into the kitchen. Cousin Jimmy will be boiling the pigs' potatoes in the old orchard and reciting his poetry. Likely Teddy and Ilse and Perry--who have all gone home, lucky creatures--will be there and Daff will be prowling about. But I must not think of it. That way homesickness lies.

"I am beginning to like Shrewsbury and Shrewsbury school and Shrewsbury teachers--though Dean was right when he said I would not find anyone here like Mr. Carpenter. The Seniors and Juniors look down on the Preps and are very condescending. Some of them condescended to me, but I do not think they will try it again--except Evelyn Blake, who condescends every time we meet, as we do quite often, because her chum, Mary Carswell, rooms with Ilse at Mrs. Adamson's boarding-house.

"I hate Evelyn Blake. There is no doubt at all about that. And there is as little doubt that she hates me. We are instinctive enemies--we looked at each other the first time we met like two strange cats, and that was enough. I never really hated any one before. I thought I did but now I know it was only dislike. Hate is rather interesting for a change. Evelyn is a Junior--tall, clever, rather handsome. Has long, bright, treacherous brown eyes and talks through her nose. She has literary ambitions, I understand, and considers herself the best dressed girl in High School. Perhaps she is; but somehow her clothes seem to make more impression on you than she does. People criticize Ilse for dressing too richly and too old but she dominates her clothes for all that. Evelyn doesn't. You always think of her clothes before you think of her. The difference seems to be that Evelyn dresses for other people and Ilse dresses for herself. I must write a character sketch of her when I have studied her a little more. What a satisfaction that will be!

"I met her first in Ilse's room and Mary Carswell introduced us. Evelyn looked down at me--she is a little taller, being a year older--and said,

"'Oh, yes, Miss Starr? I've heard my aunt, Mrs. Henry Blake, talking about you.'

Mrs. Henry Blake was once Miss Brownell. I looked straight into Evelyn's eyes and said,

"'No doubt Mrs. Henry Blake painted a very flattering picture of me.'

"Evelyn laughed--with a kind of laugh I don't like. It gives you the feeling that she is laughing at you, not at what you've said.

"'You didn't get on very well with her, did you? I understand you are quite literary. What papers do you write for?'

"She asked the question sweetly but she knew perfectly well that I don't write for any--yet.

"'The Charlottetown Enterprise and the Shrewsbury Weekly Times,' I said with a wicked grin. 'I've just made a bargain with them. I'm to get two cents for every news item I send the Enterprise and twenty-five cents a week for a society letter for the Times.'

"My grin worried Evelyn. Preps aren't supposed to grin like that at Juniors. It isn't done.

"'Oh, yes, I understand you are working for your board,' she said. 'I suppose every little helps. But I meant real literary periodicals.'