"Juliet!" Emily Byrd Kent nee Star stood on the porch of her old beloved New Moon and rang the dinner bell again, with a smile, but with an impatient ferocity. Truthfully, Emily had never been especially patient. It was never extolled as one of her virtues. But as the mother of two teenage children--especially one like Juliet Starr Kent--has sent the last tattered remnants of Emily's patience packing and out the door. Patient or impatient, though, Emily still found enough beauty around her in the ice-covered trees and the December starlight to give her the flash of yore. For a minute Emily was able to forget the events playing out thousands of miles away, in Europe--the bombs falling, the people huddled in broken cellars; the Women's Red Cross at home and the sugar ration. She stood for a moment, ringing the bell that echoed like fairy calls on the night air and looking about dreamily.

Presently, a figure appeared at the door of the barn and made elaborate hand signals at her mother and her brother, who had appeared for dinner when summoned, like the good boy he was.

"What on earth is she trying to convey?" said Emily haughtily. While not known for her patience Emily had been known for her haughtiness. She was one of the proud Murrays, after all.

"She's coming in a minute," said Douglas, who was Juliet's twin, and understood her better than everyone else.

Juliet disappeared back inside and emerged again a moment later, her pockets loaded with the last of the season's apples. She flew like a little red bird in her cape across the snowy fields, which even at this hour were a tranquil bluish in the moonlight.

"Isn't wintertime lovely?" asked Juliet, appearing suddenly before them. "It gets darker earlier--we get more moonlight that way. Moonlight is so bewitching. I like it ever so much better than sunlight, and nighttime very much better than day."

Emily, who had been thinking the exact same thing, thawed a trifle.

"You're not the first one to feel like that, you monkey," she said with a loving smile--for who could help loving Juliet? She was--in a word--lovable. "But oh ho! Give over those apples--they're the last for this year and we need them for the Christmas pies."

In response Juliet cheekily took a huge bite of the juiciest apple of the bunch, twirling out of her mother's reach enough so that her cloak swung open and they saw her shirtwaist.

"Jul-i-et!" Emily gasped. "Have you been rolling around in mud puddles to get you skirt so dirty?"

"I was helping Father clean his paintbrushes," Juliet said. "And what is one shirtwaist when compared with such art? Oh, Mother, Mrs. Kenneth Ford--Rilla Blythe Ford, you know--came to sit for her portrait today and she is so beautiful. With lovely, coppery hair--oh, Mother, sometimes I wish that I had copper-colored hair. I wished for it today so hard that when I looked in the mirror and saw my dull old hair I thought it must be a mistake. I wish I were beautiful. It hurts me so that I'm not--but if I can't be beautiful I'd like to have hair like Rilla Ford's."

"No, no," laughed Emily. "No copper hair in this family, I'm afraid. Only tipped ears and smoky gray eyes. And you are a beautiful girl, Juliet--or you could be, if you weren't always getting into messes. Douglas here keeps himself so orderly--how you can be brother and sister is beyond me. Run upstairs and change your clothes before supper."

"Douglas has no fun--no fun at all, that's how he keeps so neat," griped Juliet as she whirled off to do her mother's bidding--but not before stopping and standing on her tiptoes and giving Doug a kiss--so that he'd know she was only teasing after all.

* * *

Juliet loved New Moon as much as her mother did, and wished she had been born here. Evensong--where she and Douggie had been born--was a lovely little cottage--but it didn't seem like it had even been home like New Moon was. It was where Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Dean and Bella stayed in during summers that they were on the Island. Juliet loved New Moon so that she wanted to live her life--her entire life--within its walls. She wanted the old house to know her--to love her--to remember her when she was gone.

She stopped off in the bathroom to wash her face and then slipped across her hall to change into clean clothes for supper. But before dressing she stood in her slip and studied herself in the full-length mirror in her little over-the-stairs bedroom.

