"Love!" he said, trying to look surprised. "Who mentioned love?"
Just then I heard the flutteration of a silk petticoat on the porch behind the vines, but Rufe was gazing so hard at the blue hills on the far side of town that he didn't hear it. So, without saying anything to him, I leaned over far enough to look under the banisters, and saw the bottom of Bertha's skirt and a skein of blue silk thread lying on the floor. So I knew she was sitting there working on that everlasting chafing-dish apron. Then Satan put an idea into my head. I think it was Satan.
"Rufe," I said, talking very loud and quick, so Bertha would just have to hear me, "what's the difference between a kitten and a cat?"
Rufe at last got his eyes unfixed from the blue hills and just stared at me foolishly for a second.
"Am I the parent of a child that I should have to answer fool questions?" he said.
"But the night she came you called Bertha a kitten!" I reminded him, and he looked worse surprised. "And since I've heard her called a cat! How long does it take a kitten to grow into a cat?"
"Oh, I see! Well, I'm better versed in feline ways now than I was that night; so I might state that sometimes you discover that a kitten is a cat! There isn't any difference!"
We heard a clattering noise behind the vines just then, which I knew was Bertha dropping her embroidery scissors. Rufe jumped, for he had no idea anybody was hearing our conversation; and I know he wouldn't have said what he did about cats except he thought I was too little to understand such figures of speech. Then he got up to go in and see who it was. And I decided to disappear around the corner of the house. I didn't altogether disappear before I heard her say indeed he had meant to call her a cat; and he said indeed he hadn't, but she hadn't been "square" with him, and they talked and talked until I got uneasy that Cousin Eunice would be coming through the hall and hear them. So I hurried on back to head her off. But Satan, or whoever it was, put me up to a good job in that, for the next time I saw Rufe he was wearing his fraternity pin and a happy smile. And Bertha had red spots on her face, even as late as dinner-time, like consumption that lovely heroines die of.
I've been too disappointed lately to write in my diary. Somehow, I think like Rufe, that there's only one thing worth writing about, and there's been very little in that line going on around here lately. Poor Rufe is having a harder time now than he had when Bertha was on his hands, for Cousin Eunice has taken it into her head to show him that she doesn't have to accept him the minute he gets untangled from a summer flirtation. Those were her very words.
She and I go for long walks with him every morning, down through the ravine; and they read poetry that sounds so good you feel like somebody's scratching your back. And she wears her best-fitting shirtwaists. One good thing about Cousin Eunice is that her clothes never look like she'd sat up late the night before to make them. And when she's expecting him at night her eyes shine like they had been greased; and I can tell from the way she breathes quick when she hears the gate open that she loves him. Yes, she adores the sound of his rubber heels on the front porch; but she won't give in to him. She's punishing him for the Bertha part of it. Mother says she's very foolish, for men will be men, especially on nights in June; but Mammy Lou says she's exactly right; and I reckon mammy knows best, for she's been married a heap more times than mother ever has.