THE BOOK OF YESTERDAY
That first Saturday and Sunday at New Moon always stood out in Emily’s
memory as a very wonderful time, so crowded was it with new and
generally delightful impressions. If it be true that we “count time
by heart throbs” Emily lived two years in it instead of two days.
Everything was fascinating from the moment she came down the long,
polished staircase into the square hall that was filled with a soft,
rosy light coming through the red glass panes of the front door. Emily
gazed through the panes delightedly. What a strange, fascinating, red
world she beheld, with a weird red sky that looked, she thought, as if
it belonged to the Day of Judgment.
There was a certain charm about the old house which Emily felt keenly
and responded to, although she was too young to understand it. It was a
house which aforetime had had vivid brides and mothers and wives, and
the atmosphere of their loves and lives still hung around it, not yet
banished by the old-maidishness of the régime of Elizabeth and Laura.
“Why--I’m going to _love_ New Moon,” thought Emily, quite amazed at the
idea.
Aunt Laura was setting the breakfast table in the kitchen, which seemed
quite bright and jolly in the glow of morning sunshine. Even the
black hole in the ceiling had ceased to be spookish and become only
a commonplace entrance to the kitchen loft. And on the red-sandstone
doorstep Saucy Sal was sitting, preening her fur as contentedly as
if she had lived at New Moon all her life. Emily did not know it,
but Sal had already drunk deep the delight of battle with her peers
that morning and taught the barn cats their place once and for all.
Cousin Jimmy’s big yellow Tom had got a fearful drubbing, and was
minus several bits of his anatomy, while a stuck-up, black lady-cat,
who fancied herself considerably, had made up her mind that if that
grey-and-white, narrow-faced interloper from goodness knew where was
going to stay at New Moon, _she_ was not.
Emily gathered Sal up in her arms and kissed her joyously, to the
horror of Aunt Elizabeth, who was coming across the platform from the
cook-house with a plate of sizzling bacon in her hands.
“Don’t ever let me see you kissing a cat again,” she ordered.
“Oh, all right,” agreed Emily cheerfully. “I’ll only kiss her when you
don’t see me after this.”
“I don’t want any of your pertness, miss. You are not to kiss cats at
all.”
“But, Aunt Elizabeth, I didn’t kiss her on her mouth, _of course_. I
just kissed her between her ears. It’s nice--won’t you just try it for
once and see for yourself?”
“That will do, Emily. You have said quite enough.” And Aunt Elizabeth
sailed on into the kitchen majestically, leaving Emily momentarily
wretched. She felt that she had offended Aunt Elizabeth, and she hadn’t
the least notion why or how.
But the scene before her was too interesting to worry long over Aunt
Elizabeth. Delicious smells were coming from the cook-house--a little,
slant-roofed building at the corner where the big cooking-stove was
placed in summer. It was thickly overgrown with hop vines, as most of
the New Moon buildings were. To the right was the “new” orchard, very
wonderful now in blossom, but a rather commonplace spot after all,
since Cousin Jimmy cultivated it in most up-to-date fashion and had
grain growing in the wide spaces between the straight rows of trees
that looked all alike. But on the other side of the barn lane, just
behind the well, was the “old orchard,” where Cousin Jimmy said the
columbines grew and which seemed to be a delightful place where trees
had come up at their own sweet will, and grown into individual shapes
and sizes, where blue-eyed ivy twined about their roots and wild-briar
roses rioted over the grey paling fence. Straight ahead, closing the
vista between the orchards, was a little slope covered with huge white
birches, among which were the big New Moon barns, and beyond the new
orchard a little, lovable red road looped lightly up and up, over a
hill, until it seemed to touch the vivid blue of the sky.
Cousin Jimmy came down from the barns, carrying brimming pails of
milk, and Emily ran with him to the dairy behind the cook-house. Such
a delightful spot she had never seen or imagined. It was a snow-white
little building in a clump of tall balm-of-gileads. Its grey roof was
dotted over with cushions of moss like fat green-velvet mice. You went
down six sandstone steps, with ferns crowding about them, and opened a
white door with a glass panel in it, and went down three more steps.
And then you were in a clean, earthy-smelling, damp, cool place with
an earthen floor and windows screened by the delicate emerald of young
hop-vines, and broad wooden shelves all around, whereon stood wide,
shallow pans of glossy brown ware, full of milk coated over with cream
so rich that it was positively yellow.
