A CERTAIN thing happened at New Moon because Teddy Kent paid Ilse Burnley a compliment one day and Emily Starr didn’t altogether like it. Empires have been overturned for the same reason.
Teddy was skating on Blair Water and taking Ilse and Emily out in turns for “slides.” Neither Ilse nor Emily had skates. Nobody was sufficiently interested in Ilse to buy skates for her, and as for Emily, Aunt Elizabeth did not approve of girls skating. New Moon girls had never skated. Aunt Laura had a revolutionary idea that skating would be good exercise for Emily and would, moreover, prevent her from wearing out the soles of her boots sliding. But neither of these arguments was sufficient to convince Aunt Elizabeth, in spite of the thrifty streak that came to her from the Burnleys. The latter, however, caused her to issue an edict that Emily was not to “slide.” Emily took this very hardly. She moped about in a woe-begone fashion and she wrote to her father, “I hate Aunt Elizabeth. She is so unjust. She never plays fair.” But one day Dr. Burnley stuck his head in at the door of the New Moon kitchen and said gruffly, “What’s this I hear about you not letting Emily slide, Elizabeth?”
“She wears out the soles of her boots,” said Elizabeth.
“Boots be—” the doctor remembered that ladies were present just in time. “Let the creature slide all she wants to. She ought to be in the open air all the time. She ought”—the doctor stared at Elizabeth ferociously—“she ought to sleep out of doors.”
Elizabeth trembled lest the doctor should go on to insist
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 on this unheard-of proceeding. She knew he had absurd ideas about the proper treatment of consumptives and those who might become such. She was glad to appease him by letting Emily stay out-of-doors in daytime and do what seemed good to her, if only he would say no more about staying out all night too.
“He is much more concerned about Emily than he is about his own child,” she said bitterly to Laura.
“Ilse is too healthy,” said Aunt Laura with a smile. “If she were a delicate child Allan might forgive her for—for being her mother’s daughter.”
“S—s—h,” said Aunt Elizabeth. But she “s—s—s—h’d” too late. Emily, coming into the kitchen, had heard Aunt Laura and puzzled over what she had said all day in school. Why had Ilse to be forgiven for being her mother’s daughter? Everybody was her mother’s daughter, wasn’t she? Wherein did the crime consist? Emily worried over it so much that she was inattentive to her lessons and Miss Brownell raked her fore and aft with sarcasm.
It is time we got back to Blair Water where Teddy was just bringing Emily in from a glorious spin clear round the great circle of ice. Ilse was waiting for her turn, on the bank. Her golden cloud of hair aureoled her face and fell in a shimmering wave over her forehead under the faded, little red tam she wore. Ilse’s clothes were always faded. The stinging kiss of the wind had crimsoned her cheeks and her eyes were glowing like amber pools with fire in their hearts. Teddy’s artistic perception saw her beauty and rejoiced in it.
“Isn’t Ilse handsome?” he said.
Emily was not jealous. It never hurt her to hear Ilse praised. But somehow she did not like this. Teddy was looking at Ilse altogether too admiringly. It was all, Emily believed, due to that shimmering fringe on Ilse’s white brows.
“If I had a bang Teddy might think me handsome
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 too,” she thought resentfully. “Of course, black hair isn’t as pretty as gold. But my forehead is too high—everybody says so. And I did look nice in Teddy’s picture because he drew some curls over it.”
The matter rankled. Emily thought of it as she went home over the sheen of the crusted snow-field slanting to the light of the winter sunset, and she could not eat her supper because she did not have a bang. All her long hidden yearning for a bang seemed to come to a head at once. She knew there was no use in coaxing Aunt Elizabeth for one. But when she was getting ready for bed that night she stood on a chair so that she could see little Emily-in-the-glass, then lifted the curling ends of her long braid and laid them over her forehead. The effect, in Emily’s eyes at least, was very alluring. She suddenly thought—what if she cut a bang herself? It would take only a minute. And once done what could Aunt Elizabeth do? She would be very angry and doubtless inflict some kind of punishment. But the bang would be there—at least until it grew out long.
Emily, her lips set, went for the scissors. She unbraided her hair and parted the front tresses. Snip—snip—went the scissors. Glistening locks fell at her feet. In a minute Emily had her long-desired bang. Straight across her brows fell the lustrous, softly curving fringe. It changed the whole character of her face. It made it arch, provocative, elusive. For one brief moment Emily gazed at her reflection in triumph.
And then—sheer terror seized her. Oh, what had she done? How angry Aunt Elizabeth would be! Conscience suddenly awoke and added its pang also. She had been wicked. It was wicked to cut a bang when Aunt Elizabeth had forbidden it. Aunt Elizabeth had given her a home at New Moon—hadn’t Rhoda Stuart that very day in school twitted her again with “living on charity”? And she was repaying her by disobedience and ingratitude. A Starr should not have done that.
