Kit of Greenacre Farm

"KEEP OUT"

Hope College was founded in 1871. This date was graven on the corner stone, which the Dean had been careful to show Kit, telling her at the same time how the first settlers through the middle Northwest followed the customs of the Puritans and Cavaliers.

"A church, a schoolhouse for every clearing, and a college before the county court-house."

It seemed queer to Kit to think of Hope College as being any kind of an historic pile, but Rex had assured her anything that dated before Custer was ancient history, and if you wanted to get almost prehistoric, you went back to Lewis and Clarke, and the Jesuit explorers.

"Why, back at Gilead," Kit told him, "even the mounting stone at Cousin Roxy's had 1721 on it."

The college was built of gray field stone covered with climbing woodbine and Virginia creeper, and it dominated the little town. There were five buildings in the campus group, the main building, laboratory, library and gymnasium, boys' dormitory, and chapel.

Kit never forgot the first morning when the classes met in Assembly Hall, and the Dean addressed them on the work and aims of the coming year. For the life of her, she could not keep her mind on all he was saying or the solemnity of the moment, because, just at the very last minute when the chapel chimes stopped ringing, Marcelle Beaubien entered through the dark green swinging doors at the back of the big, crowded hall. It seemed as though every one's eyes were watching the platform, but Kit saw the slender, silent figure standing there alone. She was dressed in black, a thin black lawn, with collar and cuffs of dark red linen, and her heavy brown hair was braided in two long plaits down her back. She waited there, it seemed to Kit, expectant on the threshold of opportunity, not knowing which way to go, and without a friendly hand extended to her in welcome or guidance.

Norma Riggs, who sat next to Kit, glanced back to see what had attracted her attention, and made a funny little deprecating sound with her mouth.

"I never thought she'd have the nerve to really do it," she whispered. "Isn't she odd?"

A quick impulsive wave of indignation swept over Kit, and she rose from her seat, passing straight down the aisle without even being aware of the curious glances which followed her. She took Marcelle by storm.

"You're in my class, aren't you?" she whispered quickly. "It's right over here, and there's a seat beside me. I don't know any one either, and I'm so glad to see you, so I'll have some one to talk to."

Marcelle never answered, but smiled with a quick flash of appreciation, the smile which always seemed to illumine her rather grave face. She followed Kit back to the latter's seat, and Norma exchanged glances with her right-hand neighbor, Amy Parker. Kit was altogether too new to realize just exactly what she had done. Being the Dean's grandniece, she considered herself unconsciously a privileged person. As a matter of course, Miss Daphne had accompanied her that morning, and introduced her to four or five girls in the sophomore "prep" class, who came from the representative best families of the town. Also, as a matter of course, she had been welcomed as one of them, but Kit, with her democratic notions, never even realized that she occupied one of the seats of the mighty, in a circle of the favored few, and that she had smashed all tradition by introducing into that circle a Beaubien. In fact, even if she had known, she would probably have been thoroughly indignant at any such spirit among the girls themselves.

Jean and Helen were the natural-born aristocrats in the family, Kit always said. They loved to feel themselves aloof and not part of the populace.

"The sedan chair and palanquin for both of you," Kit had been wont to say, scornfully, "but give me a good horse and a wide trail, or if I can't have the horse, I'll hike."

And here she loved to quote Stevenson's "Vagabond" to them.

The whole morning was taken up with the assigning of students to classes. Kit loved the curious bustle and excitement of it all. It was so different from the small high school back home, and there were many more boys and girls than she had expected to see. Almost, as she passed from room to room, through the different buildings, she wished she were staying right there as a year pupil. Amy introduced her to her closest friend, Peggy Barrows, a girl from South Dakota, who took them up to her quarters in one of the dormitories.

"Dear me," Kit said, looking around her speculatively. "I wish I were going to live here. Peggy, you'll have to entertain us often. It's so kind of solitary and restful, isn't it, up here?"

"Solitary," scoffed Peggy. "I've been here four days getting settled, and you might just as well call the side show of a circus solitary. There isn't even the ghost of privacy. I'm mobbed every time I try to sit and meditate."

"Who wants to meditate, anyway?" asked Amy. "Don't you feel 'the rushing torrent of ambition's flood sweeping away the barriers' and—what else did the Dean say?"

"Log jam," Kit put in. "That's what he meant, log jam of laziness. Have you discovered all these shelves in your wardrobe? I'd take off those doors and hang lovely velvety curtains in front and make a bookcase out of it."

"Will you gaze upon her Chinese tea cupboard," exclaimed Norma, standing before the high black box, with one middle shelf, and little green and gold curtains hung before the tea set. "Where did you purloin that, Peg?"

"Peter gave it to me for fifty cents. It used to be a dumb waiter, and I painted it black myself. Isn't it beautiful? Have you seen Charity's room? Wait." Peggy darted out of her door and across the hall. On the door opposite a card bore the legend in large black letters:

"That's perfectly ridiculous," she said, tapping just the same. "Nobody's studying to-day. Let us in, Charity."

A sound of scraping over the floor, and muffled giggles came to the waiting ones in the hall, then the door was thrown wide, and Kit caught her first glimpse of Charity Parks, the best loved girl at Hope. She was about seventeen, but a short, roly-poly type, with curly rumpled hair and gray eyes that never seemed to keep from mirth. There were five other girls with her, and spread over the couch, chairs, and table were writing material and papers.

