write poetry,” said Emily — a little disdainfully, it must be admitted. “Teddy can’t — and he’s very clever.”
“Who’s Teddy?”
“A friend of mine.” There was just a trace of stiffness in Emily’s voice.
“Then,” said Perry, folding his arms across his breast and scowling, “I’m going to punch this friend of yours’ head for him.”
“You’re not,” cried Emily. She was very indignant and quite forgot for the moment that Perry had rescued her from the bull. She tossed her own head and started homeward. Perry turned too.
“May as well go up and see Jimmy Murray about hiring ‘fore I go home,” he said. “Don’t be mad, now. If you don’t want anybody’s head punched I won’t punch it. Only you’ve gotter like me, too.”
“Why, of course I’ll like you,” said Emily, as if there could be no question about it. She smiled her slow, blossoming smile at Perry and thereby reduced him to hopeless bondage.
Two days later Perry Miller was installed as chore boy at New Moon and in a fortnight’s time Emily felt as if he must have been there always.
“Aunt Elizabeth didn’t want Cousin Jimmy to hire him,” she wrote to her father, “because he was one of the boys who did a dreadful thing one night last fall. They changed all the horses that were tied to the fence one Sunday night when preaching was going on and when folks came out the confushun was awful. Aunt Elizabeth said it wouldn’t be safe to have him round the place. But Cousin Jimmy said it was awful hard to get a chore boy and that we ode Perry something for saving my life from the bull. So Aunt Elizabeth gave in and lets him sit at the table with us but he has to stay in the kitchen in the evenings. The rest of us are in the sitting-room, but I am allowed to go out and help Perry with his lessons. He can only have one candle and the light is very dim. It keeps us snuffing it all the time. It is great fun to snuff candles. Perry is head of his class in school already. He is only in the third book allthough he is nearly twelve. Miss Brownell said something sarkastik to him the first day in school and he just threw back his head and laughed loud and long. Miss Brownell gave him a whipping for it but she has never been sarkastik to him again. She does not like to be laughed at I can see. Perry isn’t afraid of anything. I thought he might not go to school any more when she whipped him but he says a little thing like that isn’t going to keep him from getting an educashun since he has made up his mind to it. He is very determined.
“Aunt Elizabeth is determined too. But she says Perry is stubborn. I am teaching Perry grammar. He says he wants to learn to speak properly. I told him he should not call his Aunt Tom an old beast but he said he had to because she wasn’t a young beast. He says the place he lives in is called Stovepipe Town because the houses have no chimneys, only pipes sticking out of the roof, but he would live in a manshun some day. Aunt Elizabeth says I ought not to be so friendly with a hired boy. But he is a nice boy though his manners are crood. Aunt Laura says they are crood. I don’t know what it means but I guess it means he always says what he thinks right out and eats beans with his knife. I like Perry but in a different way from Teddy. Isn’t it funny, dear Father, how many kinds of ways of liking there are? I don’t think Ilse likes him. She makes fun of his ignerance and turns up her nose at him because his close are patched though her own close are queer enough. Teddy doesn’t like him much and he drew such a funny picture of Perry hanging by his heels from a gallos. The face looked like Perrys and still it didn’t. Cousin Jimmy said it was a carrycachure and laughed at it but I dared not show it to Perry for fear he would punch Teddys head. I showed it to Ilse and she got mad and tore it in two. I cant imagine why.
“Perry says he can recite as well as Ilse and could draw pictures too if he put his mind to it. I can see he doesnt like to think anybody can do anything he cant. But he cant see the wallpaper in the air like I can though he tries until I fear he will strane his eyes. He can make better speeches than any of us. He says he used to mean to be a sailer like his father but now he thinks he will be a lawyer when he grows up and go to parlament. Teddy is going to be an artist if his mother will let him, and Ilse is going to be a concert reciter — there is another name but I don’t know how it is spelled — and I am going to be a poetess. I think we are a tallented crowd. Perhaps that is a vane thing to say, dear Father.
“A very terrible thing happened the day before yesterday. On Saturday morning we were at family prayers, all kneeling quite solemn around the kitchen. I just looked at Perry once and he made such a funny face at me that I laughed right out loud before I could help it. (That was not the terrible thing.) Aunt Elizabeth was very angry. I would not tell that it was Perry made me laugh because I was afraid he might be sent away if I did. So Aunt Elizabeth said I was to be punished and I was not let go to Jennie Strangs party in the afternoon. (It was a dreadful disappointment but it was not the terrible thing either.) Perry was away with Cousin Jimmy all day and when he came home at night he said to me, very feerce, Who has been making you cry. I said I had been crying — a little but not much — because I was not let go to the party because I had laughed at prayers. And Perry marched right up to Aunt Elizabeth and told her it was all his fault that I laughed. Aunt Elizabeth said I should not have laughed anyhow, but Aunt Laura was greevously upset and said my punishment had been far too severe; and she said that she would let me ware her pearl ring to school Monday to make up for it. I was enraptured for it is a lovely ring and no other girl has one. As soon as roll call was over Monday morning I put up my hand to ask Miss Brownell a question but really to show off my ring. That was wikked pride and I was punished. At recess Cora Lee, one of the big girls in the sixth class came and asked me to let her ware the ring for a while. I didnt want to but she said if I didnt she would get all the girls in my class to send me to Coventry (which is a dreadful thing, dear Father, and makes you feel like an outcast). So I let her and she kept it on till the afternoon recess and then she came and told me she had lost it in the brook. (This was the terrible thing.) Oh, Father dear, I was nearly wild. I dared not go home and face Aunt Laura. I had promised her I would be so careful with the ring. I thought I might earn money to get her another ring but when I figgered it out on my slate I knew I would have to wash dishes for twenty years to do it. I wepped in my despare. Perry saw me and after school he marched up to Cora Lee and said You fork over that ring or I’ll tell Miss Brownell about it. And Cora Lee forked it over, very meek and said I was going to give it to her anyhow. I was just playing a joke and Perry said, Dont you play any more jokes on Emily or I’ll joke you. It is very comforting to have such a champeen! I tremble to think what it would have been like if I had had to go home and tell Aunt Laura I had lost her ring. But it was crewel of Cora Lee to tell me she had lost it when she had not and harrow up my mind so. I could not be so crewel to an orfan girl.
“When I got home I looked in the glass to see if my hair had turned white. I am told that sometimes happens. But it hadnt.
“Perry knows more geograffy than any of us because he has been nearly everywhere in the world with his father. He tells me such fassinating stories after his lessons are done. He talks till the candle is burned to the last inch and then he uses that to go to bed with up the black hole into the kitchen loft because Aunt Elizabeth will not let him have more than one candle a night.
“Ilse and I had a fight yesterday about which we’d rather be Joan of Arc or Frances Willard. We didn’t begin it as a fight but just as an argewment but it ended that way. I would rather be Frances Willard because she is alive.
“We had the first snow yesterday. I made a poem on it. This is it.
Along the snow the sunbeams glide,
Earth is a peerless, gleaming bride,
Dripping with diamonds, clad in traling white,
No bride was ever half so fair and bright.
“I read it to Perry and he said he could make poetry just as good and he said right off,
Mike has made a long row
of tracks across the snow.
Now isnt that as good as yours. I didnt think it was because you could say it just as well in prose. But when you talk of peerless gleaming