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 In a panic of fear and remorse Emily snatched the scissors and cut the bang off—cut it close against the hair line. Worse and worse! Emily beheld the result in dismay. Any one could see that a bang had been cut, so Aunt Elizabeth’s anger was still to face. And she had made a terrible fright of herself. Emily burst into tears, snatched up the fallen locks and crammed them into the waste-basket, blew out her candle and sprang into bed, just as Aunt Elizabeth came in.
Emily burrowed face downward in the pillows, and pretended to be asleep. She was afraid Aunt Elizabeth would ask her some question and insist on her looking up while she answered it. That was a Murray tradition—you looked people in the face when you spoke to them. But Aunt Elizabeth undressed in silence and came to bed. The room was in darkness—thick darkness. Emily sighed and turned over. There was a hot gin-jar in the bed, she knew, and her feet were cold. But she did not think she ought to have the privilege of the gin-jar. She was too wicked—too ungrateful.
“Do stop squirming,” said Aunt Elizabeth.
Emily squirmed no more—physically at least. Mentally she continued to squirm. She could not sleep. Her feet or her conscience—or both—kept her awake. And fear, also. She dreaded the morning. Aunt Elizabeth would see then what had happened. If it were only over—if the revelation were only over. Emily forgot and squirmed.
“What makes you so restless tonight?” demanded Aunt Elizabeth, in high displeasure. “Are you taking a cold?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then go to sleep. I can’t bear such wriggling. One might as well have an eel in bed—O—W!”
Aunt Elizabeth, in squirming a bit herself, had put her own foot against Emily’s icy ones.
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“Goodness, child, your feet are like snow. Here, put them on the gin-jar.”
Aunt Elizabeth pushed the gin-jar over against Emily’s feet. How lovely and warm and comforting it was!
Emily worked her toes against it like a cat. But she suddenly knew she could not wait for morning.
“Aunt Elizabeth, I’ve got something to confess.”
Aunt Elizabeth was tired and sleepy and did not want confessions just then. In no very gracious tone she said,
“What have you been doing?”
“I—I cut a bang, Aunt Elizabeth.”
“A bang?”
Aunt Elizabeth sat up in bed.
“But I cut it off again,” cried Emily hurriedly. “Right off—close to my head.”
Aunt Elizabeth got out of bed, lit a candle, and looked Emily over.
“Well you have made a sight of yourself,” she said grimly. “I never saw any one as ugly as you are this minute. And you have behaved in a most underhanded fashion.”
This was one of the times Emily felt compelled to agree with Aunt Elizabeth.
“I’m sorry,” she said, lifting pleading eyes.
“You will eat your supper in the pantry for a week,” said Aunt Elizabeth. “And you will not go to Uncle Oliver’s next week when I go. I had promised to take you. But I shall take no one who looks as you do anywhere with me.”
This was hard. Emily had looked forward to that visit to Uncle Oliver’s. But on the whole she was relieved. The worst was over and her feet were getting warm. But there was one thing yet. She might as well unburden her heart completely while she was at it.
“There’s another thing I feel I ought to tell you.”
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Aunt Elizabeth got into bed again with a grunt. Emily took it for permission.
“Aunt Elizabeth, you remember that book I found in Dr. Burnley’s bookcase and brought home and asked you if I could read it? It was called ‘The History of Henry Esmond.’ You looked at it and said you had no objections to my reading history. So I read it. But, Aunt Elizabeth, it wasn’t history—it was a novel. And I knew it when I brought it home.”
“You know that I have forbidden you to read novels, Emily Starr. They are wicked books and have ruined many souls.”
“It was very dull,” pleaded Emily, as if dullness and wickedness were quite incompatible. “And it made me feel unhappy. Everybody seemed to be in love with the wrong person. I have made up my mind, Aunt Elizabeth, that I will never fall in love. It makes too much trouble.”
“Don’t talk of things you can’t understand, and that are not fit for children to think about. This is the result of reading novels. I shall tell Dr. Burnley to lock his bookcase up.”
“Oh, don’t do that, Aunt Elizabeth,” exclaimed Emily. “There are no more novels in it. But I’m reading such an interesting book over there. It tells about everything that’s inside of you. I’ve got as far along as the liver and its diseases. The pictures are so interesting. Please let me finish it.”
This was worse than novels. Aunt Elizabeth was truly horrified. Things that were inside of you were not to be read about.
“Have you no shame, Emily Starr? If you have not I am ashamed for you. Little girls do n............