Welcome to sleep stories with Steph your go-to podcast.
That offers you a calm and relaxing transition.
Into a great night's sleep.
It is time to relax and fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now.
And know where you need to go.
Close your eyes.
And feel yourself sink into the support beneath you.
And let all the worries of the day go.
Drift away.
This is your time.
And your space.
Take a deep breath in through your nose.
And let it out with a long sigh.
That's it!
There is nothing you need to be doing now.
And know where you need to go.
Happy listening.
Chapter 9 continued.
One night,
Aunt Laura said,
It's time these old letter bills were burned.
She was sitting and looking in the lower compartment for a certain letter she wanted to see.
The bookcase held a curious old snuff box that had belonged to Hugh Murray.
Rummaging in it,
She lifted out a big,
Flat bundle of dusty paper.
What a pile of them there are.
They've been gathering here for years and are no earthly good.
Father once kept the post office here at New Moon,
You know,
Emily.
The mail came only three times a week then and each day there was one of these long letter bills as they were called.
Mother always kept them,
Though once they were used they were of no further use.
I'm going to burn them right away.
Oh,
Aunt Laura!
" gasped Emily,
So torn between desire and fear she could hardly speak.
Don't do that,
Give them to me!
Why child,
Whatever do you want of them?
They have such lovely blank backs for writing on.
It would be a sin to burn those letter bills.
Oh,
You can have them,
Dear.
Only you'd better not let Elizabeth see them.
I won't.
Breathe Demony.
She gathered her precious booty into her arms and rarely ran upstairs,
Into the garret,
Where she'd already had her favourite haunt in which,
Her uncomfortable habit of thinking of things thousands of miles away,
Could not vex Aunt Elizabeth.
This was the quiet corner of the dormer window,
Where shadows always moved about.
And where beautiful mosaics pattern the bare floor.
From it one could see over the treetops right over to the Blair Water.
The walls were hung round with great bundles of soft fluffy rolls all ready for spinning and hanks of untwisted yarn.
Sometimes Aunt Laura spun on the great wheel at the other end of the garret and Emily loved the whirr of it.
In the recess of the dormer window she crouched.
Breathlessly,
She selected a letter bill and she extracted a lead pencil from her pocket and began to write.
Dear Father.
She pulled out her tail.
Of the teacher who slapped her.
Of her rapture and her pain.
Writing heedlessly and intently until the sunset faded into a dim,
Star-litten twilight.
Thereafter,
There were few evenings passed on which Emily did not steal up to the garret and write a letter,
Long or short,
To her father.
As she wrote,
The bitterness died out of her grief.
Writing to him seemed to bring him so near to her,
And she could tell him everything with a certain honesty of confession that was characteristic of her triumphs,
Failures,
Joys,
Sorrows.
Everything in fact.
There was fully half a yard of paper in each bill,
And Emily wrote a small hand and made the most of every inch.
I like New Moon,
It's so stately and splendid here,
" she told him.
It seems as if we must be very aristocratic when we have a sundial.
I can't help feeling proud of it all.
I am afraid I have too much pride,
Father.
And so I ask God every night to take most of it away,
But not quite all of it.
It's very easy to get a reputation for pride in Playwater School.
If you walk straight and hold your head up,
You're a proud one,
They say.
Rhoda must be proud too,
Because her father ought to be King of England.
I wonder how Queen Victoria would feel if she knew that.
It's very wonderful to have a friend who would be a princess if everyone had their rights.
I love Roja with all my heart.
She's so sweet and kind.
But I don't like her giggles,
And when I told her I could see the school wallpaper small in the air,
She said,
You lie!
That hurt me awfully.
To have my dearest friend say that to me.
It hurt me worse when I woke in the night and thought about it.
I had to stay awake ever so long because I was tired lying on one side and I was afraid to turn over because Aunt Elizabeth would say I was fidgeting.
I didn't dare tell Rhoda about the wind woman because I suppose that really is a kind of lie.
Although the wind woman seems real to me.
I hear her now singing up on the roof round the big chimneys.
I don't have any Emily in the glass here.
The looking glasses are all too high up in the rooms I've been in.
I've never been in the lookout,
It's always locked.
That was Mother's Room.
Cousin Jimmy said her father locked it up after she ran away with you.
Daughter Elizabeth keeps it locked out of respect for his memory.
When Rhoda asked me if Aunt Elizabeth burned candles because she was old-fashioned,
I answered haughtily,
No,
It was a Murray tradition.
Cousin Jimmy told me all the traditions of the Murrays.
Saucy Sal is very well and she bosses the barns,
But still she will not have kittens and I can't understand it.
I asked Aunt Elizabeth about that and she said nice little girls didn't talk about such things.
But I can't see why kittens are improper.
When Aunt Elizabeth is away,
Aunt Laura and I smuggle Sal into the house.
When Aunt Elizabeth comes back,
I always feel guilty and wish I hadn't.
I never hear about dear Mike.
I wrote to Ellen Green and asked about him and she replied and never mentioned him at all.
But told me all about her rheumatism.
As if I cared about her rheumatism.
Rhoda is going to have a birthday party and she's going to invite me.
I am so excited.
I never was went to a party before.
I think about it a great deal and picture it all out.
