"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!" "An' shows her good sense, too," mammy answered, her old brown face running over with smiles, like molasses in the sunshine. "A man's a man, I can tell you; and a career's _a mighty pore thing to warm your feet against_ on a cold night!" CHAPTER XII April is here! Jean and April together! No wonder I haven't any sense! "And the rain it raineth every day," but for just a little while at a time, and the mud smells so good afterward that you don't care. The warm air comes blowing through my window so early every morning and puts such sad, happy thoughts into my head that I have to get up and wake Jean. Then we dress and go out into the side yard, where I try to find a calecanthus in bloom that is really sweet enough to go in front of Lord Byron's picture. And I try to make Jean listen while I tell her all my sad, happy thoughts, that's what I invited her down here for, but she hardly ever listens. "Isn't everything lovely?" I asked her this morning, after we had tiptoed through the house and out to the side porch. "And doesn't April just remind you of a right young girl, about seventeen years old, with hair made out of sunshine, and cheeks made of peach-blossoms; and eyes made out of that patch of blue sky over Mrs. West's big barn?" That patch of sky over Mrs. West's barn takes up a heap of my time on summer afternoons when I lie close to the windows and read. It is so deep and far-off looking that I get to dreaming about Italy, and I call it the place where "Tasso's spirit soars and sings." I learned this long ago out of the Fifth Reader, and I don't know what else Tasso did besides soaring and singing. But Jean wasn't listening to me. She had reached out and gathered a bunch of snowballs and was shaking the night before's rain off them. "Oh, Ann," she said, "don't they remind you of willow plumes? And don't you wish we were old enough to wear _them_ on our hats instead of sissy bows? You can get engaged in a minute if you have a willow plume on your hat!" This seemed to remind her of something, for she spoke again the next minute. "Say, I've never told you about Cassius, have I?"