The eyes stared at Emily, snake eyes that never moved, and yet she knew they were crawling over her inch by inch. She felt goose bumps of terror rising on her arms and legs.
Click! Click! Click! The needles knitted on, but the parlor beyond was silent, as her velveteen coat, white stockings, and fur hat were examined and measured, not to mention what was inside them. At least one whole row of stitches had clicked by before a verdict was delivered, from lips that barely took the trouble to move.
“She is puny for eleven, Mrs. Luccock!”
Aunt Twice drew in her breath sharply. Her knuckles showed white where she clutched her purse. “I—I don’t understand, Mrs. Meeching. She was such a—a healthy, robust little child. Of course,” she faltered, “it has been a long time since I’ve seen her. I—I had no idea …” Her voiced faded away.
By way of reply, Mrs. Meeching allowed a faint hiss of air to escape her nose.
Of course, the truth was that Emily had never been either healthy or robust. Born too early, which she knew from having overheard Mrs. Leslie whispering to someone once, she had always been frail and fragile as a baby sparrow. And she had always been tiny, so that even at eleven, she looked hardly more than eight. A long parade of physicians had poured bottles of potions and pills down her throat (most of which she had unfortunately poured right back up again), but none of them was able to bring the desired color to her cheeks, or add a quarter inch of extra fat to her thin legs. So although it had indeed been a long time since Aunt Twice had seen her, none of the rest was true. Aunt Twice, Emily knew, was lying. But now at last she understood the meaning of her aunt’s dire warning, al though it had hardly been necessary to give one. Emily could not have opened her mouth if her life hung on it. She stood staring at Mrs. Meeching with frozen round eyes, too scared even to tremble, like a small animal hypnotized by a cobra.
“She’ll fatten up soon, I’m certain,” Aunt Twice ventured palely, not sounding at all certain of anything. “Bearing in mind that the child has just suffered a terrible loss—”
A thin, interrupting eyebrow slithered up Mrs. Meeching’s forehead. “We bear in mind what we choose to bear in mind, Mrs. Luccock. I pray, for her sake, as well as yours, that she will fatten up soon, but I warn you, it will not be at my expense. She will not be pampered either in the kitchen or at any dining table and will eat exactly what the others eat. Furthermore, she will earn her keep. That is clear, is it not, Mrs. Luccock?”
Although Mrs. Meeching addressed these grim orders to Aunt Twice, there was no doubt as to what person was intended to profit by hearing them. Her glance never flickered away from Emily for an instant.
“I suppose she is wearing a silk dress under that coat? Well, there will be no need for silks and velvets in scrubbing sinks, scouring pots, and emptying slop jars, eh?” There was a brief pause to allow this to settle. “Has she other clothes, Mrs. Luccock?”
“Two trunks coming—” murmured Aunt Twice.
“Two?” The same thin eyebrow rose a trifle higher. “All filled with the same frivolous garments, I venture. Well, we’ll have to attend to that, just as we shall have to attend to the hair. Long golden braids take entirely too much attention, wouldn’t you say, Mrs. Luccock?”
If Aunt Twice agreed to this observation, it was hard to tell it from the small sound that escaped her throat.
“I collect,” continued Mrs. Meeching smoothly, “that we might encounter some difficulty in having this matter attended to. Alas!” The alas came out sounding as far from what was originally intended for the word as anything imaginable. “Mrs. Plumly, the scissors, please!”
“Oh no!” breathed Aunt Twice. “Not her beautiful hair!”
“The scissors!” repeated Mrs. Meeching. Her eyes still fastened on Emily, she uncoiled a white, boneless hand in the direction of the plump lady with the knitting needles.
The knitting was arrested for a moment as Mrs. Plumly dipped into a capacious rose-embroidered knitting bag and handed Mrs. Meeching a pair of gleaming silver scissors, long as a dagger. With a flick of a pointed finger, Mrs. Meeching directed Emily to turn around. Then the scissors hissed open, and with a solid crunch, the silver jaws snapped together over one of her golden braids. Hiss! Crunch! Snap! went the scissors again, and she felt a sunny braid part from her head with a faint, farewell sigh and fall to the floor with a thump.
From the moment that Emily had walked through the doors of Sugar Hill Hall into its spectral parlor, she had half believed that she had stepped into a nightmare and would soon wake from it. But the sound and the feel of the silver jaws biting through her hair were all too real. Her heart was still pumping with fear, but with the loss of her braid, somewhere deep inside a large amount of terror was suddenly replaced by an equally large amount of anger.
How dared this wicked woman remove from her something she had owned most of her life and which had been so precious to Mama and Papa! One of her happiest memories would always be the one of skipping in to say good night to them in her pink nightdress. And how Papa had loved her hair, unplaited for the night, floating about her shoulders like a golden cloud! Now half of it was already lying lifelessly on the floor, and the rest soon to follow.
