Kit of Greenacre Farm

SHEPHERD SWEETINGS

That was the end of August. Cousin Roxy heartily approved of the plan, and said no doubt the fire down at Greenacres had been a direct dispensation of Providence.

"You were all of you settling down into a rut before it happened, and the old place needed a thorough going over anyhow. You know you couldn't have afforded it, Jerry, if it hadn't been for the fire insurance money coming in so handy like. Now, you'll all move back the first part of the winter, with the new furnace set up, and no cracks for the wind to whistle through. Jean will be started off on her path of glory, and I don't think Kit's a mite too young to be fluttering her wings a bit. Land alive, Elizabeth, you ought to be so thankful that you've got children with any get up and get to them in this day and age. The Judge and I were saying just the other night it seems as if most of the young folks up around here haven't got any pluck or initiative at all. They're born to feel that they're heirs of grace, and most of them are sure of having a farm or wood-lot in their own right, sooner or later."

So the steamer trunk stood open most of the time, and Kit prepared for her pilgrimage to Delphi. Mr. Robbins was inclined to take it as rather a good joke on the Dean, but the mother bird could not get over a certain little feeling of conscience in the matter, perhaps because she could remember her own visit with her uncle and aunt, and still retained a certain feeling of veneration for the two old people. But the rest of the family pinned its faith on Kit's persuasive adaptability.

Helen and Doris, especially, felt that, if anything, the Robbins family was conferring a high favor on the "Oracle of Delphi." Kit had always been the starter and organizer ever since they could remember, and Helen especially dreaded going back to school without her.

"Piney and Sally will go over with you," Kit told her, cheerfully, "and just think of the wonderful letters you'll have from me, Helenita. Miss Cogswell says that I always shine best when I wield the pen of a ready writer, and I'll tell you all the news of Hope College. By the way, mother told me last night that she's pretty sure in those little family colleges they run a 'prep' department, which takes in the last two years of high school. Perhaps I could persuade them that the great-grandniece of Cassius Cato would be a deserving object of their consideration. Don't forget to pack my skates, Helen. I loaned them to you last, and they're hanging in your closet."

Cousin Roxy decided to have a farewell party, two nights before Kit left, and the girls were delighted. Any party launched by Cousin Roxy promised novelty and excitement.

A big dancing platform was built on the lawn under the great elms, and rows of Japanese lanterns hung like glowworms all among the branches.

Cady Graves was there with his violin, and called out for the dancing, but Jean took the piano between times in the house, and the girls and boys gathered around her, Billie leading in the old college songs they all knew best.

It really seemed as though there were a special moon hung up in the August sky just for the occasion. It was so richly luminous, and as Doris said, so near you. The children had been playing forfeits, and in Gilead you played games at parties until you were at least twenty. Piney Haddock was giving out the forfeits, sitting blindfolded on a chair, while Jean held them over her head, calling out with each one:

Whereupon Piney would have to respond interestedly,

"Fine or superfine?"

It happened that Kit's little turquoise forget-me-not ring was the particular forfeit dangling over Piney's head, when Billie stuck his head in at the open window with a couple of other boys, and Piney lifted her chin at the sound of his voice.

"She must catch Billie Ellis, and bring him back to kneel at my feet, and hand over his forfeit."

Billie had evaded this, escaping with Banty Herrick, and the big Peckham boy, to show them his Belgian hares. Billie never had liked kissing games, and one of the Judge's favorite stories was how he had tried to give Billie a birthday party once, when he was seven years old. Most of the guests were the Judge's friends, with a small scattering of youngsters, and it appeared that just as the Judge had lined up some sweet-faced old ladies to kiss Billie, Billie had been found missing. Later he was located, clad only in overalls, leading the whole string of other children to a ruined sawmill that stood on a winding stream below the house.

So to-night the spirit of adversity whirled him about from the driveway, and he sped down the long lane with Kit in fast pursuit. Overhead the mulberry trees met in a leafy arcade, and out of the hazel thicket a whippoorwill called, flying low down the lane after the two darting forms, as if it were trying to find out what the excitement was about at that time of night. At the turn of the lane there were three apple trees, early Shepherd Sweetings, and here Billie slipped down and lay breathing heavily, his hands hunting for windfalls in the tall grass. Kit passed him by, speeding the full length of the lane, and bringing up at the end of the log-run, before the old mill.

"Billie Ellis, you come out of there," she called. "I've got my slippers wet already chasing after you, and I'm not going to climb all over those old timbers hunting for you."

Only the whippoorwill answered, calling now from a clump of elderberry bushes close by the water's edge, and while she stood listening, there was the dull splash in the pond where some big bullfrog had taken alarm at her coming.

Billie gathered a goodly supply of apples, and stole after her in the shadows.

"Well, I'm not going to stay out here all night waiting for you," Kit said, decisively, addressing the wide dark entrance to the mill, when all at once there came his voice, directly behind her shoulder.

"Why didn't you try to catch me? I was resting back under the apple tree. Let's sit down over the falls and eat some. If Piney's waiting for me to kneel in front of her, she'll wait all night. I'd like to see myself kneeling in front of a girl!"

The words had hardly left his lips, before Kit played an old-time schoolgirl trick on him. Catching him by his collar, she twirled him about with an odd twist until he knelt in front of her. Although they were just about of an age, she was taller and stronger, and Billie shook himself ruefully when he rose.

"You always catch a fellow off guard," he said.

