He and Miss Merle were about to kill themselves laughing, for Miss Merle had seen him from the first; but when Jean looked up and saw him he looked at her so sweet that you felt like you could forgive him anything he was to do, even the "i-ther and ni-ther."
"I'd like to accommodate you, Jean," he said, laughing and catching her hand with an affectionate look, although he is usually very timid and dignified, "but the fact is—may I tell, Merle?" And the way he said "Merle" sounded like a whole box of marshmallows.
Miss Merle smiled at him and then he told Jean if she would every bit as soon have it that way, he would be her uncle instead of her future husband.
I was so afraid that she would faint or die right there in the pasture that I told them I heard mother calling me and ran as hard as I could tear.
She came over this afternoon to tell me all about it and was feeling strong enough to eat a small basket of wild goose plums.
"Oh, it was a terrible shock at first," she said, stopping long enough to spit out a seed, "but the minute he said uncle my love changed. Why, Ann, an uncle is an old person, almost like a grandpa! Anyway, they've promised that I shall be in the wedding, dressed in a pair of beautiful white silk stockings."
CHAPTER X
It ain't any easy matter to keep a diary with a baby in the house, especially if he's at the watchable age, although he's such a darling one that you don't begrudge him the trouble he makes. Before you more than get a sentence set down you have to drop everything and run and jerk the palm-leaf fan out of his hands, which he takes great pleasure in ramming the handle of down his throat. Then he eats great handsful of the Virginia Creeper leaves if you leave him on the porch for a minute by himself. And at times he won't be satisfied with anything on earth unless you turn up the mattress and let him beat on the bed-springs, which I consider a smart idea and think Cousin Eunice ought to write out and send to a magazine under the head of "Hints for Tired Mothers." But I say it again, there don't any of us begrudge him these many little ways, although it's hard to be literary with them; for when he smiles and "pat-a-cakes" and says "Ah! ah!" you don't care if you never write another line.
Mother made Cousin Eunice turn over the raising of him to her the very day she got here, for everybody knows, my diary, how a lady that's ever raised a baby feels toward a lady that's just owned one a few months.