Aunt Laura was waiting for them and she strained the milk into empty
pans and then skimmed some of the full ones. Emily thought skimming was
a lovely occupation and longed to try her hand at it. She also longed
to sit right down and write a description of that dear dairy; but
alas, there was no account book; still, she could write it in her head.
She squatted down on a little three-legged stool in a dim corner and
proceeded to do it, sitting so still that Jimmy and Laura forgot her
and went away and later had to hunt for her a quarter of an hour. This
delayed breakfast and made Aunt Elizabeth very cross. But Emily had
found just the right sentence to define the clear yet dim green light
that filled the dairy and was so happy over it that she didn’t mind
Aunt Elizabeth’s black looks a bit.
After breakfast Aunt Elizabeth informed Emily that henceforth it would
be one of her duties to drive the cows to pasture every morning.
“Jimmy has no hired man just now and it will save him a few minutes.”
“And don’t be afraid,” added Aunt Laura, “the cows know the way so well
they’ll go of themselves. You have only to follow and shut the gates.”
“I’m not afraid,” said Emily.
But she was. She knew nothing about cows; still, she was determined
that the Murrays should not suspect a Starr was scared. So, her heart
beating like a trip-hammer, she sallied valiantly forth and found that
what Aunt Laura had said was true and cows were not such ferocious
animals after all. They went gravely on ahead and she had only to
follow, through the old orchard and then through the scrub maple growth
beyond, along a twisted ferny path where the Wind Woman was purring and
peeping around the maple clumps.
Emily loitered by the pasture gate until her eager eyes had taken in
all the geography of the landscape. The old pasture ran before her in
a succession of little green bosoms right down to the famous Blair
Water--an almost perfectly round pond, with grassy, sloping, treeless
margins. Beyond it was the Blair Water valley, filled with homesteads,
and further out the great sweep of the white-capped gulf. It seemed to
Emily’s eyes a charming land of green shadows and blue waters. Down
in one corner of the pasture, walled off by an old stone dyke, was the
little private graveyard where the dead-and-gone Murrays were buried.
Emily wanted to go and explore it, but was afraid to trust herself in
the pasture.
“I’ll go as soon as I get better acquainted with the cows,” she
resolved.
Off to the right, on the crest of a steep little hill, covered with
young birches and firs, was a house that puzzled and intrigued Emily.
It was grey and weather-worn, but it didn’t look old. It had never been
finished; the roof was shingled but the sides were not, and the windows
were boarded over. Why had it never been finished? And it was meant to
be such a pretty little house--a house you could love--a house where
there would be nice chairs and cozy fires and bookcases and lovely,
fat, purry cats and unexpected corners; then and there she named it the
Disappointed House, and many an hour thereafter did she spend finishing
that house, furnishing it as it should be furnished, and inventing the
proper people and animals to live in it.
To the left of the pasture field was another house of a quite different
type--a big, old house, tangled over with vines, flat-roofed, with
mansard windows, and a general air of indifference and neglect about
it. A large, untidy lawn, overgrown with unpruned shrubs and trees,
straggled right down to the pond, where enormous willows drooped over
the water. Emily decided that she would ask Cousin Jimmy about these
houses when she got a good chance.
She felt that, before she went back, she must slip along the pasture
fence and explore a certain path which she saw entering the grove of
spruce and maple further down. She did--and found that it led straight
into Fairyland,--along the bank of a wide, lovely brook--a wild, dear,
little path with lady-ferns beckoning and blowing along it, the shyest
of elfin June-bells under the firs, and little whims of loveliness at
every curve. She breathed in the tang of fir-balsam and saw the shimmer
of gossamers high up in the boughs, and everywhere the frolic of elfin
lights and shadows. Here and there the young maple branches interlaced
as if to make a screen for dryad faces--Emily knew all about dryads,
thanks to her father--and the great sheets of moss under the trees were
meet for Titania’s couch.
“This is one of the places where dreams grow,” said Emily happily.
She wished the path might go on forever, but presently it veered away
from the brook, and when she had scrambled over a mossy, old board
fence she found herself in the “front-garden” of New Moon, where Cousin
Jimmy was pruning some spirea bushes.
“Oh, Cousin Jimmy, I’ve found the dearest little road,” said Emily
breathlessly.
“Coming up through Lofty John’s bush?”