"Do you good," she retorted serenely. "Ever since you went away to school, you've had a high and mighty opinion of yourself. I don't know what will become of you after I've gone away, and there's no one who really knows how to make you behave. Aren't these apples bully though? Do you suppose they'll mind very much if we stay just a few minutes? Don't you love this old pond, Billie? Remember your flat-bottomed boat that always leaked when we used to go fishing in it. How I hated to take turns bailing it out."

Billie dipped into his inner coat pocket and drew forth a little leather bill fold, somewhat sheepishly.

"I've got a snap shot here that I wanted you to take out with you. It's funny you just happened to speak about it. That hat nearly covered your face, but anybody could tell it was you, Kit. It was the day we got caught in the rain, when we were out after pickerel, and when the sun came out, Ben came along, and snapped us with my camera."

Kit took the little photograph in her hand. There was plenty of light to see it by. The little old, red, flat-bottomed boat out in midstream, with Billie standing, barelegged to his knees, straddling from the stem seat to the rear middle one, while he strove persuasively with a big pickerel. Kit was half kneeling in the other end of the boat, bailing for dear life, dressed in an old middy and wash skirt, with a boy's farm hat pulled low over her eyes.

"Wouldn't it be strange, Billie, if either of us were famous some day," she said, thoughtfully, "and this picture would just be priceless? You know, that's one thing awfully nice about us two. We've always appreciated each other so much. I know you're going to be somebody special. Maybe it will just be in natural history, but I wish it were exploring, or something awfully adventurous."

Billie laughed comfortably, perching himself just below her on the heavy timbers of the old sluice gate.

"Grandfather says I have a great responsibility on my shoulders, because I'm the last of the Ellis family. He says there's always been an Ellis in the State Legislature at Hartford, ever since there was a Legislature, and just as soon as I'm old enough, he's going to set me to reading law. Gee, I wish he wouldn't. Think of being shut up all day long in an office."

Far down the lane they heard the others calling them and Kit sprang up, scattering the apples as she did so.

"I'd forgotten all about the party," she exclaimed. "Anyway, I'm glad we had a chance to talk, because I won't see you again before I leave. If I were you, I'd just read and study everything I could lay my hands on about entymology, all the time I was in school, and then when the Judge sees that you're in dead earnest about it, he'll let you go on if Cousin Roxy says so. I heard Dad say that Mr. Howard knew more about insects than any man he'd ever met, and that he was considered one of the coming experts in government work. Why, Billie, it's just like a great surgeon or doctor, who is able to discover a certain germ that can be used as a toxin, only you doctor Mother Nature."

"I know," Billie agreed, enthusiastically. "There was some fellow who discovered the cause of the wheat blight in the south a few years ago, and somebody else is trying to land whatever is killing our chestnuts off. Kit, you're a bully pal. If it wasn't for you, I don't know whether I'd ever have seen a chance to win out or not, but you do spur a fellow on."

Kit laughed, and tagged him on the shoulder as she broke into a run.

"You're it," she cried. "Don't give any one else the credit for starting you off in the way you know you ought to go. Just take a good deep breath and race for it."

EXPECTING "KIT"

Mr. Robbins had answered the first letter from Delphi, under Kit's careful supervision, and the acceptance was couched in language ambiguous enough to please even her.

It aroused no suspicions whatever in the minds of Dean Peabody or Miss Daphne. The only question was, who was to meet the child in Chicago. The through express would leave him there, and in order to connect with the Wisconsin trains it was necessary to make the change over to the Northwestern Depot.

Miss Daphne was far more perturbed over it than her brother. One of the latter's favorite mottoes was inscribed in old English lettering over his desk:

"Never set in motion forces which
you cannot control."

Having set in motion the coming guest, he believed firmly that an unfaltering Fate would direct his footsteps safely to Delphi. Cassius Cato Peabody had been peculiar all his life. He had been a peculiar boy, unsettled, studious, impractical. Miss Daphne was his younger sister, and ever since her girlhood had tried to give him all the love and encouragement that others refused. She had trotted after him faithfully and happily on all of his exploring expeditions. Perhaps one reason why these had been so successful was because somehow she had always managed to surround him with home comforts, even in the wilds of the upper Nile. The Dean had had his regular meals and clean changes of clothing in the shadow of Nineveh's ruins in far Chaldea, just as though he had been in his own domicile.

And perhaps the quaintest thing about it all was that Miss Daphne herself, no matter on what particular point of the globe she had happened to pitch her tent, had always retained her courage, although she had faced dangers that the average woman would have fled from. Perhaps she carried in her heart an unfailing faith that Providence could not deny her protection when she was enabling the Dean to give the benefit of his great gifts to the world.

Their house stood on the same hill as Hope College, the highest point in the rising ridge of bluffs along the Lake Shore at Delphi. It was built of dark red brick, a square double edifice, with long French windows and two rotunda shaped wings, somewhat in the French style. A grove of pine trees almost hid it from view on its street side, the stately Norway pines that Kit always loved. The back of the house looked directly out over the lake, and the land here was frankly left to nature. Trees, grass and underbrush rioted at will, until they suddenly ended on the brow of the bluff, where there was a sheer declivity of sand to the beach. Looking at it from below, Kit afterwards thought it was like a miniature section of the Yosemite, the sand had hardened into such fantastic shapes, and the strata in places was so plainly visible.

Mrs. Robbins' telegram arrived the night before Kit herself. It was brief and non-committal.

"Kit arrives Union Station, Chicago, Thursday, 10:22 A.M."

"Kit," repeated the Dean. "Humph! Nickname. Superfluous and derogatory."

Miss Daphne took the telegram from his desk with a little smile that was almost tremulous with excitement.