"We're frightfully busy, girls," Charity said, discouragingly. "What do you want?"

"Just to look at your room. Isn't it inspiring, Kit? This is Kit Robbins, Charity."

"Hope you'll like it at Hope." Charity gave Kit her hand with a warm grip. "I'm from the east, too, only not so far as you are, but we think Pennsylvania's east, out here. How do you like the decoration?"

Kit liked it, and said so emphatically. The room was in Chinese blue and black, tea table, chiffonier and two chairs painted a dull black, and the walls tinted a soft deep gray blue.

"I hunted all over Chicago for Chinese things, and I found a few. Isn't this a celestial rose jar? I think it's big enough for a pot of basil. Who was the gentle poet that sang of the lady who buried her fond lover's head in a flower pot and watered it with her tears?"

"Bet you use it for orange punch before the year is up," Peggy laughed. "Oh, Kit, she makes wonderful fruit punch. Each guest brings her own favorite fruit, then Charity mashes them all together and it's delicious."

"I wish I stayed here all the time," Kit exclaimed. "You miss the fun, being a day student, don't you?"

"Never mind, child," Charity told her consolingly, "we will have some special daylight celebrations all for you. Now clear out, girls, because I'm dying to lay out the first edition schedule."

"Charity's editor of the 'Glamour,'" Peg said. "The boys call it the 'Clamour,' but we don't mind. It used to be the 'Gleam,' but we thought 'Glamour' carried more intensity with it. Kit's going to dash off some little simple trifle in spare moments for us, aren't you? Amy writes poetry, free verse. Show them that bit you made up in Assembly."

Amy took out a sheet of copy paper from her Ancient History, and read aloud:

"Sounds just like Pope, doesn't it?" said Kit. "I like that last line, 'by fond ambition fanned.'"

But Kit interrupted pointblank. She was sitting up very straight on the divan, with a certain expression around her mouth, and a very steady purposeful look in her eyes, which even Jean at home paid attention to.

"Just a minute," she said, quickly. "Do you mean Marcelle Beaubien? Because if you do, I don't think that's fair."

KIT LOCATES A "FOUNDER"

Peg patted her in a conciliatory manner.

"Now, my child," she said, "curb that swift and rising wrath, and bottle the vials thereof. What is Hecuba to you, or you to Hecuba?"

"Poor little Peggy," Charity murmured, "getting into trim for a Shakespeare drive? You know, Kit, our Peg is president of the Portia Dramatic Club, and the mantle doth not rest lightly on her young shoulders."

But Kit could not be diverted, and the color rose somewhat belligerently in Amy's cheeks, too;

"I don't see," she said, "why you feel that you have to take Marcelle Beaubien's part. If you knew all about her the way we girls do, you'd let her alone."

"I don't see how she ever came up here anyway," Norma remarked. "It's just exactly as if one of her brothers tried to come in. Do you think the boys would stand for that?"

"Why on earth shouldn't they?" demanded Kit, hotly. "And I'd like to know what they've got to say about it anyway. I don't think that's the college spirit. Any one who wants an education and is willing to work for it should be admitted."

"Yes, but if they had any sense at all," responded Norma, placidly, "they wouldn't put themselves into the position of being snubbed. You can talk all you want to about the college spirit from the standpoint of Deans and faculties, but when all's said and done, it's the student spirit that rules. I'll bet that she doesn't stay here a month. She hasn't any one to help her at home, and can't afford tutoring, so she'll just peter out."

"Dear, dear friends of my youth," Charity exclaimed, on her knees before the couch, "here are some wonderful chocolates and cheese straws and pimentoes. Let's have a love feast immediately and bury the hatchet. Kit, your hair isn't red enough to warrant any such exhibitions, and you'll have to cut them out."

The gong sounded in the hall below for afternoon classes, and there was just time to snatch a little refreshment before they joined the other girls trooping through the corridors. Kit found herself watching Marcelle. There was a peculiar aloofness about the girl which seemed to put almost a wall of defense around her. She was intensely interested in everything, one could see that plainly, except the other students, and it seemed as if she simply overlooked them. When Kit came down the staircase, she glanced into the library and saw Marcelle in there alone, bending down before the long wall bookcases. Across the wide hall there were groups of boys and girls in the two long double parlors, laughing and talking together, and every couch and settee along the T-shaped hall was occupied, but Marcelle was alone.

Whoever had built Hope College had managed to work out some of his dreams of old world beauty. The library was wainscoted in some dull satin finished wood, with the graining of olive wood. In the west wall was set a deeply embrasured mullioned window of stained glass, with the figure of a young girl in white in college cap and gown, her face upturned, as she seemed to come towards one through a garden of foxgloves, pale-pink and hyacinth in hue. Beneath was the one word, Hope. Scattered about the room on top of bookcases and shelves were the usual beloved bits of bronze and statuary, Dante's head, the Niké, with widespread wings, busts of Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Whitman, Whittier, Mrs. Stowe, Louisa Alcott, and a beautiful bowed head of Mrs; Browning, her curls half-shadowing her face.

Marcelle had a volume of "Treasure Island" in her hand, illustrated in color. She turned in surprise at the touch of Kit's hand on her shoulder.

"I thought we could walk down towards the bluff together, because we go the same way," said the latter. "How do you like it here?"

