Emily's Runaway Imagination Read Free

by the clock to earn the nickel. She was saving up her sitting-still nickels to buy Mama a rotary eggbeater, the kind that would beat eggs and whip cream when you turnedthe handle around and around. This morning, however, she decided against earning a nickel and in favor of going upstairs to the rooms where Grandpa and Grandma lived. She would say hello to Grandma and avoid anyone who might be coming to the store from the post office.

    Upstairs was the best part of all–Grandma’s millinery room, where Grandma trimmed hats for the ladies of Pitchfork–and it was there that Emily found her grandmother, her mouth full of pins, trimming a white leg-horn hat with beautiful pink ribbon bows. Grandma nodded and smiled through her mouthful of pins. Dear gentle Grandma, who always smelled of violets.
    Emily heard the merry ring of the cash register downstairs as Grandpa waited on his customers. To pass the time until they left she amused herself exploring the millinery room–the deep round boxes of untrimmedhats, bolts of veiling, boxes of flowers. There were velvet violets for winter hats, garlands of daisies and poppies, bunches of hard red cherries that rattled when Emily picked them up, stiff little nosegays of forget-me-nots, even artificial wheat, although why anybody would want to trim a hat with anything so ordinary as wheat Emily could not understand. And the ostrich plumes! Each beautiful curling plume lay in its own question-mark-shaped compartment in a big box. Grandma had dozens of lovely plumes, which she said would surely come back in style. Grandma said if you kept a thing seven years, it was bound to come back in style.
    At last Grandma took the pins out of her mouth. “How are you today, Emily,” she asked.
    â€œJust fine, Grandma.” Emily stabbed a pincushion with a hatpin. “Grandma, doyou know maybe Pitchfork is going to have a library? Mama wrote a letter to the state library this morning and I mailed it.”
    â€œWell now, wouldn’t that be nice?” Grandma deftly twisted a length of ribbon into a crisp bow. “Other towns have libraries, I’ve heard. There’s no reason why Pitchfork can’t keep up with the times.”
    â€œThat is just what Mama said,” Emily told her grandmother. And then deciding that the coast must be clear by now, because the store was quiet, she added, “Good-bye, Grandma.”
    Grandma smiled. “You didn’t pay me a very long visit today.”
    Emily did not want to tell Grandma that she was hiding from the people who had been in the post office. She said, “I’ll be back soon.” Then she ran downstairs, where Grandpa was weighing out tea for a customer. “Good-bye, Grandpa,” she said.
    Grandpa paused with his hand above the scales and looked at Emily with what she always thought of as his twinkly look. “Good-bye, Emily,” he said. “You and Plince come again soon.”
    Emily felt herself blush once more. “Now Grandpa, you stop it,” she said, and hurried out of the store with Prince trotting after her. So someone had already told Grandpa about her mistake! Well, she might have known.
    Emily soon discovered that Grandpa was not the only person who had been told. Everyone Emily met on the street said, “Good morning, Emily. Hello there, Plince”–George A. Barbee, who had the longest gray beard in Pitchfork; Mrs. Warty Thompson, who played the piano at the picture show on Saturday night; the man who ran the feed store–everybody. Emily was so embarrassed that she hurried onwithout even stopping to spread the glad tidings about the important letter she had just mailed.
    She decided to go home the long way around, because she could not face passing Fong Quock’s house. She did not want to run into him again for a long, long time, not until everyone in Pitchfork had stopped laughing at her thoughtless mistake. She went down a side street past the