"It's probably the diminutive for Christopher, brother," she said. "I think it's a nice name. I always liked the legend of St. Christopher. Somebody'll have to meet him down in Chicago. He might lose his head and take the wrong train."

"He's about fourteen, isn't he? Old enough to change from one train to another, and use his tongue if he's in doubt. When I was fourteen, Daphne, I was earning my own living working on a farm, summers, and going to a school in the winter time where we all had to work for our board. Never hurt us a bit. The greatest trait of character you can inculcate in a child is self-reliance."

Miss Daphne had a little way of appearing to listen while her brother expatiated on any of his favorite topics. It had grown to be a loving habit with her, and she had a way of answering absently.

"Yes, dear, I'm quite sure of it," which always satisfied him that he had her attention. But now, she sat looking out the window and thinking, a perplexed expression on her face. It had not altogether been her desire that the coming child should be a boy, although not one word had she breathed of this to Dean Peabody. Their lives had run in tranquil grooves. Everything about their daily routine was as St. Paul suggested, "Decently and in order."

The determination to take one of the Greenacre brood had been a sudden one. The Dean had been reading somebody's theory about the obligations of age to youth.

"Daphne, my dear," he had remarked one evening, as the two sat quietly in the old library, "we have been leading very narrow, selfish lives, and we will suffer for it as we grow older. We have shut ourselves away from youth. I am seventy-four now, and what heritage am I leaving to the world beyond a few books of reference, and my collections? What I should do is to take some child, still in the impressionable stage, and impart to it all I know."

Miss Daphne glanced up with a little amused twinkle in her eyes.

"But, brother, what about the child? Surely you would require an exceptional child for such an experiment. One who would have the mentality to grasp all that you were trying to impart to it."

The Dean cogitated over this, pursing his lips and tapping his knuckles with his rimless eye-glasses.

"Possibly," he granted, "and yet, Daphne, surely there would be far more credit attached to planting the seed of knowledge where it needed much cultivating. It has surprised and amazed me up at the college to find that usually the children who appreciate an education are the farmer boys, and very often the foreign element."

Miss Daphne rocked to and fro gently. She knew her brother well enough to understand that this had become a fixed idea with him, and the easiest way out was to find him an impressionable child. And then, it happened that she thought of Elizabeth Ann Robbins, their niece, and all her nestful of young mouths to be satisfied with life's gifts and privileges. She remembered having one letter after the breaking up of the home on Long Island. This had told them of Mr. Robbins' illness and breakdown. But with the optimism that was inherent in every one of the family, there had been no appeal for aid or cry of despondency over the sudden change in their fortunes.

Several times the Dean had written to Mr. Robbins but always on archaeological topics. Some little point of controversy upon which he desired confirmation. Somehow material needs never seemed to suggest themselves to the Dean. Blessed with absolute self-reliance from his boyhood, he had educated and made a success of himself, and he could not understand how any one could falter or repine in the race. Particularly, if Nature had granted them any precious ratio of Peabody blood.

"Do you know, brother," began Miss Daphne, in the bright, abrupt little way she had, "I think it would be the right thing if we took one of the Robbins' children. There are four or five of them——"

"Boys or girls?" interrupted the Dean.

"Well, now I'm not quite sure, but if my memory serves me, I think there's a boy amongst them. I know the eldest girl is named Jean Daphne, because I've always sent her a silver spoon on her birthday since she was born. They're all of them over ten, I am sure. Why don't you just write to Jerrold and make known your willingness? I am sure they would take it in the spirit in which it was offered."

PERSONALLY CONDUCTED

So this was how it happened that the Dean's letter went forth to Gilead, and produced the hour when Kit stood on the platform of the Union Station in Chicago, looking around her to discover any one who might appear to be seeking a small boy.

Gradually the long platform that led up to the concourse cleared. Kit went leisurely on, following the porter who carried her suit-case. She was looking for some one who might resemble either the Dean or Miss Daphne from her mother's description of them.

"As I remember him," Mrs. Robbins had said, "the Dean was very tall, rather sparely built, but broad-shouldered and always with his head up to the wind. His hair was gray, worn rather long and curly at the ends, and he had the old-fashioned Gladstone whiskers. Miss Daphne was like a little bird, a gentle, plump, busy Jenny Wren, with bright brown eyes and a little smile that never left her lips. I am sure you can't mistake them, Kit, for in their way they are very distinctive."

Yet Kit was positive now that neither the Dean nor his sister had come to meet her. She stood in the waiting-room quite unconscious of the attention she attracted, for Kit would have been singled out from the multitude anywhere by reason of what Jean called "her unique individuality."

She wore a dark tan serge traveling coat with a brown service cap to match that set a bit rakishly on her red curls. There was about her an air of buoyant and friendly self-possession, which always ingratiated her with any casual acquaintances. Therefore it was no wonder that Mr. Bellamy glanced at her several times with interest, even while his gaze sought through the crowd for a young New England type of boy, bound for Delphi, Wis.

But Kit noticed Mr. Bellamy. Noticed his alert anxiety as he walked up and down, eyeing every newcomer. He was eighteen or nineteen, and unmistakably looking for some one. Even while Kit watched him, she saw a girl of about her own age hurry up to him. Her voice reached her plainly, as she said:

"I've looked up and down that end, and I'm positive he isn't there. Oh, but the Dean will lecture you, Rex, if you miss him."

At this identical moment, Rex's eyes met a pair of dancing, mischievous ones, and Kit crossed over to where they stood.

"I do believe you must be looking for me," she said. "I'm Kit Robbins."