"I like it," responded Marcelle, slowly, with a certain dignified shyness that was characteristic of her. "My mother has told me all about it. She liked the library when she was here. She told me where her room was up-stairs, too, but I did not want to go up while the girls were there."

"Let's go up now, while they're all down-stairs," Kit suggested impulsively. "I'll take you. Which dormitory was she in?"

"Her name was Mary Douglas. It is the Douglas Dormitory. Her father was one of the founders here, Malcolm Douglas."

Kit listened in utter amazement and with a rising sense of joy. Here was Marcelle Beaubien, flouted and disdained by the little crowd of girls who happened to live in a certain restricted district of Delphi, but claiming her grandfather was a founder of the college. At that very moment Kit planned her surprise on the girls.

As they walked through the hall together, Pauline and the other girls followed them with their glances and smiled. The two paused before a big bronze tablet with the name of the founders on it. There it was, third from the last, Malcolm Douglas, and date, 1871.

"He came from Canada," said Marcelle, "and settled here. Later on he went into Minnesota, and on into Dakota as one of the first of the Indian fighters in the Sioux wars there, but he was really seeking gold. The family was very poor after he died, but my mother came here for two years, and even when I was a little bit of a girl, seven or eight, years old, before she died, she used to tell me how she loved it, and that I must come here, too."

"Don't any of your brothers want to come?" asked Kit impulsively. "They're all older than you, aren't they?"

Marcelle shook her head with a curious little smile.

"They are all Beaubien, every one. They eat, and they sleep and fish, that is all."

Kit led the way to the upper floor, where the dormitories were, and meeting Charity, she asked the way to the Douglas.

"Why, you were in that one to-day," replied Charity in surprise. "It's our dormitory, don't you know?"

"Oh, thank you so much," Kit said, with suspicious alacrity, as she guided Marcelle down the corridor, and Charity glanced back at them both, speculatively, wondering just what special business could take two new day girls into the most exclusive dormitory at Hope.

ENTER THE ROYAL MUMMIES

Kit deliberately planned her campaign for the following week, and the only girl she took into her confidence was Anne Bellamy. It had been the greatest relief, somehow, when Anne returned to Delphi for the fall term. There was something good-natured and comfortably serene about Anne that made her companionship a relief from that of the other girls. Jean often said back home that Kit was such a bunch of fireworks herself, she always needed the background of a calm silent night or a flaccid temperament, to set her off properly.

"You know, Anne," Kit exclaimed, sinking with a luxurious sigh of content down among the cushions on the broad couch in Anne's room, "I'd give anything, sometimes, if I'd been an only child; of course, you've got a brother, but you're the only girl. You don't know what it is to be one of four. I share my room with Helen, back home, and all honors with Jean. Then, of course, Doris is the baby, and while we all love each other devotedly, still you do have to elbow your way through a large family, if you want to keep on being yourself. I read somewhere about old Joaquin Miller, the poet of the Sierras. Know him?"

Anne shook her head, as she combed out her long brown hair, holding one roll with her teeth.

"No, I don't suppose you do," Kit went on happily. "That's one reason why you and I are going to be fearfully good friends, 'cause you don't know everything in creation. It seems to me I can't speak of anything at all at home now that Jean doesn't know more about it than I do, or Helen thinks she does, which is worse. Don't mind me this morning. I just got a family budget, full of don'ts."

"Yes, and you're just as likely as not to be homesick to-morrow," laughed Anne. "Go on about your poet."

"Oh, nothing, except that he didn't believe there should be more than one room in a house, and he built little individual houses all over 'The Heights' out in California. I'd love to do that back home, with a dining-room on one green hill, and the kitchen down in the, valley."

"You'd need a mountain railway on an up grade, when it came meal time."

"Well maybe," Kit assented, "but at least I'd have my own bower in a pine grove, and each of the royal princesses could go and do likewise. But that isn't what I came over for. You know Marcelle Beaubien? The girls don't like her going to Hope."

"Don't they?" Anne asked, mildly. "Well, what are they going to do about it? I thought that's what colleges were for. Who's against her?"

"I don't think it's exactly anything definite or violent, but you know how mighty uncomfortable they can make her. There's Amy Roberts and Norma and Peggy Porter and the Tony Conyers crowd."

"She won't miss anything special, even if they do try to snub her," answered Anne laughingly.

"This is my second year at Hope, and I want to tell you right now that Charity rules in the Douglas Dormitory. If you can get her on Marcelle's side, the other girls will trot along like little lambkins."

"Do you suppose," Kit leaned forward impressively, as she sprang her plan, "do you suppose Charity would loan her room for a Founders' Tea?"

"A Founders' Tea," repeated Anne. "What's that?"

Kit proclaimed grandiloquently:

"A tea in honor of Malcolm Douglas, pioneer founder of Hope College, and grandfather of Marcelle Beaubien."

Anne's blue eyes widened in amazement, and her hair-brush was suspended in mid-air.

"How did you find out?" she whispered. "Does Marcelle know?"

"Of course she knows. She told me all about it herself, but I don't think she's got sense enough to realize what a nice handy little club of defense it gives her against the girls to spring it on them at the tea, and you've got to help me get it up. We'll coax Charity into loaning us her room first, and I'll look up all about Malcolm Douglas, and write a cute little essay about the historic founding of Hope. Then we'll send out mysterious little invitations, and just say on them, 'To meet a Founder's granddaughter.'"

