Home > Work > Emily of Deep Valley (Deep Valley, #2)
1 " I'm finished with something, but I'm not beginning anything. That's wrong. When you finish something, you ought always to begin something new. "
― Maud Hart Lovelace , Emily of Deep Valley (Deep Valley, #2)
2 " A house with nothing old in it seems - unseasoned. "
3 " We have to build our lives out of what materials we have. It's as though we were given a heap of blocks and told to build a house. "
4 " Muster your wits: stand in your own defense. "
5 " Emily interrupted."Don," she said. "would you mind going home?"He pulled his soft hat violently down over his forehead. "I suppose you think that I'm a cad.""I just don't think about you. Good-by," Emily said, and closed the door firmly behind him. "
6 " Emily of a warm feeling of pleasure about the request to call.Don had always just dropped in, indifferent to her convenience. Cab had only taken her to dances. There was a flattering formality, an indication of a genuine wish to get acquainted, about Jed Wakeman's overture. It gratified her. The ungratifying though occurred that he might be coming just to talk about the Syrians."What makes me have ideas like that?" she asked herself. "There's a side of my nature that's always trying to pull me down - the way Don does. Well, I won't allow it! He asked to call because he likes me. And I like him. And I'm glad he's coming. "
7 " And when she went that far in her thoughts it sounded absurd. Was she the same Emily Webster who had been so humble and adoring with Don? Could it be she seriously thought it possible that anyone so desirable as Jed Wakeman could be in love with her? The truth was that she did. "
8 " They turned and looked down to the roof of the little house."This seemed like a long way from home when I was a little girl. I used to bring picnics up here.""Alone?""Oh, yes! Unless I brought a doll along."She had never, she realized, talked about herself with Don. Don had never thought of her or her problems. Jed liked to hear about her childhood and her growing up. Little by little she had told him almost all there was to tell - about her parents, and her grandmother; her differentness in school; even the great pain of not being able to go to college. "
9 " He was always so happy, and she was sometimes depressed, although not so often as she used to be. And he was so completely unselfconscious, so untroubled by perplexities and doubts of the sort which had always beset her. But they beset her less and less. He was always confident, without being at all vain, and he was building that same confidence in her. "
10 " Everything he said seemed complimentary, somehow, although he wasn't gallant in the artificial sense. But plainly he liked her, and she liked him. "
11 " That Jed Wakeman is *nice*," Emily remarked aloud when she reached her own room. He was, she thought, such a happy normal person, so - outgiving.Her eyes chanced to fall on Don's picture inspecting her disdainfully. She took it up and changed it from the front row of pictures to the back. As she did so she wished she could put him that easily into the background of her life. "
12 " Depression settled down upon her, and although she tried to brush it away it thickened like a fog....But she felt lonely and deserted and futile."A mood like this has to be fought... "
13 " She did bring home books from the library, in armloads, replenishing them every two or three days. She read avidly, indiscriminately, using them as an antidote for the pain in her heart. But they didn't help much. There was no one to talk them over with. "
14 " She felt heavy and lifeless, and her mind reached out despairingly for something to fill the day. "
15 " How do you do it?" Jed asked."Oh, Miss Fowler loaned me Arnold Bennett's book, How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day." But then, because she could really talk with Jed, she grew serious."I filled my winter up in a sort of desperation. I just couldn't seem to face it that I wasn't going to college."They were having cocoa in front of the coal stove after a skating expedition. Jed looked at her with a puzzled expression."What made you feel so badly about not going to college?""I love to learn.""But you certainly haven't stopped learning.""I'd like to be - a really cultured person.""Well, you're certainly on the way to being. And Emily - it's a good thing for the Syrians of Deep Valley that you didn't go to college."Her eyes filled with tears.Jed reached over and patted her hand."Speaking of Syrians, that board meeting's coming up Friday night. May I call for you? Miss Bangeter has asked me to present our case, but if I run into difficulties I'll turn to you like Jerry Sibley did before the St. John game. "