"Oh, but we were expecting your brother," exclaimed the other girl, eagerly.

"I know, the whole family have," said Kit, placidly, "for years and years. But there aren't any boys at all in our family," and here she smiled sweetly, and quite innocently. "I'm afraid the Dean made a little mistake, didn't he? Do you think he'll mind so very much when he sees me?"

"Mind?" repeated Mr. Bellamy. "Why, I think he'll be perfectly delighted. My name is Rex Wade Bellamy, Miss Robbins, and this is my sister, Anne. We're close neighbors of the Dean and Miss Daphne, and as we happened to be coming in town to-day they asked us to be sure to meet your——" Here he hesitated.

"My brother," laughed Kit. "Well, here I am, and I only hope that mother's letter reached them this morning, explaining everything. Of course, they did write for a boy, and it takes so long for a letter to get out here and be answered, that I told mother and Dad I knew it would be perfectly all right for me to come instead. Don't you think it will be?"

Anne's blue eyes were brimful of merriment.

"Oh, dear," she exclaimed. "I do wish I could go back with you, so I could see their faces when they find out. I don't live in Delphi. Mother and I have been here all summer so I could keep up my music at the conservatory. Rex has had to 'batch it' alone, but we'll be back in a week, so I'll see you then, and anyway, we're sure to visit back and forth. I'm awfully glad you're a girl."

"But I won't be here all winter," Kit answered. "I've only come for a couple of months. On trial, you know. Maybe it'll only be a couple of days, if they're fearfully disappointed."

Anne exchanged quick glances with her brother and he smiled as he led the way to the waiting car.

"You don't know the elaborate plans the Dean has laid out for your education," he said. "It will take you all winter long to live up to them, but I'm sure he will not be disappointed."

Kit had her own opinion about this, still it was impossible for her to feel apprehensive or unhappy, as the car sped over towards the Lake Shore Drive. The novelty of everything after two years up in the Gilead hills of rest was wonderfully stimulating. But it was not until they had left the city and river behind and had reached Lincoln Park that she really gave vent to her feelings. It was a wonderful day and the lake lay in sparkling ripples beyond the long stretch of shore.

"Are we going all the way in the car?" she asked, eagerly.

Rex shook his head.

"No, only as far as Evanston. We'll drop Anne off, and have lunch with mother and then catch the train to Delphi. I have an errand for the Dean out at the University."

"You know," said Kit, "we lived right on the edge of Long Island Sound before we moved up to Connecticut, and ever since I was in rompers, I can remember going away somewhere to the seashore every summer, but I think your lake is ever so much more interesting than the ocean. Somehow it seems to belong to one more. I always felt with the ocean as if it just condescended to come over to my special beach, after it had rambled all over the world, and belonged to everybody."

"But you have all the shells and the seaweed, and we haven't," demurred Anne. "Before I ever went East, we had a couple of clam shells, just plain every-day old round clam shells, that had come from Cape May, and I used to think they were perfectly wonderful because they had belonged in the real ocean."

After the rugged landscape of New England, Kit found this level land very attractive. They passed through one suburb after another, with the beautiful Drive following the curving shore line out to Evanston. Here she caught her first glimpse of the Northwestern University, its terra-cotta hued buildings showing picturesquely through the beautiful giant willows around the campus.

They left Rex at the main entrance and drove on to where Mrs. Bellamy was stopping. The houses made Kit think of those back at the Cove, with their spacious lawns and large restful homes of plenty. Mrs. Bellamy was filled with amusement when she heard the story of Kit's substitution of herself for the boy the Dean had asked for. She was a tall, slender woman with ashen gold hair and gray eyes, who seemed almost like an elder sister of Anne's. They occupied a suite of rooms near the campus.

"It is ever so much pleasanter than living in the heart of the city," she said, "and Rex has so many friends among the boys out here that it makes it pleasant for both of the children. We used to live in North Evanston before Mr. Bellamy took the chair of modern history up at Delphi. I wish that you were going to live here for Anne's sake."

"Well, that's almost selfish, mother, because Delphi is a hundred times more fun than Evanston," Anne declared, "and we're sure to see a lot of each other, anyway, when school opens. Kit's promised to tell me all about her sisters and Greenacres. It must be awfully queer to live up in the hills like that."

"Queer?" repeated Kit, laughingly. "It's a joy to the soul and a discipline to the body, Cousin Roxy says."

Anne immediately wanted to know who Cousin Roxy was, and Kit waxed eloquent on her favorite topic.

"She's an angel in a gingham apron, we girls think," she concluded, "and yet she can take off the gingham apron and stand up and address any kind of a meeting. I just can't tell you all that she's been to us since we lived there."

Early in the afternoon Rex returned, and they caught the 2:45 local up to Delphi. Kit could hardly keep from looking out of the car window all the time. Every now and then the rich blueness of the lake would flash through the trees in the distance, and to the westward there stretched long level vistas of prairie land, dipping ravines which unexpectedly led one into woodland ways. Gradually the bluffs heightened as they neared the Wisconsin line above Waukegan, and just beyond the state line, between the shore and the region of the small lakes, Oconomowoc and Delevan, they came suddenly upon Delphi. It stood high upon the bluff, its college dominating the shady serenity of its quiet avenues.

"The Dean doesn't keep a carriage or car," said Rex as they alighted at the gray stone station covered with clambering vines. "Besides, he thought I was bringing a boy, who would not mind the hike up the hill!"