"When?" asked Anne, reflectively. "You ought to do it soon, so if it works they'll take her into the different clubs right away. I think you ought to try and see Charity to-day after classes and get her advice. Another thing, Kit, do you suppose Marcelle would have any relics around of her grandfather that we could kind of spring on them unexpectedly?"

Kit's eyes kindled with appreciation.

"That's a worthy thought. Sort of corroborative evidence, as it were. Anne, you're a wonder." She sprang up from the couch, her hands deep in her white sweater pockets, looking very fit and purposeful. "I think it's up to me to go and prepare Charity. You make out a list of things that we'll want for the tea. You'd better be the refreshment chairman, and we'll try and make it a week from next Saturday."

"Too far off," Anne demurred. "Better do it while it's fresh in your mind, before you start lectures."

"I believe I'll go over now. It's only a little after five, and that'll keep me from answering that family budget until I've calmed down. If you see any one looking for me, tell them I'll be right straight back. I'll stop in the library and look up Malcolm's historic record, on my way, so you may truthfully announce I'm delving into research."

Kit went up the hill road buoyantly. Dearly she loved to set a goal ahead of her, and then run for it. Delphi had appeared rather barren as a field for her real endeavor, but now with the opening of school, she could see her way ahead to conscientiously starting something, which she sincerely hoped she could finish. Coming along the sidewalk which bounded the campus on the south, she met Charity on her way back from the post-office.

"This is ever so much better than going up-stairs," Kit said. "Let's walk around the campus twice, while I unburden my soul."

At the second lap, the whole plan had been matured by Charity's quick sympathy and understanding.

"And it will do them good, too," she said, as they parted. "That's not the college spirit by a long shot, and you're perfectly right, Kit, but just the same it's easier to get it on the girls in this way with a nice friendly accompaniment of sandwiches, and iced tea, and whatever you do, Kit, don't breathe one blessed word to anybody. I wouldn't even tell Marcelle herself that she is to be the guest of honor. She'd run like a deer, if she even suspected it."

The date of the Founders' Tea was set for the following Saturday. Kit evolved the invitations herself and wrote them on blank cards, as she remembered doing back at the Cove in the days of opulence and entertainment.

Saturday, October Second, Three to Five.

You are invited to attend a Founders' Tea, Douglas Dormitory, Hope College, Miss Allen's Study.

"Diffident, modest and correct," quoth Kit, critically, when she showed them to Anne. "Now, what are you going to eat, Anne? Isn't there something besides just plain tea? Couldn't we fix up some kind of glorified lemonade?"

"I've got it all down," answered Anne. "Grape juice, ginger ale and lemons. It's wonderful, and six kinds of sandwiches. Cheese with pimento, and cheese with chopped walnuts, lettuce and egg, chopped raisins with beaten white of egg, and raspberry jam and cream cheese, sardine on lettuce with mayonnaise and deviled ham, with macaroons on the side."

"It's perfectly dandy," exclaimed Kit. "Aunt Daphne told me when I first started in that I could give a spread for the girls, and this is it. After it's all over, I'll tell her about Marcelle, and I know she'll enjoy it and approve. I think we ought to get Peggy or Amy to write some kind of an anniversary ode for us. It might begin like this:

"Better finish that up, and read it at the tea," advised Anne; "there's something so spirited about it. Is Charity going to decorate the study for the festal occasion? We ought to have something sort of different, don't you think so?"

"Pioneer relics would be the only thing, and I don't know where we'd scare those up."

"There's a whole cabinet of them in the Dean's room at the Assembly Hall."

The two girls looked at each other wisely. The subject really needed no argument or discussion. Kit said briefly:

"I'll try. I think I can get some of them anyway if I approach Uncle Cassius as a humble student seeking knowledge."

All unprepared for the onslaught, the Dean sat enjoying his after dinner smoke that evening when Kit tapped at the door.

"Come in," he called, a little bit testily, looking over his eye-glasses at the intruder. "I don't think I can talk with you just now, my dear," he said. "I am very busy working out a dynasty problem."

"Oh, but I'd love to help," Kit pleaded, "and I did help before on the aborigines of Japan, didn't I? I even remember their names, the Ainos."

"This is early Egyptian. Something you know nothing whatever about."

"Just mummies?" inquired Kit. "Oh, Uncle Cassius, we girls back home made up a lovely little couplet about that when we were studying Egypt at high school.

No answering gleam of amusement showed in the Dean's eyes. In fact, be regarded her, Kit thought, rather severely for this unseemly display of levity.

"Of course," she added, hastily, "that was when I was very much younger than I am now. It was two years ago."

The Dean coughed deprecatingly, and turned back to the pamphlets before him.

"Remains have been discovered," he began in quite the tone he used in Assembly, "of the lost tribe of the Nemi. When the Greeks, my dear, obtained a foothold in Carthage and along the Mediterranean coast, the Nemi remained unconquered and retreated to the mountain fastnesses, west of the source of the Nile."

"Well, I know all about that," Kit answered, encouragingly, perching herself on the arm of a chair, across from him. "Just see," and she counted off on her fingers, "Livingstone-Stanley,—Victoria Falls—Zambesi—and Kipling wrote all about the people in 'Fuzzy-Wuzzy.'"

