"What is the thing?" he asked, after he had looked again. Jean told him why it was just the lady over at our house's little baby dressed up. Then he asked what that horrible woolly growth on his head was, which tickled Jean mightily. Then, just for the fun of seeing what he would say when he was very much surprised, she jerked it off and held it up, like the executioner did Mary, Queen of Scot's head, which gives me a crinkly pain up and down my back even to read about. The rat was just pinned together and set up on Waterloo's little noggin, so Jean jerked it off and explained to Mr. St. John that it was her Aunt Merle's rat. I always knew it wasn't any good idea to talk about such things before a man that was a person's lover; but I thought Jean had had more experience in such things than I had and it wasn't my place to interrupt her.
I am sure Mr. St. John felt like saying "Jumping Jerusalem" when Jean told him that the woolly growth was the rat of his beloved. If I was writing a novel I'd say that he "recoiled with horror," that is, he jumped back quickly, like he didn't want it to bite him, and sat down.
"Imagine!" he kept saying to himself like he was dazed; "imagine a man touching the thing! Kissing the thing!"
I thought, of course, he was talking about Waterloo, and was ready to speak up and say, "I thank you, Mr. St. John, my little cousin is not to be called a 'thing,'" but Jean spoke first.
"What would you want to kiss this for?" she asked him. "'Tain't any harm to kiss in the mouth after you're engaged, is it?"
We might have been standing there asking him such questions as that till daylight this morning for all the answers we got out of him, but while he sat looking at us and we were trying to squirm Waterloo's little fat legs out of the overalls and him kicking and crying, Miss Merle walked out on the porch. She saw Mr. St. John first, as you would naturally expect an engaged girl to do, and started toward him, but just then she saw us and stopped.
"Why, what on earth are you children doing with my rat down here?" she asked, not looking a bit ashamed.
We told her what we had been doing with it and she just laughed and said well, it was too hot to wear the thing on such a day anyway, although she had looked for it high and low.
All the time we were talking Mr. St. John looked at her in the most amazed way, like he expected to see her appear looking like a Mexican dog, but was greatly surprised to see her with such a nice lot of home-made hair. If he had had any sense he would admire her all the more for not telling a story about that rat; for I've seen a thousand young ladies in my life that wouldn't have owned up to it for a hundred dollars, but would have made their little niece out a story and then boxed her ears in private. I hope when I get grown I won't be a liarable young lady, although it does seem like they're twice as quick to get married as an honest one.
He didn't act with good sense, though, for they soon got to talking and we could hear what they said (although we were out of sight) for they were high-toned remarks.