"I don't mind a bit," returned Kit. "I like it. It seems so good to find real hills after all. I thought everything out here was just prairie. I do hope they won't be watching for us. It will be ever so much easier if I can just walk in before they get any kind of a shock, don't you know."

Rex did not tell her which was the house until they came to the two tall sentinel poplars at the entrance to the drive. Kit caught the murmur of the waves as they broke on the shore below and lifted her chin eagerly.

"Oh, I like it," she cried. "This is it, isn't it? Isn't it a dear, drowsy dreamful place? I only hope they'll let me stay."

AT THE SIGN OF THE MUMMY

"DEARLY BELOVED FAMILY:—

"Devotedly yours,
KIT.

"Sign of the Mummy,
Delphi, Wis."

At the same moment that Kit was writing home, the Dean and Miss Daphne stepped out on the broad veranda. Every evening about nine-thirty passers-by might have seen the flickering glow of the Dean's good-night cigar. He was not an habitual smoker, but the evening cigar was a sort of nocturnal ceremonial. It gave him an excuse to step out into the fragrant darkness of the garden walk for a quiet little stroll before bedtime, and usually Miss Daphne would try to join him.

So to-night they paced together, discussing the girl with the red curls who had come to them from far-off New England, in lieu of the boy they had sent for.

"There's no reason," remarked the Dean, reflectively, "why the child should not have a pleasant visit, since she is here. I have had a long conversation with her, and while I would not say that she was exceptionally—er——"

"Bright," suggested Daphne.

"I should like to call it intellectual," the Dean said kindly, "she is keenly impressionable and self-reliant. I think I may be able to interest her, at least in a simplified course of study. I have always believed that boys were more amenable to routine discipline in education than girls, but we shall see."

Miss Daphne's eyes, if he could only have seen them, held a twinkle of mirth, and her smile was a little more pronounced than usual.

"I think," she said, softly, "that she is a very lovable, attractive girl. I am quite relieved, brother, not to have a boy in the house."

Kit wakened the following morning with the sunlight calling to her. It was early, but back on the farm the girls usually rose about five. There did not seem to be any one stirring yet, so she dressed quietly, and found her way down-stairs. The Dean kept a cook, gardener and second girl. Kit heard Delia, the latter, singing in the dining-room and went out at once to make friends with her.

"Is it very far down the bluff to the shore, Delia?" she asked, eagerly. "I'm dying to climb down there, if I have time before breakfast."

"Sure, Miss, it's as easy as rolling off a log. You take the roundabout way through the garden, and the little path, behind the tool shed, and you just follow it until you can't go any farther, and there's the bluff. I haven't been down myself, but Dan says there's a little path you take to the shore if you don't mind scrambling a bit."

Kit waved good-bye to her and went in search of the path. She found Dan, the gardener, raking up leaves in the back garden. He was a plump rosy-cheeked old Irishman, his face wrinkled like a winter pippin, and he lifted his cap at her approach with a smile of frank curiosity and approval.

A half-grown black retriever came bounding to meet her, his nose and forepaws tipped with white.

"That's a welcome he's giving you you wouldn't have had if you'd been a boy, Miss," Danny said, shrewdly. "I'm glad to meet you, and hope you'll like it here."

Kit was stroking Sandy's silky curls. His real name he told her was Lysander. Anything that the Dean had the naming of received the benediction of ancient Greece, but Sandy, in his puppyhood, had managed to acquire a happy diminutive.

"I don't see," Kit said, laughingly, "why you dreaded a boy coming. I know some awfully nice boys back home, and there's one specially"—she paused just a moment, before she added—"named Billie. He's kind of related to us, because his grandfather married Cousin Roxy, and she's my father's cousin. It's a little bit hard to figure it out, but still we're related, and we're very, very good friends. I think he's just the kind of a boy the Dean expected to see, but perhaps he'll get used to me. Do you think he will?"

"Sure, it's like asking me could he get used to the sunshine," answered Danny, gallantly.—"If you leave it to Sandy to find the shore, he'll take you the quickest way."

ALL SANDY'S FAULT

Everything was so different from the Connecticut verdure and underbrush. Instead of the thick, lush growth which came from richly watered black loam, here one found sand cherries and little dwarf willows and beeches springing up from the sand. Tall sword grass waved almost like Cousin Roxy's striped ribbon grass in the home garden, and wild sunflowers showed like golden glow here and there.

The beach was level and rockless, different entirely from the Eastern Atlantic shores, but the sand was beautifully white and fine, and there were great weather-beaten, wave-washed boulders lying half buried in the sand, also trunks of trees, their roots uprearing grotesquely like strange heads of animals. Kit thought whimsically how the Dean might have added them with profit to his prehistoric collection. There was no glimpse or hint of the town to be seen down here. Not even a boat house, only one long pier. About a mile and a half from shore was a lightship, and farther out a white steamer showed in perfect outline against the blueness of the morning sky.

Kit followed Sandy's lead, hardly realizing the distance she was covering, until he suddenly disappeared behind a nosing headland. When she rounded it, she saw a cottage built close under the shelter of the bluff. The sand drifted like snow half-way up to its windows. It had been painted red once, but now its old clapboards were the color of sorrel, and weather-beaten and wave-washed like the boulders. There were fish nets drying on tall staples driven in behind a couple of overturned rowboats, and at that first glimpse it seemed to her as if there were children everywhere. Four stalwart boys from fourteen to eighteen worked over the nets, mending them; around the back door there were four or five more, and sitting in the sunlight in a low rocking-chair was an old woman as picturesque as some ancient sibyl.

