Well, in just a minute after we were talking about the hair Jean said she knew the _very_ thing! Her Aunt Merle was up on the far back porch drying her hair that she had just finished washing, and had left her rat lying on her bureau. She had seen it there when she went to get the ashes of Mr. Aryan. She said it was a lovely rat, which cost five dollars, all covered with long brown hair; and she said it was just the thing to set off Waterloo's bald head fine. So she ran and got it and we fixed it on. He looked exactly like a South Sea Islander which you see in the side show of an exposition by paying twenty-five cents extra. (An exposition is a large place which makes your feet nearly kill you.) But the picture-man said he looked mighty cute and snapped him in several splendid positions. Now, if Mr. St. John had just stayed where he belonged this would be the end of the story and I could go on to bed to-night, without having to sit up by myself writing till the clocks strike eleven, which is a lonesome hour when everybody else is in bed. But Mr. St. John didn't stay away; and, as all the bad things that happen are laid on Fate, I reckon she was the one that put it into his head to walk up those front steps and on to that porch before we noticed him, for we were trying our best to get Waterloo back into citizen's clothes. He stopped to see what it was we were scrambling over, and when he saw that it was alive he threw up his nice white hands and remarked "Heavens!" which is the elegant thing to say when you're surprised, although father always says, "Jumping Jerusalem!" "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!"