"No, no, no, not a bit like it!" the Dean exclaimed. "My dear child, learn to think in centuries and epochs. The long and short of it is, there have been some very wonderful remains of the Nemi recently discovered, and I have been honored by a commission from the Institute to write a complete summary of the results of the expedition and its historic significance."

"Don't you wish you'd been there when they dug them up? That's what I'd love, the exploring part, don't you know. I should think it would be fearfully dry trying to make bones sit up and talk, when you are so far away from it all."

"They are not sending me bones," replied the Dean with dignity, "but they are sending me the Amenotaph urn, and a sitting image of Annui. I believe with these two I shall be able to establish as a fact the survival of the Greek influence in ancient Egypt. My dear, you have no idea," he added, warmly, "how much this explains if it is true. There may be even some Phoenician data before I finish investigating."

"Phoenicians," thought Kit, although she said nothing. "Yes, I do remember about them, too. Tin,—ancient Britain—and something about Carthage, or was that Queen Dido?" Then she said aloud very positively and earnestly:

"I know I can help you a lot with this, Uncle Cassius, if you will only let me, because history is my favorite study, and the reason I came to speak to you to-night is this: We girls are going to have a Founders' Tea, Saturday afternoon, up at Hope; just a little informal affair, but I'd like to give it a——" She hesitated for the right word, and the Dean nodded encouragingly, being in a better mood.

"Semblance of verity? Are you preparing a treatise?"

"No. I want something they can look at," Kit explained, "and I knew if I told you about it, you'd let us take a few of the old things out of that cabinet in your room at Assembly Hall. All I need would be—well, say a few portraits of any of the founders of Hope, and any of the relics of the Indians or French explorers."

The Dean graciously detached a key from the ring at one end of the slender chain which barred his waistcoat.

Kit retired with it, as though she bore a trophy, and the next day the last preparations were completed for impressing on the freshman class the honor of having a Founder's granddaughter in their midst.

IN HONOR OF MARCELLE

"I think you ought to preside, Kit," Charity said as she arranged the tea table more handily before the corner couch. "It's your party, and you ought to pour."

"Takes too much concentration," Kit returned. "Anne'll help you. I want to have my mind perfectly clear to manage the thing. You see, Marcelle doesn't know a blessed thing about it yet, and there's no knowing how she'll take it. Wouldn't it be funny if she got proud and haughty, and marched away from our Founders' Tea?"

"I don't think you ought to spring it until after we've had refreshments. Food has such a mellowing effect on human nature. It's all a question of tact, though. If I were you, I'd talk to them in an intimate sort of way instead of lingering too much on the historic value. Better straighten Malcolm, over yonder; he looks kind of topply."

Kit regarded the framed steel engraving of Malcolm Douglas almost fondly. It had been taken from a history of early Wisconsin, together with some other founders fortunate enough to be included on the roll of honor, and had hung down in the Dean's room. Now it occupied a prominent spot specially cleared for it in the middle of the wall, and Kit had twined a long, double tendril of southern smilax around it, culled from the local florist's supply for any chance Delphi festivities.

Backed by Miss Daphne's approval and interest, Kit had called at several homes where lived the descendants of other founders, and the results were manifest. Mrs. Peter Bradbury had contributed two Indian blankets and a hunting-bag, besides an old pair of saddle bags used by her father, one of the early missionary bishops of the northwest, in his travels through the wilderness. Two fine timber wolf pelts lay on the floor, and of these Kit was specially proud. She had beguiled them from the treasure store of old Madame Giron, whose husband could still tell with fiery eyes and thrilling tone of how he had killed the animals not a quarter of a mile from the site of Hope College, in the old settler days.

From the cabinet in the Dean's room had come mostly records, old documents carefully framed, and several letters written by the founders themselves.

"You know," Kit said, as she gave a last touch to her exhibit, "of course these are important, but I like the Indian and hunting things best. I wish I could run away with that double pair of buffalo horns that belonged to Dr. Gleason's granduncle or somebody. I like them better than anything."

A quick rap came on the door, and before Charity could even call "come in" Peggy entered with her usual galaxy behind her, Amy, Norma, and a newcomer from Iowa, Henrietta Jinks, whom the girls had instantly dubbed "the Jinx," because of her infallible habit of everlastingly doing the inopportune thing.

"If it wasn't that her father was a congressman, she'd never get by with it," Amy had said, "but as it is, if you'll just remember that she's been reared on rhetoric and torch-light parades, you can understand that little abrupt way she has. I think it's rather interesting to be a 'Jinx,' it's so different, and the boys only have mascots. This way, it shows we have a fine, proud disregard for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Kit, my child, did you hear that? I'll be playing Ophelia before the New Year dawns."

"Tony Conyers sent word she'd be ready in five minutes," said Norma. "I think she's dressing up as something symbolical, and she's got a lot of the girls in there with her. Charity, I think this is a perfectly stupendous idea of yours."

"'Tisn't mine," retorted Charity, hurtling cushions handily from one couch to another in order to balance the room. "It's Kit's. This is her party. Her coming out party at Hope."

"Oh, are you the founder's granddaughter?" Amy inquired, her blue eyes opening widely.

"No, precious, I'm not," replied Kit, happily. "I wish this minute I could mount yon rostrum, Mid declaim the feats of my ancestors. They were pathfinders and Cavaliers, but I don't know of a single blessed founder among them. Peggy, don't sit on the almonds. They're right behind you in that glass dish."