Sandy seemed to greet them as old acquaintances, so Kit called good-morning in good old Yankee fashion. The boys eyed her, somewhat askance, and all of the children scurried like a flock of startled chickens as she came up the boardwalk to the kitchen door, but the old grandmother kept serenely on paring potatoes, calm-eyed and unembarrassed.

"How do you do?" said Kit, smilingly. "I'm Dean Peabody's grandniece. I just came west yesterday, and Sandy brought me here this morning. I didn't know where he was going, but he seemed to know the way."

The old woman's brown eyes followed the movement of the dog.

"He ver' fine, that dog," she said, deliberately. "He come ver' often. I know him since he is un petit chien, ver' small pup—so beeg." She measured with her hand from the ground.

"Do you know the Dean?" Kit asked, sitting down on the doorstep beside her. "He lives up in the big house on the bluff, where the pine and maples are."

The old woman shook her head placidly.

"I not go up that bluff in forty-eight year."

Kit's eyes widened with quick interest. Just then a girl a little older than herself came out of the kitchen door. Two long braids of straight brown hair hung over her shoulders, and her dress was slouchy and gypsy-like. She looked at Kit with quiet, steady scrutiny, and then questioningly over at the boys. But Kit herself relieved the tension.

"Hello," she said. "I think you've got an awfully nice place down here. I like it because it looks old like our houses back home. All the other places I've seen since I came west have looked so newly painted."

"This isn't new," the girl told her slowly. "This place belonged to my grandfather's father, Louis Beaubien. There were Indians around here then. Most of them 'Jibways."

Jean used to say that the instant Kit's curiosity was aroused, she was just exactly like a squirrel after nuts, and here was an entirely new field of romance and adventure to be uncovered. She fairly sniffed the air. The wonderful old grandmother, basking in the sun with memories of the past like a Mother Time. The strong, tanned boys working at the nets, the flock of dark-skinned youngsters, and the girl, Marcelle, whom she was to know so well before her stay in Delphi was over.

She hurried back, eager to ask questions about the Beaubiens, and found herself late for breakfast the very first morning she was there. The Dean's face was a study as she entered, and Miss Daphne's fingers fluttered somewhat nervously over the coffee urn, and fragile cups. Kit was out of breath, and so full of excitement that she did not even notice the air was chill.

"I've had a perfectly wonderful time," she began. "No coffee, Aunt Daphne, please. Mother doesn't allow me to have any. It's all Sandy's fault. I just wanted to run down the bluff to the shore, and he led me way round that headland to the funniest old house, half-sunken in the sand, and I got acquainted with the old grandmother and Marcelle. The boys and the little youngsters seemed half-scared to death at the sight of me, and so I didn't bother to get acquainted with them yet."

The Dean looked up at her over his glasses with a quizzical expression, and Miss Daphne fairly caught her breath.

"The Beaubiens on the shore, my dear?" she asked. "Those half-breed French Canadians?"

"Well, I didn't know just what they were," answered Kit, cheerfully, "but I think they're awfully interesting. Don't you think that they look like the Breton fisher people in some of the old French paintings? That girl looked just exactly like the youngest one crossing the sands at low tide at St. Malo. We have the painting at home, and I love it. And there was another girl about thirteen that I saw staring at me from the kitchen, and she looked just like 'The Song of the Lark' girl where she's crossing the fields at dawn."

"The Beaubiens have not a very good reputation, my dear," the Dean coughed slightly behind his hand as he spoke. "The present generation may be law-abiding, but even within my memory, the Beaubiens had a little habit of smuggling."

"Smuggling?" repeated Kit, interestedly. "How could they smuggle way off here?"

"Very easily. There were schooners that used to make the run down from the Canadian shore around the Straits carrying contraband goods in war time. Besides, there is the Indian strain in them, and they are squatters. There have been several lawsuits against them, and they have persisted in staying there on the shore when the property owners on the bluff distinctly purchased riparian rights."

"But, brother, the Beaubiens won all their suits, didn't they?" asked Miss Daphne, pleasantly. "I'm sure the older boys are very industrious, and I think the girl Marcelle is strikingly attractive. You're not really forbidding Kit to go down there, I'm sure."

The Dean said something that was lost in a murmur, for he had been one of the property owners vanquished in the lawsuits by the Beaubiens. After breakfast Kit went up-stairs with Miss Daphne into her own little sitting-room. This looked towards the street, out over the maple and pine-shaded lawn. Also, you could command a very fair view of the college. This was built of gray stone like a Norman castle, with square towers, and was overgrown with woodbine just beginning to show a tinge of crimson.

"It seems awfully queer, Aunt Daphne," Kit said as she leaned out of the window, "to think that I am going there into the 'prep' class. Rex said on the way up here——"

She leaned suddenly farther out and waved.

"Hello, Rex, are you coming over?"

Rex glanced up at the radiant face as he came along the hedge-bordered drive between his home and the Dean's and waved back in neighborly fashion.

"I'm going up to the campus now," he said. "Ask Miss Daphne if she'd let you be in the library club. There's a meeting this morning."

"Could I, Aunt Daphne? Please say yes. I haven't joined anything in ages," Kit begged. "I don't care whether it's a library club or an Indian powwow. I am just dying to be in something out here, where I'll meet every one and get acquainted. If you don't need me this morning——" She hesitated, but some of her enthusiasm had caught Miss Daphne, and she immediately succumbed to the whim of the moment.

"Why, I think, my dear, that I'll go with you. The Dean has taken up so much of my time that I've rather lost my interest and activity in affairs. You go down with Rex, and I'll join you presently."

