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 a special providence.
Emily was sure on the first day at school she would never like it.
In order to get an education and be ready to earn her own living.
But it would always be what Ellen Green solemnly called a cross.
Consequently,
Emily felt quite astonished when after going to school a few days,
It dawned upon her she was actually liking it.
To be sure,
Miss Bromwell did not improve on acquaintance,
But the other girls no longer tormented her.
Indeed,
They seemed suddenly to forget all that had happened,
And hailed her as one of themselves.
She was admitted to the Fellowship of the Path.
And although in some occasional tiff she got a dig about baby aprons and Murray pride.
.
.
There was no more hostility veiled or open.
Besides,
Emily was quite able to give digs herself.
As she learned more about the girls and their weak points,
She could give them with such merciless lucidity and irony,
The others soon learned not to provoke them.
Chestnut Curls,
Whose name is Grace Wells,
And the Freckled One,
Whose name is Carrie King,
And Jenny Strang,
Became quite chummy with her.
And Jenny sent chews of gum and tissue thumb papers across the aisle instead of giggles.
Emily allowed them all to enter the outer court of her temple of friendship.
But only Rhoda was admitted to the inner shrine.
As for Ilse Burnley,
She did not appear after that first day.
Ilse,
So Rhoda said,
Came to school or not,
Just as she liked.
Her father never bothered about her,
And Emily always felt a hankering to know more about her.
But did not seem likely to be gratified.
Emily was insensibly coming happy again.
Really she felt as if she belonged to this old cradle of her family.
She thought a great deal about the old Murrays and liked to picture them revisiting the glimpses of New Moon.
She still had terrible hours when she was overwhelmed by grief for her father.
And when all the splendours of New Moon could not stifle the longing for the shabby little house in the hollow where they had loved each other so.
It was then she fled to some secret corner and cried her heart out.
Emerging with red eyes that always seem to annoy Aunt Elizabeth.
Aunt Elizabeth had become used to having Emily at Newmoon,
But she has not drawn any nearer to the child.
Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy loved her,
However,
And she had saucy sal and rhoda,
Fields creamy with clover,
Soft dark trees against amber skies,
And the madcap music the wind woman made in the firs behind the barns when she blew straight up from the gulf.
Emily's days became vivid and interesting.
Full of little pleasures and delights like tiny opening golden buds on the tree of life.
If she could only have had her old yellow account book or some equivalent.
She could have been fully content.
She missed it next to her father.
And its enforced burning was something for which she held Aunt Elizabeth responsible.
And something for which she felt she could never wholly forgive her.
It did not seem possible to get any substitute.
As Cousin Jimmy said,
Writing paper of any kind would scare some new moon.
Letters were seldom written.
And when they were,
A sheet of notepaper sufficed.
Emily dared not ask Aunt Elizabeth for any.
There were times when she felt she would burst if she couldn't write out some of the things that came to her.
She found a certain safety valve in writing on her slate at school.
But these scribblings had to be rubbed off sooner or later,
Which left Emily with a sense of loss.
And there was always the danger Miss Brownwell would see them.
That,
Emily felt,
Would be unendurable.
No stranger eyes must behold those sacred productions.
Sometimes she let Rhoda read them,
Though Rhoda rasped her by giggling over her finest flights.
Emily thought Rhoda was as near perfection as a human being could be.
But giggling was her fault.
There is a destiny which shapes the ends of the young missus who are born with the itch for writing,
Tingling in their baby fingertips.
And in the fullness of time,
This destiny gave to Emily the desire of her heart.
In fact,
On the day she most needed it.
That was the day,
The ill-starred day,
When Miss Brownwell elected to show the fifth class how the bugle song should be read.
Standing on the platform,
Miss Brownwell,
Who was not devoid of a superficial elocutionary knack,
Read those three wonderful verses.
Emily,
Who should have been doing a sum and long division,
Dropped her pencil and listened entranced.
She had never heard the bugle song before,
But now she heard it and saw it.
The rose-red splendour falling on those storied snowy summits and ruined castles.
The lights that never were on land or sea streaming over the lakes.
And when Miss Brownwell came to,
Horns of elf land faintly blowing,
Emily trembled with delight.
She was snatched out of herself.
She forgot everything but the magic of that unequalled line and sprang from her seat Knocking her sleep to the floor with a clatter,
She rushed up the aisle and caught Miss Brownwell's arm.
Oh teacher!
" she cried with passionate earnestness.
Read that line over again.
Miss Brownwall,
Suddenly halted in her elocutionary display,
Looked down into a rapt,
Uplifted face.
Where grey,
Purplish-grey eyes were shining with the radiance of a divine vision.
Angry with this breach of her strict rules.
Discipline.
Angry with this unseemly display of interest in a third-class atom whose attention should have been focused on long division.
Miss Brown will shut her book.
Shot her lips and gave Emily a resounding slap to the face.
Go right back to your seat and mind your own business,
Emily Starr.
She's sick.
Her cold eyes malignant with fury.
Emily moved back to her seat in a daze.
Her smitten cheek was crimson,
But the wound.
.
.
Was deeper in her heart.
One moment ago she was in seventh heaven and now this.
Pain,
Humiliation and misunderstanding.
She could not bear it.
What has she done to deserve it?
She had never been slapped in her life before.
The degradation and the injustice ate into her soul.
She could not cry.
This was a grief too deep for tears.
She went home from school in a suppressed anguish of bitterness and shame and resentment.
An anguish that had no outlet.
But she dared not tell her story at New Moon.
Aunt Elizabeth,
She felt sure,
Would say Miss Brownwell had done quite right.
And even Aunt Laura,
Kind and sweet as she was,
Would not understand.
She would be grieved because Emily had misbehaved in school and had to be punished.
If only I could tell father about it.
Daughter Emily.
She did not eat any supper that night.
She did not think she would ever be able to eat again.
She could never forgive Miss Brownwall ever.
If there were only some way she could get square with her.
Sitting small and pale and quiet at the new moon's supper table.
There was a seething volcano of wounded feeling and misery and pride.
Worse even than the injustice was the sting of humiliation.
She,
Emily Byrd's star,
On whom no hand had ever before been ungently laid,
Had been slapped like a naughty baby before the whole school.
Who in the world could endure?
And indeed go on to live.
Through this.