She was very tall--that's what struck Juliet first about her appearance. So tall that she almost had to bend her knees to see her face in the mirror. That was ridiculous. Mother and Father were both tall, but not ridiculously so. Juliet was already a head taller than Doug. Aunt Elizabeth Murray, Juliet was told, has also been tall. Juliet did not remember Aunt Elizabeth, who had died when she was a baby, but wished every now and then that she'd been a little smaller.

She had a lot of very black, very thick, very wavy hair. Masses of it. Gobs of it. Perhaps she should have it cut and permed like Bea Miller's? Aunt Ilse was so fashionable to let her--she got hers cut and styled too! Mother only wore hers pulled back in a braid or a pony-tail--but somehow that suited Mother. Juliet did not want to lop off her beautiful strands. She thought her hair her only beauty and was fervently and secretly proud of it.

She was wrong--her tumbling masses of dark waves were not her only beauty. She had lovely, tip-tilted eyes that were not an almost-violet like her mother's but more of a bluish-gray. They were fringed with lashes as thick and dark as her hair. Her forehead was high but not too high--her nose was small and didn't turn up at the end like Bea's. Juliet gave it a pat but then shook her head mournfully.

"Juliet Kent!" she breathed. "Why, you aren't beautiful--but you're me! And I've changed my mind--I don't know if really I would want to be beautiful, like Mrs. Ford. It makes you everyone else's property somehow. This way I can just be me--and go where I please--whither and whence--like a little spring breeze!"

Juliet smiled over the small poem she'd made without intending to and thought for a moment of writing it down. When she had been younger she'd had a Jimmy-book of her own which she filled with poetry. But she'd tired of that. She kept a diary--but was not as fanatical about writing as Mother was. Nor did she fancy herself a great artist, like Father, though he had always encouraged her to draw.

"I like both, plus dancing, and singing, and playing the piano, and cooking!" she told herself. "But I want to be different! I want to love and be loved and be happy. I don't care what else I do, as long as I can do that!"

"Juliet!" Came a voice from downstairs. Father's. "Hurry down, please, we're starving." The entire family emitted piteous moans of hunger and Juliet giggled. She threw on her pink sweater and her gray kilt, and pulled up her kneesocks,. She tied the laces of her saddle oxfords--and wished for a moment that they were the sweet pink ones that Bella had had on her last visit. She wound her hair into a braid as she skipped down the stairs.

"Here I am!" she crowed, stepping into the warm, good-smelling kitchen, and preparing to emit a few hunger-moans of her own. But dinner was already on the table. No one was eating it. They weren't laughing, either, though they had been a short time ago. Doug--Mother--Father--all of them looking stricken at each other as the news programme on the radio droned on and on.

"What's everyone looking so peevish for?" Juliet snapped, sitting down. It was just like them to spoil her good mood.

"Good God," said Father, as if he had not heard her.

"What does it mean?" Douglas asked. "Father--Mother--what does this mean?"

"What does what mean?" Juliet said, her heart beginning to beat faster now. "What's happening? What's going on?"

"The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor," Father said, slapping his knee. "I'll be! I'll be! I guess Roosevelt can't keep out of it now."

"The United States will join the war," said Douglas. "Things'll start picking up now. I bet we have the Germans--and the Japs--licked by this time next year, with the States on our side."

Juliet felt suddenly put out. War, war, war--it was all they talked about anymore! She missed the old days when they talked and chattered around the dinner table. When they could have as much sugar--and flour--as they wanted. When she could have a new pair of leather oxfords every years--now the leather and rubber used to make them were all needed for the war effort. Before she had had to spend tedious afternoons making socks and bandages with the Junior Red Cross that Bella Priest had organized. Before the radio was on all the time. Before they had air raids drills at the school. Heavens! Nothing was going to happen to them here, on little Prince Edward Island. It was--ridiculous!

"Mother, may I be excused? I want go over to see Bea and Allan?" said Juliet, standing.

But Mother, eyes shining, was making her own victory predictions with Father and Doug. Juliet slipped away from the table, grabbed her cape, and set off cross-lots, through the snowy fields.