The Dean's desk stood in a wide square bay window which overlooked the driveway. He had settled down to his morning's portion of labor and was blocking out a curriculum of study for Kit, when he happened to glance up, and beheld the trio passing happily out through the gates. Certainly they did not realize, nor did he at that moment, that already the leaven of youth was at work in the old shadowy house behind the sentinel pines.

THE DEAN'S OUTPOSTS

The first budget of family letters arrived the following week. Kit fairly pounced on them when the mail carrier came up the walk, for she had been watching anxiously at each delivery. After all, it was the first time she had been away from home, and after the first excitement and novelty had worn off, her heart, she told herself laughingly, "harked back to Dixie."

It seemed the Dean had written to her father on the night of her arrival, and this was a surprise to Kit.

"It is a great relief to us all to know that you have made such a favorable impression," Mr. Bobbins' letter read. "After all, it was somewhat of an experiment, and I confess that I was rather sceptical of the result, knowing the Dean as I do. Try to adapt yourself as much as possible to the home conditions there, Kit. You know, we have always lived somewhat of an easy-going life so far as discipline and set routine go, and consequently you girls have been brought up in a happy-go-lucky fashion. Do you remember what Emerson had inscribed over his study door? 'Whim.' The old Concord philosopher and Thoreau have been close pals of mine, and I fear that I adopted at an early age the same motto. Be considerate of all the Dean's notions, and make yourself as useful and lovable as you can while you are with them, dear.

"The rebuilding of the house is going along splendidly, and we hope to have our Christmas there. I have followed the old plan, but with some improvements, I think, putting in a good furnace, and enlarging the dining-room and kitchen. The veranda also will extend around three sides of the house instead of two, and we are building the supports of field stone. There will be an outdoor fireplace on the west side also, and I know you will enjoy this."

Enjoy it? Kit stared ahead of her at the shady lawn. Miss Daphne was bending over nasturtium beds gathering the black seeds, but instead, Kit saw in a vision ahead a great hickory fire burning in the outdoor veranda fireplace with the mystery of the night crooning low over the sleeping hills. Her mother's letter came next. Kit read it with delight. She could tell just exactly the mood the mother bird was in when she wrote, just how her conscience pricked her for having been a party to Kit's plan.

"Of course, while the Dean's letter was very nice, still I am sure he felt 'put upon,' as Cousin Roxy would say. I am ever so sorry that we did not write sooner, and tell them that you were coming. It rests with you now, Kit, to make yourself so adaptable that they will forget all about the boy they wanted. I have no objection to your staying for the winter term at Hope College. Between ourselves, dear, our plans are a little unsettled here. Father is certain that the house will be ready for us this winter, but you know we have kept from him any worry about financial matters, and I am afraid he figures on a wider latitude in expense than we can afford. At the little farm here, and with you and Jean both away we could manage very well. In order to rebuild at all, we had to part with some securities which I had always hoped to save for you girls. It will be sad, won't it, if the royal princesses have to be launched without wedding chests and dowries?

"Make all the friends that you possibly can among your college mates. You won't realize it now, but so many of these friendships become precious lifelong ones. Billie is leaving this week for school. You remember Mr. Howard, who came to look after our trees? He has been staying up at the Judge's, and took a great interest in Billie. Instead of going back to Blackwood Hall, Billie is going on to a school in Virginia, not far from Washington, that Mr. Howard suggested sending him to. He is a great believer in the value of environment that is associated with historic traditions."

Kit read this last over twice, but could not agree with it at all. She had always liked the pioneer outlook, the longing to break new trails, the starting of little colonies in clearings of one's own making. If there was an ivy around her castle, she wanted the joy of planting it herself, and seeing it grow from her own efforts.

Jean had always told her that this came from the distaff side of the family. There had been a Virginian ancestor long ago, who had broken away from the conventional life on the big river estate, near Roanoke, and had gone faring forth into the wilderness. This was Kit's favorite ancestor, John Carisbrook. He had wandered far through the west, and had married a girl in one of the outlying settlements along the Ohio River, a girl with French blood in her, Gabrielle de la Chapelle. Kit always liked to believe that it was from these two she had received her love of adventure, and of trail blazing.

She had never felt an affinity with "haunts of ancient peace" like Jean and Helen. Only that week she had been reading in one of the Dean's early English histories of real rooftrees. How, in the earliest times, primitive people built their houses around some selected giant oak or other king of the forest, with the massive trunk itself upholding the structure. If she could have done so, Kit would have gladly selected for herself her own special tree in the forest primeval, rather than have fallen heir to any ancestral castle such as Helen hankered for.

So, the little town perched high on the bluff above the lake had appealed to her mightily. Although from a western standpoint it was quite old, dating at least five years before the outbreak of the Civil War, from the colonial standpoint it was a mere youngster.

"Historic tradition?" repeated Kit. "When all around here are the old Indian trails, and the footprints left by the French explorers. I just wish I could get Billie out here for a little while. He'll settle down in some old school that thinks it is wonderful because John Smith built a camp-fire on its site once upon a time, or Pocahontas planted corn in its back field."

Kit sighed, tucked her mother's and father's letters in her sweater pocket and started off for her favorite lookout point on the bluff. Here, with Sandy crouching at her feet, she read the three letters from the girls. Jean's was full of plans for her coming trip to New York, She was not going to Boston this year, but Aunt Beth had promised her three months at the Art school, and she was to take pupils besides, to help out expenses.

"You know, if the war had ended as we planned, I could have gone to Italy with Carlota and the Countess, but the villa is still used as a hospital, and though I am dying to go, Dad and mother won't hear of it. Don't I wish I were twenty so I could do some Red Cross work and get over? It seems so perfectly futile dabbling away at one's own little petty ambitions, with humanity needing one so."

