THERE had been several clashes between Aunt Elizabeth and Emily that winter and spring. Generally Aunt Elizabeth came out victorious; there was that in her that would not be denied the satisfaction of having her own way even in trifling matters. But once in a while she came up against that curious streak of granite in Emily’s composition which was unyielding and unbendable and unbreakable. Mary Murray, of a hundred years agone, had been, so family chronicle ran, a gentle and submissive creature generally; but she had that same streak in her, as her “Here I Stay” abundantly testified. When Aunt Elizabeth tried conclusions with that element in Emily she always got the worst of it. Yet she did not learn wisdom therefrom but pursued her policy of repression all the more rigorously; for it occasionally came home to her, as Laura let down tucks, that Emily was on the verge of beginning to grow up and that various breakers and reefs loomed ahead, ominously magnified in the mist of unseen years. Emily must not be allowed to get out of hand now, lest later on she make shipwreck as her mother had done—or as Elizabeth Murray firmly believed she had done. There were, in short, to be no more elopements from New Moon.
One of the things they fell out about was the fact that Emily, as Aunt Elizabeth discovered one day, was in the habit of using more of her egg money to buy paper than Aunt Elizabeth approved of. What did Emily do with so much paper? They had a fuss over this and eventually Aunt Elizabeth discovered that Emily was writing stories. Emily had been writing stories
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 all winter under Aunt Elizabeth’s very nose and Aunt Elizabeth had never suspected it. She had fondly supposed that Emily was writing school compositions. Aunt Elizabeth knew in a vague way that Emily wrote silly rhymes which she called “poetry” but this did not worry her especially. Jimmy made up a lot of similar trash. It was foolish but harmless and Emily would doubtless outgrow it. Jimmy had not outgrown it, to be sure, but then his accident—Elizabeth always went a little sick in soul when she remembered it—had made him more or less a child for life.
But writing stories was a very different thing and Aunt Elizabeth was horrified. Fiction of any kind was an abominable thing. Elizabeth Murray had been trained up in this belief in her youth and in her age she had not departed from it. She honestly thought that it was a wicked and sinful thing in anyone to play cards, dance, or go to the theatre, read or write novels, and in Emily’s case there was a worse feature—it was the Starr coming out in her—Douglas Starr especially. No Murray of New Moon had ever been guilty of writing “stories” or of ever wanting to write them. It was an alien growth that must be pruned off ruthlessly. Aunt Elizabeth applied the pruning shears; and found no pliant, snippable root but that same underlying streak of granite. Emily was respectful and reasonable and above-board; she bought no more paper with egg money; but she told Aunt Elizabeth that she could not give up writing stories and she went right on writing them, on pieces of brown wrapping paper and the blank backs of circulars which agricultural machinery firms sent Cousin Jimmy.
“Don’t you know that it is wicked to write novels?” demanded Aunt Elizabeth.
“Oh, I’m not writing novels—yet,” said Emily. “I can’t get enough paper. These are just short stories. And it isn’t wicked—Father liked novels.”
“Your father—” began Aunt Elizabeth, and stopped.
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 She remembered that Emily had “acted up” before now when anything derogatory was said of her father. But the very fact that she felt mysteriously compelled to stop annoyed Elizabeth, who had said what seemed good to her all her life at New Moon without much regard for other people’s feelings.
“You will not write any more of this stuff,” Aunt Elizabeth contemptuously flourished “The Secret of the Castle” under Emily’s nose. “I forbid you—remember, I forbid you.”
“Oh, I must write, Aunt Elizabeth,” said Emily gravely, folding her slender, beautiful hands on the table and looking straight into Aunt Elizabeth’s angry face with the steady, unblinking gaze which Aunt Ruth called unchildlike. “You see, it’s this way. It is in me. I can’t help it. And Father said I was always to keep on writing. He said I would be famous some day. Wouldn’t you like to have a famous niece, Aunt Elizabeth?”
“I am not going to argue the matter,” said Aunt Elizabeth.
“I’m not arguing—only explaining.” Emily was exasperatingly respectful. “I just want you to understand how it is that I have to go on writing stories, even though I am so very sorry you don’t approve.”