The room filled up rapidly with members of the freshman class, and Kit declared after she had been the rounds four times that she felt exactly like the lecturer in the curio hall in a museum, telling the history of the relics over and over again. Nobody but Anne knew how anxious she became as the moments slipped by and no Marcelle appeared. It would never do to have a climax happen without the surprise of her presence to carry it off. The refreshments had all been served, and the little bronze dragon clock on top of the book shelves showed the hour of five, when Charity called:

"You'd better start in on your Founders' talk, Kit; we've only got about half an hour."

There was a baffled look in Kit's eyes, as she picked up the challenge and rose from the brown willow chair. Charity must know perfectly well how untimely it was to start to spring the surprise while there was a running chance of Marcelle appearing. Still there was a hush, and the girls faced her expectantly.

"As you all know," began Kit, "the old bronze tablet in the lower hall carries names on its roll of honor which not only uphold the glory of Hope College, but also of the entire town of Delphi, of the entire state, I may say, of Wisconsin."

"Kit," murmured Peggy, sotto voce, "if you start declaiming like that you'll have 'the Jinx' after your scalp. First thing we know, you'll begin, 'Ladies and fellow constituents.'"

Kit waited until the laugh had subsided, and Peggy had replaced the shell pins from her tumbled braids after a tussle with "the Jinx," who took all political allusions as personal affronts.

"There are few of us here to-day, if any," continued Kit, slowly, one eye watching the concrete walk across the campus from the nearest window, "who can boast of a Hope founder in her family."

"I can, almost," interrupted Antoinette, otherwise Tony; "my big sister Marie was engaged for a very little while to Bernard Giron. If she had only married him, we would have had a 'Founder' in the family."

"Tony," said Kit, severely, "I am dealing with facts, not prospects, and you ought not to reveal any family secrets, either. I say it is a great honor to be a direct descendant of a 'Founder,' and we have one in our class. A girl, too modest to take advantage of her grandfather's record." She paused impressively, but with a quickening gleam in her eyes, as there suddenly have in view a hurrying figure in gray sweater and dark crimson cap on the campus walk. It was Marcelle herself, late, but in time to create the desired sensation.

Kit drew a deep breath, and plunged back to her subject, considering exactly the time it would take for the belated guest to reach the study.

"Since all the girls here belong to this dormitory, it seems appropriate that the founder whose memory we honor should be Malcolm Douglas. His portrait hangs upon the wall, evidently taken from an old likeness." Oh, how she wished the home folks could hear her roll her phrases! "There is no more adventurous or thrilling career in the annals of historic Delphi than that of the illustrious Scotchman. Making his way through the perils of the wilderness, he came from Quebec with a party of fur traders and pioneer explorers."

"Don't hit too far back, Kit," interrupted Peggy, alertly. "If he was a founder in '71, you can't have him trotting over wilderness trails with Marquette and Lasalle, you know."

"Nevertheless," responded Kit, ignoring the levity of her nearest neighbor, "he is one of the heroes of our Wisconsin pioneer times. He came here in his early twenties, and married Lucia, the daughter of Captain Peter Morton. Their daughter was Mary, and, girls, she was the mother of one of our classmates, the very same Mary who went through Hope and graduated with high honors. You'll find her initials carved in Number 10 across the hall, and her portrait—the only one I could find—is in this graduating group."

The girls all crowded forward to look at the group photograph which Kit held out to them, just as a knock came at the door. For one dramatic instant Kit held the knob, her back against the door as she announced in almost a whisper:

"The granddaughter of Malcolm Douglas."

The girls leaned forward, eagerly, every eye fixed upon the door. As Kit said afterwards, laughingly to Anne:

"Goodness knows who they expected to see, but I almost felt as though I had promised them the excitement of a live mummy and then had sprung Marcelle. Oh, but wasn't she splendid, Anne? The way she stood the introduction and the shock of finding herself the guest of honor. As I looked at her, I thought to myself, you may be Douglas, and you may be Morton, fine old Scotch and English stock, but if it wasn't for the dash of debonair Beaubien in you too, you could never carry this off the way you are doing."

Marcelle was not the only person present who had to fall back on inherent caste for their manners of the moment, but Tony was the only one that gave an audible gasp. Even Peggy and Norma smiled, and greeted the Founder's granddaughter in the proper spirit.

She was dressed in white, just a plain kilted skirt and smock, but Kit gloried in the way she took her place beside Charity at the tea table, and parried the questions of the girls with laughing ease.

"Of course," she said, with the little slight accent she seemed to have caught from her father and old Grandmother Beaubien, "I thought every one in Delphi knew. For myself, I am proud of him, and of all my mother's people, but I am also proud of being a Beaubien. You girls do not know perhaps that some of my father's people helped to found Fort Dearborn, and they were very brave and courageous voyagers in the early days of New France."

Peggy really rose to the occasion remarkably, Kit thought. Probably the most zealously guarded membership in Hope's freshman class was that of the Portia Club, and yet, before the tea was over, she had invited Marcelle to attend the next meeting and be proposed for membership.

"We're not going to try a whole play at first, just famous scenes, and I know you'd fit in somewhere and enjoy it. Don't you want to, Marcelle?"

Marcelle shrugged her shoulders, deprecatingly.