That was quite like Jean, Kit thought, glancing over the rest of the letter hurriedly. Cousin Roxy had given a community social, and Mr. Howard had interested Jean considerably, especially as he told her he was bound for France the first of November. Jean was always so easily impressed just the first few times she met a person. It took Kit a long time to really admit a stranger to her circle of selected ones, and she had never quite forgiven Stanley Howard for trespassing in the berry patch, even though it had been in the cause of science. Besides, the last year, Jean had seemed to grow somewhat aloof from the others. Perhaps it had been her trips away from home, or her ambition. Kit could not precisely define the change, but it was there, and she felt that Jean troubled herself altogether too much over things unseen. One of Kit's favorite mottoes was from Stevenson:

"In things immaterial, Davey, be soople."

Helen's letter was all about the opening of school, and Doris' asked questions about Delphi.

"When you write, do tell us about the things that happen there, and not just what you think about it. I don't like descriptions in books, I like the talk part. You know what I mean, Kit. Has Uncle Cassius got any pets at all?"

Kit laughed over this. Bless her heart, if she could only have seen Uncle Cassius' pets. His stuffed mummy and horned toads, the chimpanzee skull beaming at one from a dark corner, and the Cambodian war mask from another. It seemed as if every time she looked around the house she found something new, and with each curio there went a story. Oddly enough, the Dean thawed more under Kit's persuasion when she begged for the stories than at any other time. After each meal, it was his custom to take what he called "four draws" in his study. Kit found at these times that he was in his best humor. Relaxed and thoughtful, he would lean back in the deep Morris chair between the flat-topped desk and the fireplace, and smoke leisurely. Even his pipe had come from Persia, its amber stem very slender and beautifully curved, its bowl a marvel of carving.

Kit sat pondering over her father's and mother's letters, after putting those of the two girls away. School would begin in another week, and she was to enter the sophomore preparatory, which corresponded to the second year in high school back home. And yet, after what her father had written, she felt that she was not giving the Dean a square deal.

The odor of tobacco came through the library window, and acting on the spur of the moment, she stepped around the corner of the veranda and perched herself on the window sill.

"Are you busy, Uncle Cassius?" Anybody who was well acquainted with Kit would have suspected the gentleness of her tone, but the Dean looked over at her with a little pleased smile. Her coming was almost an answer to his reverie.

"Not at all, my dear, not at all. In fact, I was just thinking of you. I am inclined to think after all that we will begin with the geological periods. I wish you to get your data assembled in your mind on prehistoric peoples before we take up any definite groups."

"That's all right," Kit answered, comfortably. "I don't mind one bit. I'll do anything you tell me to, Uncle Cassius, because," this very earnestly, "I do feel as if I hadn't played quite fair. I mean in coming out here, and landing on you suddenly, without warning you I was a girl, and I want to make up to you for it in every possible way. I'll study bones and ruins and rocks, and anything you tell me to, but I want to make sure first that you really like me. Just as I am, I mean, before you know for certain whether all this is going to 'take.'"

The Dean glanced up in a startled manner and looked at the face framed by the window quite as if he had never really given it an interested scrutiny before. Not being inclined to sentiment by nature, he had regarded Kit so far solely from the experimental standpoint. Since she had turned out to be a girl, he had decided to make the best of it, and at least try the effect of the course of instruction upon her. The personal equation had never entered into his calculation, and yet here was Kit forcing it upon him, quite as plainly as though she had said:

"Do you like me or don't you? If you don't I think I had better go back home."

"Well, bless my heart," he said, rubbing his head. "I thought that we had settled all that. Of course, my dear, the reason I preferred a boy was because, well"—the Dean floundered,—"because scientists hold a consensus of opinion that through—hem—through centuries of cultivation, I may say, collegiate development,—the male brain offers a better soil, as it were, for the—er—er——"

"The flower of genius?" suggested Kit, happily. "I don't think that's so at all, Uncle Cassius, and I'll tell you why. You take it on the farm down home. Dad says that our land in Gilead is no good because it's been worked over and over, and it's all worn out, but if you plow deep and strike a brand new subsoil you get wonderful crops. Just think what a lovely time you'll have planting crops in my unplowed brain cells."

The first laugh she had ever heard came from the Dean's lips, although it was more of a chuckle. His next question was apparently irrelevant.

"How do you think you're going to like Hope College?"

"All right," Kit responded, cheerfully. "I only hope it likes me. I've met a few of the boys and girls through Rex and Aunt Daphne, and I like them awfully well. You know, down home they're nice to you if they know who you are, and all about your family. Cousin Roxy says it's better to have a private burial lot well filled with ancestors than your name in the Social Register. But out west here it seems as if they either like you or not. Just when they first meet you, you're taken right into the fold on the strength of what you are yourself. Rex said an awfully funny thing the other day when Barty Browning declared that he had two Indian chiefs in his family, and Rex asked me if we had a little 'tommyhawk' in our family."

The door opened with a little, light, deprecating tap first from Miss Daphne's finger-tips. She glanced around the side of it cautiously to be sure she was not disturbing the Dean, and smiled whimsically when she saw the two. The Dean's pipe had gone out, and he was leaning over the desk listening as eagerly as though he had been a boy himself, while Kit, with her hands clasped behind her head, chatted. Usually people conversed with the Dean, they never chatted, and Miss Daphne realized that Kit had already passed the outposts of the Dean's defenses.