“If you don’t give up this—this worse than nonsense, Emily, I’ll—I’ll—”
Aunt Elizabeth stopped, not knowing what to say she would do. Emily was too big now to be slapped or shut up; and it was no use to say, as she was tempted to, “I’ll send you away from New Moon,” because Elizabeth Murray knew perfectly well she would not send Emily away from New Moon—could not send her away, indeed, though this knowledge was as yet only in her feelings and had not been translated into her intellect. She only felt that she was helpless and it angered her; but Emily was mistress of the situation and calmly went on
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 writing stories. If Aunt Elizabeth had asked her to give up crocheting lace or making molasses taffy, or eating Aunt Laura’s delicious drop cookies, Emily would have done so wholly and cheerfully, though she loved these things. But to give up writing stories—why, Aunt Elizabeth might as well have asked her to give up breathing. Why couldn’t she understand? It seemed so simple and indisputable to Emily.
“Teddy can’t help making pictures and Ilse can’t help reciting and I can’t help writing. Don’t you see, Aunt Elizabeth?”
“I see that you are an ungrateful and disobedient child,” said Aunt Elizabeth.
This hurt Emily horribly, but she could not give in; and there continued to be a sense of soreness and disapproval between her and Aunt Elizabeth in all the little details of daily life that poisoned existence more or less for the child, who was so keenly sensitive to her environment and to the feelings with which her kindred regarded her. Emily felt it all the time—except when she was writing her stories. Then she forgot everything, roaming in some enchanted country between the sun and moon, where she saw wonderful beings whom she tried to describe and wonderful deeds which she tried to record, coming back to the candle-lit kitchen with a somewhat dazed sense of having been years in No-Man’s Land.
She did not even have Aunt Laura to back her up in the matter. Aunt Laura thought Emily ought to yield in such an unimportant matter and please Aunt Elizabeth.
“But it’s not unimportant,” said Emily despairingly. “It’s the most important thing in the world to me, Aunt Laura. Oh, I thought you would understand.”
“I understand that you like to do it, dear, and I think it’s a harmless enough amusement. But it seems to annoy Elizabeth some way and I do think you might give it up on that account. It is not as if it was anything that mattered much—it is really a waste of time.”
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“No—no,” said distressed Emily. “Why, some day, Aunt Laura, I’ll write real books—and make lots of money,” she added, sensing that the businesslike Murrays measured the nature of most things on a cash basis.
Aunt Laura smiled indulgently.
“I’m afraid you’ll never grow rich that way, dear. It would be wiser to employ your time preparing yourself for some useful work.”
It was maddening to be condescended to like this—maddening that nobody could see that she had to write—maddening to have Aunt Laura so sweet and loving and stupid about it.
“Oh,” thought Emily bitterly, “if that hateful Enterprise editor had printed my piece they’d have believed then.”
“At any rate,” advised Aunt Laura, “don’t let Elizabeth see you writing them.”
But somehow Emily could not take this prudent advice. There had been occasions when she had connived with Aunt Laura to hoodwink Aunt Elizabeth on some little matter, but she found she could not do it in this. This had to be open and above-board. She must write stories—and Aunt Elizabeth must know it—that was the way it had to be. She could not be false to herself in this—she could not pretend to be false.
She wrote her father all about it—poured out her bitterness and perplexity to him in what, though she did not suspect it at the time, was the last letter she was to write him. There was a large bundle of letters by now on the old sofa shelf in the garret—for Emily had written many letters to her father besides those which have been chronicled in this history. There were a great many paragraphs about Aunt Elizabeth in them, most of them very uncomplimentary and some of them, as Emily herself would have owned when her first bitterness was past, overdrawn and exaggerated. They had been written in moments when her hurt and angry soul demanded
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 some outlet for its emotion and barbed her pen with venom. Emily was mistress of a subtly malicious style when she chose to be. After she had written them the hurt had ceased and she thought no more about them. But they remained.
And one spring day, Aunt Elizabeth, housecleaning in the garret while Emily played happily with Teddy at the Tansy Patch, found the bundle of letters on the sofa shelf, sat down, and read them all.
Elizabeth Murray would never have read any writing belonging to a grown person. But it never occurred to her that there was anything dishonourable in reading the letters wherein Emily, lonely and—sometimes—misunderstood, had poured out her heart to the father she had loved and been loved by, so passionately and understandingly. Aunt Elizabeth thought she had a right to know everything that this pensioner on her bounty did, said, or thought. She read the letters and she found out what Emily thought of her—of her, Elizabeth Murray, autocrat unchallenged, to whom no one had ever dared to say anything uncom............