that Cousin Jimmy was composing poetry, though why he was doing it at that hour o’ night was a puzzle.
Emily slipped around the house, opened the kitchen door gently, and walked in. Poor Cousin Jimmy in his amazement tried to swallow half a doughnut whole and then couldn’t speak for several seconds. Was this Emily—or an apparition? Emily in a dark-blue coat, an enchanting little red-feather hat—Emily with wind-blown night-black hair and tragic eyes—Emily with tattered kid slippers on her feet—Emily in this plight at New Moon when she should have been sound asleep on her maiden couch in Shrewsbury?
Cousin Jimmy seized the cold hands Emily held out to him.
“Emily, dear child, what has happened?”
“Well, just to jump into the middle of things—I’ve left Aunt Ruth’s and I’m not going back.”
Cousin Jimmy didn’t say anything for a few moments. But he did a few things. First he tiptoed across the kitchen and carefully shut the sitting-room door; then he gently filled the stove up with wood, drew a chair up to it, pushed Emily into it and lifted her cold, ragged feet to the hearth. Then he lighted two more candles and put them on the chimney-piece. Finally he sat down in his chair again and put his hands on his knees.
“Now, tell me all about it.”
Emily, still in the throes of rebellion and indignation, told it pretty fully.
As soon as Cousin Jimmy got an inkling of what had really happened he began to shake his head slowly—continued to shake it—shook it so long and gravely that Emily began to feel an uncomfortable conviction that instead of being a wronged, dramatic figure she was by way of being a bit of a little fool. The longer Cousin Jimmy shook his head the smaller grew her heroics. When she had finished her story with a defiant, conclusive “I’m not going back to Aunt Ruth’s, anyhow,”
