"Oh, I'm so glad you and Mr. St. John have made up!" I told her, fanning hard with my hat, for I was all out of breath.
She looked very strange and asked me, "What?" and so I told her over again. Just then Mr. St. John came out and asked who was that talking about him behind his back. He looked pitiful, although he tried to look pleasant, too.
Jean heard me talking and came running down the stairs just in time to hear me telling it over again to Miss Merle.
"Why, there ain't a sign of a towel hanging out the window," she told me, looking very much surprised and me greatly mortified. "You must have dreamed it!"
Miss Merle asked her then what she was talking about and it was their turn to look surprised when she told them.
I told them I had felt awfully bad about the rat, because me and Waterloo was partly responsible, and they kinder smiled. But I couldn't let them think that I had made up the towel story, so I told them if they would come around on the side that faces our house I'd show them. Mr. St. John and Miss Merle looked at each other very peculiar and he said:
"It's a shame to disappoint the children!" which she didn't make any answer to, but she looked tolerable agreeable. Then I begged them to come on around to Mr. St. John's window and I could show them I wasn't any story.
"My window!" he said, looking surprised; then his face turned red. "Why, it must have been my er—shirt I hung there last night to dry after I was out in that shower!"
We couldn't help from laughing, all of us; but he laughs like the corners of his mouth ain't used to it. That is one bad thing about a dignified man—they're always afraid to let their mouth muscles stretch.
Miss Merle caught me and Jean by the hand with a smile and said let's go and see what that signal looked like that brought Ann over in such a hurry. "A shirt is a highly proper thing to discuss—since Thomas Hood," she said as we started down the steps.