"I shall be glad to help always," she said, with simple dignity, "if you wish to make me one of you. We have an old copy of Shakespeare at home that was my mother's, and I have read much of it in the long winter evenings. I think," she added, whimsically, "that I would rather play parts like Shylock or Hamlet than the girl rôles, and best of all, I should love dearly to play Prince Hal."

"What do you think of that?" Anne said on the way home. "The idea of her being interested in Shakespeare at all or knowing anything about it, after living all her life in that little sand dump. Kit, you certainly have discovered a flower that was born to blush unseen."

"It will take her out of her shell, anyway," Kit replied, happily. "And I do think the girls came up to the mark splendidly. Heaven knows how they are talking about us now, behind our backs, but they acted their parts nobly when I swung that door open, and there stood, just Marcelle!"

THE FAMILY ADVISES

No qualms of homesickness visited Kit the first two months after school opened. Not even New England could eclipse the glory of autumn when it swept in full splendor over this corner of the Lake States. Down east there was a sort of middle-aged relaxation to this season of the year. Kit always said it reminded her of the state of mind Cousin Roxy had reached, where one stood on the Delectable Mountains and could look both ways.

But here autumn came as a veritable gypsy. The stretches of forest that fringed the ravines rioted in color. The lakes seemed to take on the very deepest sapphire blue. No hush lay over the land as it did in the east, but there were wild sudden storm flurries, and as Kit expressed it, a feeling in the air as if there might be a regular circus of a cataclysm any minute.

Hardly a Saturday passed but what she was included in some motoring party. The Dean never joined these, but Miss Daphne thoroughly enjoyed her new rôle of chaperon. Sometimes the run would be further north, along the route to Milwaukee. Other days they would dip into the beautiful wooded roads that cut through the ravines, leading over towards Lake Delevan. And once, towards the end of November, in the very last spurt of Indian Summer weather, they took a week-end tour up to Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls.

"I only wish," Rex said, "that we could come up here next spring when they have their big logging time. It's one of the greatest sights you ever saw, Kit. I have seen the logs jammed out there in the river until they looked like a giant's game of jackstraws. Maybe we could arrange a trip, don't you think so, mother?"

"I don't see any reason why not," replied Mrs. Bellamy.

"But I won't be here then," protested Kit.

"Oh, you'll stay till the end of the spring term, dear," Miss Daphne corrected, and right there and then Kit experienced her first pang of homesickness. Would she really be away from the home nest until next June? Even with this novelty of recreation, backed by wealth, she felt suddenly as though she could have slipped away from it all without a single regret, just to find herself safely back home with the family.

When her next letter arrived at Maple Lawn, Jean read it over her mother's shoulder. The two younger girls were at school, and a little puzzled frown drew Jean's straight dark brows together.

"She's getting homesick, mother. Kit never writes tenderly like that unless she feels a heart throb. I never thought she'd last as long as she has——"

But Mrs. Bobbins looked dubious.

"She seems to have made such a good impression. I hate to have her spoil it by jumping back too soon. It's such a benefit for her."

Jean stopped polishing lamp chimneys and gazed out of the kitchen window towards the far-reaching fields, where none but the crows could find a living now. She was only able to run up from New York once a month, since she had taken a position of junior instructor at the Academy, and yet each time she found herself turning with a sigh of relief and safety from the city life to the peace of these everlasting hills.

"I don't blame her a bit if she wants to come back home before summer, mother dear. Money isn't everything."

"Oh, but Jean," sighed the Mother Bird, "it means so much in life. It's foolish to blind ourselves to all that it will do for us. I never try to deceive myself one bit, and I shall always miss the little luxuries and greater comforts of life that we had back at the Cove, before your father's health broke down, especially now that you girls are growing up so soon into womanhood. It isn't for myself I want it, but for you."

Jean laughed as she slipped her arms closer around her mother's neck.

"But you mustn't apprentice Kit to the Sign of the Dollar, just for the forlorn hope that Uncle Cassius and Aunt Daphne may send her home with a shower of gold. It seems to me if they were really and truly the right kind of family people, and cared for you and father, that they couldn't rest until they had handed over a splendid, generous slice of their money right now when it would do the most good."

"Oh, Jean, people never do that. But I do think they will leave something to you all."

"Leave something!" sniffed Jean, scornfully. "If there's anything in the world I thoroughly despise, it's old, mouldy, dead men's shoes. If I were you, I'd write and tell Kit that she could come home at the Christmas vacation if she wanted to."

But Cousin Roxy took an entirely different view of the matter when she was consulted.

"Fiddlesticks," she said. "No girl of Kit's age knows what she wants two minutes of the time. She's doing good missionary work out there, and she must not become weary in well doing or draw back her hand from the plow. You don't need her here at all, Elizabeth. Helen's getting plenty old enough to take hold and help."

"Oh, but she's so young, Roxy, to have responsibility thrust upon her."

"Can't have it too young," retorted Mrs. Ellis, buoyantly. "It's what tones up the muscles of the spirit. From what I know about Cassius Cato Peabody, I should say that what he needed most was a trumpet call from the Lord to make him take an interest in the land of the living instead of mummies and buried cities."