I hope Aunt Elizabeth will let me wear my white dress and good hat.
Oh father,
I pinned that lovely picture of the lace ball dress up on the wall of Aunt Elizabeth's room just like I had it at home and Aunt Elizabeth took it down and burned it and scolded me for making pin parks in the paper.
I said Aunt Elizabeth,
You should not have burned that picture!
I wanted to have it when I grew up to make a dress like it for balls.
And Aunt Elizabeth said,
Do you expect to attend many balls if I may ask?
I said,
Yes when I'm rich and famous.
And Aunt Elizabeth said,
When the moon is made of green cheese.
I saw Dr.
Burnley yesterday when he came over to buy some eggs from Aunt Elizabeth.
I was very disappointed because he looks just like other people.
I thought a man who didn't believe in God would look queer in some way.
He has big yellow eyes like Ilsa and a loud voice.
Rhoda says when he gets mad you can hear him yelling all over Blair Water.
There is some mystery about Ilsa's mother,
I can't fathom.
Dr.
Burnley and Ilsa live alone.
Rhoda says Dr.
Burnley says he will have no devils of women in that house.
That speech is wicked but striking.
Old Mrs Sims goes over and cooks dinner and supper for them.
Then vermooses and they get their own breakfast.
The doctor sweeps out the house every now and then,
And Ilsa never does anything but run wild.
The doctor never smiled,
So Rhoda said.
He must be like King Henry II.
I would like to get acquainted with Ilsa.
She isn't as sweet as Rhoda,
But I like her looks.
When she doesn't come to school much and Rhoda says I mustn't have any chum but her or she'll cry her eyes out.
Rhoda,
I know,
Loves me as much as I love her.
We're going to pray we may live together all our lives and die on the same day.
My teacher's name is Miss Bromwell.
I do not like the cut of her chin.
That's a nautical phrase that cousin Jimmy uses.
She is too sarcastic and she likes to make you ridiculous.
Then she laughs at you in a snorting way.
I forgave her for slapping me and took a bouquet to school for her the next day to make it up.
She let it fade on her desk.
In a story she would have wept on my neck.
I don't know whether it's any use forgiving people or not.
Yes it is and makes you more comfortable yourself.
You never have to wear baby aprons and sun bonnets because you're a boy.
So you can't understand how I feel about it.
The aprons are made of such good stuff they'll never wear out and it'll be years before I grow out of them.
But I have a white dress for church with a black silk sash and white lagorn hat.
I feel very elegant in black kids slippers and black bows.
Rhoda told me I had beautiful eyes.
I wish he hadn't.
I had always suspected my eyes were beautiful,
But I wasn't sure.
Now I know they are,
I'm afraid I'll be wondering if people notice it.
I have to go to bed at half past eight and I don't like it but I sit up and look out of the window till it gets dark.
So that's how I get square with Aunt Elizabeth.
Then I listen to the sound that the sea makes.
The parlour is as dark as a tomb.
I went in one day and rolled up all the blinds and Aunt Elizabeth was horrified and called me a little hussy and gave me the murray look.
You would suppose I'd committed a crime.
All the walls are hung over with pictures of our ancestors and there's not one good looking person among them.
Except Grandfather Murray,
Who looks handsome but very cross.
Oh,
And I forgot about the cellar cupboard.
I love to go down there and look at the beautiful rows of jam and jelly pots.
Cousin Jimmy says it's a New Moon tradition the jam pots must never be empty.
What a lot of traditions New Moon has!
It's a very spacious house and the trees are lovely.
I'd named the three Lombardies at the garden gate the Three Princesses.
And I've named the old summer house Emily's Bower.
And the big apple tree by the old orchard,
The praying tree.
Because it holds up his long bowels exactly as Mr Dare holds up his arms in church when he prays.
Aunt Elizabeth has given me the little right hand top drawer to keep my things in.
Oh,
Father dear.
I have made a great discovery.
I wish I'd made it when you were alive.
I think you'd have liked to know.
I can write poetry.
Perhaps I could have written it long ago if I tried.
But after that first day in school,
I felt I was bound in honour to try and it's so easy.
There is a little curly black covered book in Aunt Elizabeth's bookcase called Thompson's Seasons and I decided I would write a poem on a season.
And the first three lines go like this.
Now autumn comes ripe with a peach and pear,
The sportsman's horn is heard throughout the land,
And the poor partridge,
Fluttering,
Falls dead.
Of course there are no peaches in PE Island and I never heard a sportsman horn here either.
But you don't have to stick too close to facts in poetry,
Do you?
Cousin Jimmy makes poetry too.
He's made over a thousand pieces,
But he never writes any down.
He just carries them in his head.
And Aunt Laura says I'm crazy.
And Aunt Elizabeth says I'm irreverent.
Old Mr Wales on the Derry Pond Road is dying of cancer.
Jenny Strang said his wife has her morning all ready.
I wrote a biography of Saucy Sal today in a description of the road in Lofty John's Bush.
I will pin them to this letter so you can read them too.
Goodnight,
My beloved father.
Yours most obedient,
Humble servant,
Emily B.
Starr PS.
I think Aunt Laura loves me.
I like to be loved,
Father dear.
X.
