April comes in with rain. The barn springs a leak, the woodshed, the house. The cellar fills half up, and Peter, Andrew, James, and John go boating on a raft down there and ferry mother's preserves and jams to the drier end of the cellar.
The snow in the woods is melting fast. Green snakes of water twist down all the hills into the sea. The brooks become yellow rivers, and Peter bears Undine crying her cry under his windows all night long. For Uridine is the book of April month, and Peter reads himself into its watery depths. He fancies he sees Uncle Kübleborn's white beard shining in every twilit waterfall.
Aunt Emma rejoices that she is still with the family. since this is a time of floods and disasters. She reads the story of Noah and his ark to the family at night. In his dreams, Peter tries to get bis bull-calf, John Bull, into his father's gunlow with him, along with Lucy, as the farm goes under water, but it is no go, and they have to sail away without him.
Next morning the first sun seen so far in this April shines for a moment or two, but clouds close in. and it showers until night. Then the Bible story concerns true, a high double rainbow bridges the whole Atlantic from Ram Island to Jenny's Neck. and Uncle Cephus' schooner is right at the center of it. looking like Noah's ark. and powdered all Over with golden dust. The promise is kept, next day is clear as a box of beads. The sun cones out for good. A million peepers are calling in the marsh by broad daylight. Uncle Cephus comes ashore and fetches Peter to spend the night afloat with him. Peter hears the peepers even away out there on the sea. halfway to Spain.
The rainbow comes true the following day also. For Aunt Emma packs up her bag and gets father to drive her to town to visit other nephews needing regimentation and disciplining in morals, Peter runs over with relief. He doesn't even mind having to carry lime-dipped shingles every night after school to his father and brothers mending the farm's roofs. And Uncle Cephus tells him that old Noah his Aunt Emma read so much about wasn't so strong on the moral virtues as you might think, at least when he was in his cups, after bis seafaring days were over and there was a whole earth needing to be filled up quick with boys and girls.
The hangover March aunt having gone, the real aunt of April comes in, She comes in a soft veil and hat like a lovely April shower falling over all the flowers in the world. She is Peter's beautiful Aunt Susan, who went to the Chicago World's Fair and got cultivated and never has been the same since. She talks as if her mouth were full of pearls, she eats her steamed clams with a knife and fork, and she never gets a drop of butter on her delicate chin. She teaches Ann and Molly and Jane how to hemstitch handkerchiefs and how to say please in Fundi. But Peter likes her best when she plays the parlor melodeon and sings the pretty song from Mignon about the land where the oranges grow. He practically dissolves in tenderness in his private place under the parlor sofa. Peter likes being under that sofa better than on it, for the haircloth on it docs its best to slide him off, and its prickles make him itch.
Now the farm really begins to spread itself out over the ocean. Peter and James go spearing flounders in James' skiff. James is generous for once and does the pushing along the mud flats at the stern seat. He lets Peter use bis long twelve-foot dart with the fierce barbed point. Peter stands balanced at the bow of the boat, one foot on the port and the other on starboard gunwale. They slide over the green mud of low ride in a foot of water. The shallow waves are shot through with rays of sunlight like endless rainbows.
Peter keeps his blue eyes wide open. He stands as taut and tall as a stocky boy can, arms up and spear across the sky. He sees the telltale triangle in the mud, raises his dart's point, and drives it down with all he has in him. A row of golden puffs of cloudy water going off to the horizon tells him he has missed. The flounder goes away to the safe mid-ocean. James swears Peter is a butter-fingers and ought to wear skins. But Peter sees another triangle with an arrow-point of a nose with two wide eyes behind, and he sends bis long iron home into the mud just at the triangle's base. There is a commotion in the shallow water. Peter twists to port, brings up his spear with an ivory-bellied first flounder of the year flapping and squirming on the barb. He drops the fish into the boat's bottom, where it flaps diamonds all over the two boys.
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