“Isn’t it our bush?” asked Emily, rather disappointed.
“No, but it ought to be. Fifty years ago Uncle Archibald sold that jog
of land to Lofty John’s father--old Mike Sullivan. He built a little
house down near the pond and lived there till he quarrelled with Uncle
Archibald--which wasn’t long, of course. Then he moved his house across
the road--and Lofty John lives there now. Elizabeth has tried to buy
the land back from him--she’s offered him far more than it’s worth--but
Lofty John won’t sell--just for spite, seeing that he has a good farm
of his own and this piece isn’t much good to him. He only pastures a
few young cattle on it through the summer, and what was cleared is
all growing up with scrub maple. It’s a thorn in Elizabeth’s side and
likely to be as long as Lofty John nurses his spite.”
“Why is he called Lofty John?”
“Because he’s a high and lofty fellow. But never mind him. I want to
show you round my garden, Emily. It’s mine. Elizabeth bosses the farm;
but she lets me run the garden--to make up for pushing me into the
well.”
“_Did_ she do that?”
“Yes. She didn’t mean to, of course. We were just children--I was
here on a visit--and the men were putting a new hood on the well and
cleaning it. It was open--and we were playing tag around it. I made
Elizabeth mad--forget what I said--’twasn’t _hard_ to make her mad,
you understand--and she made to give me a bang on the head. I saw it
coming--and stepped back to get out of the way--and down I went, head
first. Don’t remember anything more about it. There was nothing but mud
at the bottom--but my head struck the stones at the side. I was took up
for dead--my head all cut up. Poor Elizabeth was--” Cousin Jimmy shook
his head, as if to intimate that it was impossible to describe how or
what poor Elizabeth was. “I got about after a while, though--pretty
near as good as new. Folks say I’ve never been quite right since--but
they only say that because I’m a poet, and because nothing ever worries
me. Poets are so scarce in Blair Water folks don’t understand them, and
most people worry so much, they think you’re not right if you don’t
worry.”
“Won’t you recite some of your poetry to me, Cousin Jimmy?” asked Emily
eagerly.
“When the spirit moves me I will. It’s no use to ask me when the spirit
don’t move me.”
“But how am I to know when the spirit moves you, Cousin Jimmy?”
“I’ll begin of my own accord to recite my compositions. But I’ll tell
you this--the spirit generally moves me when I’m boiling the pigs’
potatoes in the fall. Remember that and be around.”
“Why don’t you write your poetry down?”
“Paper’s too scarce at New Moon. Elizabeth has some pet economies and
writing paper of any kind is one of them.”
“But haven’t you any money of your own, Cousin Jimmy?”
“Oh, Elizabeth pays me good wages. But she puts all my money in the
bank and just doles out a few dollars to me once in a while. She says
I’m not fit to be trusted with money. When I came here to work for
her she paid me my wages at the end of the month and I started for
Shrewsbury to put it in the bank. Met a tramp on the road--a poor,
forlorn creature without a cent. I gave _him_ the money. Why not? _I_
had a good home and a steady job and clothes enough to do me for years.
I s’pose it was the foolishest thing I ever did--and the nicest. But
Elizabeth never got over it. _She’s_ managed my money ever since. But
come you now, and I’ll show you my garden before I have to go and sow
turnips.”
The garden was a beautiful place, well worthy Cousin Jimmy’s pride.
It seemed like a garden where no frost could wither or rough wind
blow--a garden remembering a hundred vanished summers. There was a high
hedge of clipped spruce all around it, spaced at intervals by tall
lombardies. The north side was closed in by a thick grove of spruce
against which a long row of peonies grew, their great red blossoms
splendid against its darkness. One big spruce grew in the center of the
garden and underneath it was a stone bench, made of flat shore stones
worn smooth by long polish of wind and wave. In the southeast corner
was an enormous clump of lilacs, trimmed into the semblance of one
large drooping-boughed tree, gloried over with purple. An old summer
house, covered with vines, filled the southwest corner. And in the
northwest corner there was a sun-dial of grey stone, placed just where
the broad red walk that was bordered with striped grass, and picked out
with pink conchs, ran off into Lofty John’s bush. Emily had never seen
a sun-dial before and hung over it enraptured.
“Your great-great grandfather, Hugh Murray, had that brought out from
the Old Country,” said Cousin Jimmy. “There isn’t as fine a one in the
Maritime Provinces. And Uncle George Murray brought those conchs from
the Indies. He was a sea-captain.”
