"Rufe's typewriter!" I said, jumping up and down in my joy, so it waked them up some just to look at me. "The bell on it can go exactly like a clock if you slide the top thing backwards and forwards right fast. I've done it a million times to amuse Waterloo!"
They said they knew I'd make a mess of it if I tried such a thing, but I told them if they took that view of what a person could do they never would be encouraged to try to do things. I knew I could do it! Marcella said then for Rufe to place the typewriter close up to the parlor door, and they would all go out on the front porch to keep the lovers from hearing them laugh. So out they all filed.
Well, it was an exciting moment of my life when I was sliding that thing backwards and forwards and thinking all sorts of heroic thoughts, but I gritted my teeth and didn't look up until I had got the twelve strokes struck. Then I went out on the front porch right easy and sat down by the others. Julius tucked his big coat around me and we all sat there a little while, laughing and shivering and shaking until I felt that I'd never had such a good time in my life! Then somebody whispered let's go in—and then the unexpected happened.
We heard a sound in the parlor close back of us and the first thing we knew there was Mr. Gayle raising the window that opens on to the porch, and he and Miss Claxton came over and looked out into the night. They couldn't see us if we sat still, close up against the wall; and it seemed that none of us could budge to save our lives!
It was a lovely moonlight night, clear and cold, that always reminds me of the night Washington Irving reached Bracebridge Hall (I just love it), and so he put his arm around her, Mr. Gayle I mean, not Washington Irving, and his voice was so clear and firm and happy that we all knew he had been accepted.
"Bid good morrow to the New Year, my love," he said and kissed her on the lips a long, long time. "There has been created for me this night not only a new year, but a new Heaven and——"
"And a new earth," she finished up softly, and they closed the window down.
"I hope she won't take her little hammer and knock on her new earth to see if it has petrified wiggle tails in it," Rufe said, after we had filed back into the house and moved the typewriter away from the door. But his voice was solemn when he said it, and we all felt like puppy dogs for being out there. And nobody said another word about staying up to see how they looked when they came out of the parlor.
The next day everybody made like they were very much surprised at the way it had turned out except Mammy Lou. She looked as happy when Miss Claxton told us the news as if she had got herself engaged again.
"You were right after all, mammy," Cousin Eunice told her. "In spite of all Miss Claxton's scientific knowledge she has preferred a man to a career!"