Why was Aunt Twice allowing this to happen? Why did she not put a stop to it at once? But when Emily looked at her aunt, she knew why. Though Aunt Twice’s eyes were brimming with tears, her face was ashen with fear. So Emily stood still as a stone statue, without making a sound.
Thin as a thread, strong as wire! Papa had said that once about her, she remembered, and everyone had laughed. But now she intended to prove Papa’s words true. She would not cry and make a scene, for Aunt Twice’s sake. This monstrous person wielding the scissors would not bring tears to her eyes.
Hiss! Crunch! Snap! Hiss! Crunch! Snap! A second braid lay beside the first, its bright red ribbon trembling like a butterfly on a dead branch. Emily dug her fingernails into her hand in a tight fist, but her eyes remained dry.
“There now, Mrs. Luccock, I believe she is ready to go to work. She will be expected to serve in the dining room this evening and to help Tilly so that you may be relieved for your other duties. And on the matter of dinner, I presume it will be served on time? You were very late returning, were you not, Mrs. Luccock?”
“I had to wait such a long time for the cablecar, you know, Mrs. Meeching. The fog must have held it up.” Aunt Twice twisted her fingers together nervously.
“But I noticed that you arrived in a cab. Cabs are for the very rich.” Mrs. Meeching’s voice suddenly took on a sly quality. “We must be paying you too well, eh, Mrs. Luccock?”
“I didn’t want to be late. It took all the money I had,” said Aunt Twice faintly.
“Well, we shall see!” The scissors still in Mrs. Meeching’s hand hissed open and snapped shut. “You may go now, and take the orphan brat with you.”
Aunt Twice started to reach for Emily’s travelling bag, but a warning hiss from Mrs. Meeching made her draw back her hand as if it had been bitten.
“There will be no pampering, Mrs. Luccock. Let her carry her own bag!”
Quickly, Emily wrapped both her small hands around the handle of her travelling bag and stumbled forward. To her dismay, she found that Mrs. Plumly stood directly in her path. She hesitated for a moment, and in that moment Mrs. Plumly finally looked up from her needles to present a round, blossom-pink face as harmless as an apple dumpling and to give Emily a secret, sympathetic smile. Emily nearly dropped her bag in surprise. Curiously, this unexpected friendliness from someone as warm and cozy as a story-book grandmother came close to making her cry at last. But under Mrs. Meeching’s icy stare, she kept back the tears and steered around Mrs. Plumly as best and as rapidly as she could manage.
Now, for the first time, she could study the parlor that had once so delighted her. Although her bag thump-thumped painfully against her knees, she managed to peek upward. There they were, the same plaster cupids gamboling in the corners and all around the edges of the endlessly high ceiling. On either side, the walls were still graced with the same huge mirrors. And directly ahead the same broad oak staircase curved up to a high mirrored wall, and then up and up to a second and yet a third story. Emily remembered how she had loved to run up those stairs to her little room on the second floor. She hoped that Aunt Twice, if she could do nothing else, had arranged for Emily to have that very same room again.
Of course, everything she now saw in the parlor provided only a memory of an elegance long since past. The carpet under her feet was worn to the threads. The gold frames around the mirrors were tarnished and peeling. And cobwebs dangled like small ghosts from the cupids overhead. She could tell all this despite the shadows that shrouded the room.
Shadows seemed to be lurking everywhere. Shadows in the stairwell. Shadows hovering in the corners of the ceiling. Shadows even seemed to be huddling in every chair that lined the walls of the room. And then Emily made a horrifying discovery. In the dim, flickering light what had appeared to be shadows in the chairs were not shadows at all. They were very old people sitting and staring silently ahead with pale, wrinkled faces as empty of expression as unmarked gravestones!
Who were they? Why were they there? Had they been sitting in the room all along, watching the terrible scene at the front door without so much as a murmur? If Emily had not seen one of them shuffle an old, shabby carpet slipper just then, she might have wondered if they were even alive. But the worst thing was that they all seemed to be looking right through her as if she were not even there, as if she had become a shadow too!
She had no more than made this new, startling, and frightening discovery, however, than she made another one of an entirely different nature. Directly ahead of her, at the foot of the staircase, sat a round table laid with a magnificent, full-skirted red velvet cloth. Its heavy gold fringe barely brushed against the worn carpet, as if it were afraid to touch such a shabby relic. On this splendid setting rested a large bowl of cut crystal, so brilliant it twinkled like a star in the dusky parlor. And in the bowl lay a neatly arranged miniature mound of her favorite Christmas treat—puffy, tempting, tantalizing, delicious pink-and-white-striped peppermint drops! It almost seemed that they had been placed there just for Emily. Forgetting everything, she set down her travelling bag and reached out her hand.
Snap! Another hand, thin and cold as six feet under, flicked around her wrist. “Those are not placed there for the benefit of charity brats!” hissed Mrs. Meeching. Behind her, Aunt Twice gave a fainting gasp.
With wide eyes still fastened on the peppermint drops, Emily picked up her bag and numbly followed after Aunt Twice.