Emily looked about her with delight. The garden was lovely and the
house quite splendid to her childish eyes. It had a big front porch
with Grecian columns. These were thought very elegant in Blair Water,
and went far to justify the Murray pride. A schoolmaster had said
they gave the house a classical air. To be sure, the classical effect
was just now rather smothered in hop vines that rioted over the whole
porch and hung in pale-green festoons above the rows of potted scarlet
geraniums that flanked the steps.
Emily’s heart swelled with pride.
“It’s a noble house,” she said.
“And what about my garden?” demanded Cousin Jimmy jealously.
“It’s fit for a queen,” said Emily, gravely and sincerely.
Cousin Jimmy nodded, well pleased, and then a strange sound crept into
his voice and an odd look into his eyes.
“There is a spell woven round this garden. The blight shall spare it
and the green worm pass it by. Drought dares not invade it and the rain
comes here gently.”
Emily took an involuntary step backward--she almost felt like running
away. But now Cousin Jimmy was himself again.
“Isn’t this grass about the sun-dial like green velvet? I’ve taken
some pains with it, I can tell you. You make yourself at home in this
garden.” Cousin Jimmy made a splendid gesture. “I confer the freedom of
it upon you. Good-luck to you, and may you find the Lost Diamond.”
“The Lost Diamond?” said Emily wonderingly. What fascinating thing was
this?
“Never hear the story? I’ll tell it to-morrow--Sunday’s lazy day at
New Moon. I must get off to my turnips now or I’ll have Elizabeth out
looking at me. She won’t say anything--she’ll just _look_. Ever seen
the real Murray look?”
“I guess I saw it when Aunt Ruth pulled me out from under the table,”
said Emily ruefully.
“No--no. That was the Ruth Dutton look--spite and malice and all
uncharitableness. I hate Ruth Dutton. She laughs at my poetry--not
that she ever hears any of it. The spirit never moves when Ruth is
around. Dunno where they got her. Elizabeth is a crank but she’s sound
as a nut, and Laura’s a saint. But Ruth’s worm-eaten. As for the
Murray look, you’ll know it when you see it. It’s as well-known as the
Murray pride. We’re a darn queer lot--but we’re the finest people ever
happened. I’ll tell you all about us to-morrow.”
Cousin Jimmy kept his promise while the aunts were away at church. It
had been decided in family conclave that Emily was not to go to church
that day.
“She has nothing suitable to wear,” said Aunt Elizabeth. “By next
Sunday we will have her white dress ready.”
Emily was disappointed that she was not to go to church. She had always
found church very interesting on the rare occasions when she got there.
It had been too far at Maywood for her father to walk but sometimes
Ellen Greene’s brother had taken her and Ellen.
“Do you think, Aunt Elizabeth,” she said wistfully, “that God would
be much offended if I wore my black dress to church? Of course it’s
cheap--I think Ellen Greene paid for it herself--but it covers me all
up.”
“Little girls who do not understand things should hold their tongues,”
said Aunt Elizabeth. “I do not choose that Blair Water people should
see my niece in such a dress as that wretched black merino. And if
Ellen Greene paid for it we must repay her. You should have told us
that before we came away from Maywood. No, you are not going to church
to-day. You can wear the black dress to school to-morrow. We can cover
it up with an apron.”
Emily resigned herself with a sigh of disappointment to staying home;
but it was very pleasant after all. Cousin Jimmy took her for a walk to
the pond, showed her the graveyard and opened the book of yesterday for
her.
“Why are all the Murrays buried here?” asked Emily. “Is it really
because they are too good to be buried with common people?”
“No--no, pussy. We don’t carry our pride as far as _that_. When old
Hugh Murray settled at New Moon there was nothing much but woods for
miles and no graveyards nearer than Charlottetown. That’s why the old
Murrays were buried here--and later on we kept it up because we wanted
to lie with our own, here on the green, green banks of the old Blair
Water.”
“That sounds like a line out of a poem, Cousin Jimmy,” said Emily.
“So it is--out of one of my poems.”
“I kind of like the idea of a ’sclusive burying-ground like this,” said
Emily decidedly, looking around her approvingly at the velvet grass
sloping down to the fairy-blue pond, the neat walks, the well-kept
graves.
Cousin Jimmy chuckled.
