Inside, the house is cool and shady; and you can always find a place to lie down and read. Cousin Eunice says so many people spoil their houses by selecting carpets and wall-paper that look like they want to fight. But ours is not like that. Some corners in our library look like _Ladies' Own Journal_ pictures. Cousin Eunice doesn't belong to our house, but I wish she did, for she's as beautiful as a magazine cover. And I think we have the nicest home in the world. Besides being old and big and far back in the yard, there's always the smell of apples up-stairs. And I'm sure mother is the nicest lady in the world. She wants everybody to have a good time, and no matter whether you're a man, a young lady, or a little girl, she lets you scatter your pipes, love-letters and doll-rags from the front gate to the backest chicken-coop without ever fussing. Mother admires company greatly. She doesn't have to perspire over them herself, though, for she has Mammy Lou to do all the cooking and Dilsey to make up the beds. So she invited Cousin Eunice to spend the summer with us and asked Bertha, a cousin on the other side, to come at the same time, for she said girls _love_ to be together. We soon found out, though, that some girls do and some don't. Cousin Eunice said I might always express my frank opinion of people and things in my diary, so I take pleasure in starting in on Bertha. Bertha, she is a _cat_! Even Rufe called her one the night she got here. Not a straight-out cat, exactly, but he called her a kitten! You see, when Bertha was down here on a little visit last year she and Rufe had up a kind of summer engagement. A summer engagement is where the girl wears the man's fraternity pin instead of a ring. And when she came again this time it didn't take them two hours to get summer engaged again, it being moonlight on the front porch and Bertha looking real soft and purry. Then the very next week Cousin Eunice came! And poor Rufe! We all felt _so_ sorry for him, for, from the _first_ minute he looked at her he was in love; and it's a terrible thing to be in love and engaged at the same time, when one is with _one_ girl and the other to another! And it was so plain that the eyes of the _potatoes_ could see it! But Bertha hadn't an idea of giving up anybody as good-looking as Rufe to another somebody as good-looking as Cousin Eunice, which mother said was a shame, and _she_ never did such a thing when _she_ was a girl; but Mammy Lou said it was no more than Rufe deserved for not being more careful.