The Emily Starr Trilogy: Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs & Emily's Quest. Lucy Maud Montgomery

carrying brimming pails of milk, and Emily ran with him to the dairy behind the cookhouse. 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 cosy 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 Junebells 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