“And yet they say you ain’t a Murray,” he said. “Murray and Byrd and
Starr--and a dash of Shipley to boot, or Cousin Jimmy Murray is much
mistaken.”
“Shipley?”
“Yes--Hugh Murray’s wife--your great-great-grandmother--was a
Shipley--an Englishwoman. Ever hear of how the Murrays came to New
Moon?”
“No.”
“They were bound for Quebec--hadn’t any notion of coming to P. E. I.
They had a long rough voyage and water got scarce, so the captain of
the _New Moon_ put in here to get some. Mary Murray had nearly died
of sea-sickness coming out--never seemed to get her sea-legs--so the
captain, being sorry for her, told her she could go ashore with the
men and feel solid ground under her for an hour or so. Very gladly she
went and when she got to shore she said, ‘Here I stay.’ And stay she
did; nothing could budge her; old Hugh--he was young Hugh then, of
course--coaxed and stormed and raged and argued--and even cried, I’ve
been told--but Mary wouldn’t be moved. In the end he gave in and had
his belongings landed and stayed, too. So that is how the Murrays came
to P. E. Island.”
“I’m glad it happened like that,” said Emily.
“So was old Hugh in the long run. And yet it rankled, Emily--it
rankled. He never forgave his wife with a whole heart. Her grave is
over there in the corner--that one with the flat red stone. Go you and
look at what he had put on it.”
Emily ran curiously over. The big flat stone was inscribed with one of
the long, discursive epitaphs of an older day. But beneath the epitaph
was no scriptural verse or pious psalm. Clear and distinct, in spite of
age and lichen, ran the line, “Here I stay.”
“_That’s_ how he got even with her,” said Cousin Jimmy. “He was a good
husband to her--and she was a good wife and bore him a fine family--and
he never was the same after her death. But that rankled in him until it
had to come out.”
Emily gave a little shiver. Somehow, the idea of that grim old ancestor
with his undying grudge against his nearest and dearest was rather
terrifying.
“I’m glad I’m only _half_ Murray,” she said to herself. Aloud--“Father
told me it was a Murray tradition not to carry spite past the grave.”
“So ’tis now--but it took its rise from this very thing. His family
were so horrified at it, you see. It made considerable of a scandal.
Some folks twisted it round to mean that old Hugh didn’t believe in the
resurrection, and there was talk of the session taking it up, but after
a while the talk died away.”
Emily skipped over to another lichen-grown stone.
“Elizabeth Burnley--who was she, Cousin Jimmy?”
“Old William Murray’s wife. He was Hugh’s brother, and came out here
five years after Hugh did. His wife was a great beauty and had been a
belle in the Old Country. She didn’t like the P. E. Island woods. She
was homesick, Emily--scandalous homesick. For weeks after she came
here she wouldn’t take off her bonnet--just walked the floor in it,
demanding to be taken back home.”
“Didn’t she take it off when she went to bed?” asked Emily.
“Dunno if she did go to bed. Anyway, William wouldn’t take
her back home so in time she took off her bonnet and resigned
herself. Her daughter married Hugh’s son, so Elizabeth was your
great-great-grandmother.”
Emily looked down at the sunken green grave and wondered if any
homesick dreams haunted Elizabeth Burnley’s slumber of a hundred years.
“It’s dreadful to be homesick--_I_ know,” she thought sympathetically.
“Little Stephen Murray is buried over there,” said Cousin Jimmy.
“His was the first marble stone in the burying-ground. He was your
grandfather’s brother--died when he was twelve. He has,” said Cousin
Jimmy solemnly, “become a Murray tradition.”
“Why?”
“He was so beautiful and clever and good. He hadn’t a fault--so of
course he couldn’t live. They say there never was such a handsome child
in the connection. And lovable--everybody loved him. He has been dead
for ninety years--not a Murray living to-day ever saw him--and yet
we talk about him at family gatherings--he’s more real than lots of
living people. So you see, Emily, he must have been an extraordinary
child--but it ended in that--” Cousin Jimmy waved his hand towards the
grassy grave and the white, prim headstone.
“I wonder,” thought Emily, “if any one will remember _me_ ninety years
after I’m dead.”
“This old yard is nearly full,” reflected Cousin Jimmy. “There’s just
room in yonder corner for Elizabeth and Laura--and me. None for you,
Emily.”
