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Uncle Wallace patronises me. I prefer Aunt Ruth’s snubs because I don’t have to look as if I like them. I endured them to a certain point, and then the lid flew off Aunt Ruth said to me,
    “‘Em’ly, don’t contradict,’ just as she might have spoken to a
mere child
. I looked her right in the eyes and said
coldly
,
    “Aunt Ruth, I think I am too old to be spoken to in that fashion now.’
    “‘You are not too old to be very rude and impertinent,’ said Aunt Ruth, with a sniff, ‘and if
I
were in Elizabeth’s place I would give you a sound box on the ear, Miss.’
    “I hate to be Em’ly’d and Miss’d and sniffed at! It seems to me that Aunt Ruth has
all
the Murray faults, and
none
of their virtues.
    “Uncle Oliver’s son Andrew came with him and is going to stay for a week. He is four years older than I am.
    “May 19, 19–
    “This is my birthday. I am fourteen years old today. I wrote a letter ‘From myself at fourteen to myself at twenty-four,’ sealed it up and put it away in my cupboard, to be opened on my twenty-fourth birthday. I made some predictions in it. I wonder if they will have come to pass when I open it.
    “Aunt Elizabeth gave me back all Father’s books today. I was so glad. It seems to me that a part of Father is in those books. His name is in each one in his own handwriting, and the notes he made on the margins. They seem like little bits of letters from him. I have been looking over them all the evening, and Father seems so
near
to me again, and I feel both happy and sad.
    “One thing spoiled the day for me. In school, when I went up to the blackboard to work a problem, everybody suddenly began to titter. I could not imagine why. Then I discovered that some one had pinned a sheet of foolscap to my back, on which was printed in big, black letters:
‘Emily Byrd Starr, Authoress of The Four-Legged Duck’
They laughed more than ever when I snatched it off and threw it in the coalscuttle. It infuriates me when any one ridicules my ambitions like that. I came home angry and sore. But when I had sat on the steps of the summer-house and looked at one of Cousin Jimmy’s big purple pansies for five minutes all my anger went away. Nobody can keep on being angry if she looks into the heart of a pansy for a little while.
    “Besides,
the time will come when they will not laugh at me!
    “Andrew went home yesterday. Aunt Elizabeth asked me how I like him. She never asked me how I liked any onebefore – my likings were not important enough. I suppose she is beginning to realise that I am
no longer a child
.
    “I said I thought he was good and kind and stupid and uninteresting.
    “Aunt Elizabeth was so annoyed she would not speak to me the whole evening. Why? I had to tell the truth. And Andrew
is
.
    “May 21, 19–
    “Old Kelly was here today for the first time this spring, with a load of shining new tins. He brought me a bag of candies as usual – and teased me about getting married, also as usual. But he seemed to have something on his mind, and when I went to the dairy to get him the drink of milk he had asked for, he followed me.
    “‘Gurrl dear,’ he said mysteriously. ‘I met Jarback Praste in the lane. Does he be coming here much?’
    “I cocked my head at the Murray angle.
    “‘If you mean Mr. Dean Priest,’ I said, ‘he comes often. He is a particular friend of mine.’
    “Old Kelly shook his head.
    “‘Gurrl dear – I warned ye – niver be after saying I didn’t warn ye. I towld ye the day I took ye to Praste Pond niver to marry a Praste. Didn’t I now?’
    “‘Mr. Kelly, you’re too ridiculous,’ I said – angry and yet feeling it was absurd to be angry with Old Jock Kelly. ‘I’m not going to marry anybody. Mr. Priest is old enough to be my father, and I am just a little girl he helps in her studies.’
    “Old Kelly gave his head another shake.
    “‘I know the Prastes, gurrl dear – and when they do be after setting their minds on a thing ye might