“I don’t want to be buried here,” flashed Emily. “I think it’s splendid
to have a graveyard like this in the family--but _I_ am going to be
buried in Charlottetown graveyard with Father and Mother. But there’s
one thing worries me Cousin Jimmy, do _you_ think I’m likely to die of
consumption?”
Cousin Jimmy looked judicially down into her eyes.
“No,” he said, “no, Miss Puss. You’ve got enough life in _you_ to carry
you far. You aren’t meant for death.”
“I feel that, too,” said Emily, nodding. “And now, Cousin Jimmy, _why_
is that house over there disappointed?”
“Which one?--oh, Fred Clifford’s house. Fred Clifford began to build
that house thirty years ago. He was to be married and his lady picked
out the plan. And when the house was just as far along as you see
she jilted him, Emily--right in the face of day she jilted him.
Never another nail was driven in the house. Fred went out to British
Columbia. He’s living there yet--married and happy. But he won’t sell
that lot to any one--so I reckon he feels the sting yet.”
“I’m so sorry for that house. I _wish_ it had been finished. It _wants_
to be--even yet it _wants_ to be.”
“Well, I reckon it never will. Fred had a bit of Shipley in him, too,
you see. One of old Hugh’s girls was his grandmother. And Doctor
Burnley up there in the big grey house has more than a bit.”
“Is he a relation of ours, too, Cousin Jimmy?”
“Forty-second cousin. Way back he had a cousin of Mary Shipley’s for a
great-something. That was in the Old Country--his forebears came out
here after we did. He’s a good doctor but an odd stick--odder by far
than I am, Emily, and yet nobody ever says he’s not all there. Can you
account for that? _He_ doesn’t believe in God--and _I_ am not such a
fool as that.”
“Not in _any_ God?”
“Not in any God. He’s an infidel, Emily. And he’s bringing his little
girl up the same way, which _I_ think is a shame, Emily,” said Cousin
Jimmy confidentially.
“Doesn’t her mother teach her things?”
“Her mother is--dead,” answered Cousin Jimmy, with a little odd
hesitation. “Dead these ten years,” he added in a firmer tone. “Ilse
Burnley is a great girl--hair like daffodils and eyes like yellow
diamonds.”
“Oh, Cousin Jimmy, you promised you’d tell me about the Lost Diamond,”
cried Emily eagerly.
“To be sure--to be sure. Well, it’s there--somewhere in or about the
old summer-house, Emily. Fifty years ago Edward Murray and his wife
came here from Kingsport for a visit. A great lady she was, and wearing
silks and diamonds like a queen, though no beauty. She had a ring on
with a stone in it that cost two hundred pounds, Emily. That was a
big lot of money to be wearing on one wee woman-finger, wasn’t it? It
sparkled on her white hand as she held her dress going up the steps of
the summer house; but when she came down the steps it was gone.”
“And was it _never_ found?” asked Emily breathlessly.
“Never--and for no lack of searching. Edward Murray wanted to have the
house pulled down--but Uncle Archibald wouldn’t hear of it--because he
had built it for his bride. The two brothers quarrelled over it and
were never good friends again. Everybody in the connection has taken
a spell hunting for the diamond. Most folks think it fell out of the
summer house among the flowers or shrubs. But I know better, Emily. I
know Miriam Murray’s diamond is somewhere about that old house yet. On
moonlit nights, Emily, I’ve seen it glinting--glinting and beckoning.
But never in the same place--and when you go to it--it’s gone, and you
see it laughing at you from somewhere else.”
Again there was that eerie, indefinable something in Cousin Jimmy’s
voice or look that gave Emily a sudden crinkly feeling in her spine.
But she loved the way he talked to her, as if she were grown-up; and
she loved the beautiful land around her; and, in spite of the ache for
her father and the house in the hollow which persisted all the time and
hurt her so much at night that her pillow was wet with secret tears,
she was beginning to be a little glad again in sunset and bird song
and early white stars, in moonlit nights and singing winds. She knew
life was going to be wonderful here--wonderful and interesting, what
with out-door cook-houses and cream-girdled dairies and pond paths
and sun-dials, and Lost Diamonds, and Disappointed Houses and men who
didn’t believe in _any_ God--not even Ellen Greene’s God. Emily hoped
she would soon see Dr. Burnley. She was very curious to see what an
infidel looked like. And she had already quite made up her mind that
she would find the Lost Diamond.