So two letters went back to Kit, and in hers the Mother Bird could not resist slipping a hint that perhaps it would be a wise thing to ask the Dean about terminating her visit at Christmas time. But Jean added in hers:

"Mother's afraid you are homesick, or that they may be tired of you by this time, but if I were in your place, Kit, I'd try to stay until June. Father thinks the Hall may be done in time for us to go into it next month, but we've had lots of wet weather, and Cousin Roxy says it would be horribly unhealthful to move in before the plaster has had a chance to thoroughly dry. Shad goes down every day with father, and they've kept the fire going in the furnace, so I suppose that will help some, but there isn't a particle of need for your coming back, except mother's dread that you may be homesick, and you're getting too old to mollycoddle yourself, Kit, where there's a big interest at stake."

Kit read this with lowering brow.

"It's so nice to have been born Jean, and speak on any subject as the eldest sister," she said, scornfully. "I know perfectly well that mother needs me when she is moving back into the new house, and I never expected to stay so long when I came, anyway."

She stopped short, meditating on just what this queer, choky feeling was that had swept over her. Helen and Jean always liked to take a new emotion and analyze it, but Kit rarely concerned herself with motives or causes. And now she only knew that she would have given up everything, future hopes of the Dean's bestowing bequests broadcast in the robins' nest, and all the winter's fun at Hope College, just to be safely back home with all the dear familiar faces around her.

SHOPPING FOR SHAKESPEARE

It was Saturday morning. She had been elected a member of the Portia Club, and even now rehearsals were under way for the first performance the second week in December. There was to be one that morning at Amy's study, the scene between Rosalind, Orlando, and Celia. Kit was Orlando on account of her height and carriage. As Amy said:

"You've got the air, Kit, that goes with doublet and hose and Lincoln green."

"Lincoln green was in Robin Hood's time," retorted Kit.

"Yes, but it's all that foresty stuff, don't you know. You can play Mercutio next month in the 'Merchant of Venice.'"

"No, I want to be Shylock. I love character parts. I don't see why you have to pick out these little tame scenes when we could have Lear and Edgar and the Fool on the heath, or Dick the Third or Macbeth. I'd play any of those for you. We used to have plays back home just amongst us girls, and I was always the leading heavy. We even tried putting on 'Faust' in the barn when the hay-lofts were empty, but that does need atmosphere."

"Dear wayward, fearless sister," answered Amy, kindly, "what you haven't found out here is this. Thus far we can go and no farther. The faculty would expire seeing you as King Lear. Discreetly may ye pose as Orlando, or any other gentle lad, with a sweeping cloak about thee, but I doubt if the Dean would even beam on Hamlet."

"I'm a splendid Hamlet," Kit said, thoughtfully. "I doubled in 'Hamlet' and 'The Raven' in the same costume down home. Just the soliloquy, of course, though we'd have tried the grave-diggers scene only we didn't have any skulls."

But Amy had not thought favorably of deviating from the usual program. Scenes from "As You Like It," as usual, was to be the first effort. Kit glanced at the clock, and caught up her sweater and cap. It was quarter of ten, and she was due at Amy's at ten. As she ran down-stairs, she encountered the Dean, happily directing two expressmen carry a large box back into the study.

"My dear, it has come," he told her. "I'm hoping they will both be here, the Amenotaph urn and the statue of Annui. I do not wish to be disturbed just now while I am unpacking them, as it takes a great deal of care and delicacy and you will ask too many questions, Kit, but if you will come in after lunch, I will explain the inscriptions to you."

"Oh, I'd love to, Uncle Cassius," Kit answered, eyeing the box hopefully. "I'm going up to a rehearsal at the Hall."

The Dean smiled absently and nodded his head at her.

"Look up Annui while you are there, also Semele."

Lysander, the puppy, bounded to meet her as she hurried down the walk, and at the sidewalk curb she found the Bellamy car waiting.

"Just in time," called Rex, cheerily. "Where are you bound for?"

Kit took the seat beside him gratefully. The wind from the lake blew cuttingly, and there was a flurry of first snowflakes in the air wavering about uncertainly like birds that had lost their way.

"Where's Anne?" she asked. "Isn't she going up to rehearsal?"

"Gone down to Brent's first. I'm going to stop and pick her up. She's been building a costume all the morning."

The car swung around the corner of Maple Avenue and down the hill towards the village, leaving Lysander sitting at the corner, wailing dolefully.

Brent's was the local emporium for everything needed, from the college standpoint. Not only were its shelves filled with goods which varied from library supplies to latest fiction, but there was an ice cream parlor annex patronized almost entirely by students.

Anne was engrossed over a selection of patterns at the counter in the back of the store. She was to play Celia, and Norma was Rosalind. Charity always said that Norma's profile and long corn-colored hair brought her more undeserved honors than any qualities of excellence she possessed.

"I'm so glad you came along just now," sighed Anne. "Mother says I ought to dress very simply, but a Duke's daughter would have even a stuff dress cut in fashion, wouldn't she? Besides, I can show a lot of taste in my cap. Norma's got a perfectly wonderful cloak made of a dark green felt piano cover."

Kit helped her select a dull violet goods, with white underslip that showed through the slashes in the sleeves. Anne had been hovering over an old rose that absolutely killed any glint of color in her light brown hair.

"Never, never," warned Kit, "let old rose come near you, if you've got freckles or sandy hair. Don't you notice, Anne, how I cling to all the soft pastel nondescript tones? That's because my eldest sister is an artist, and we all have to live up to it more or less now. When Jean wants a new dress she slips away and communes with nature, until she's hit the right tone values. You should have seen her face one day when some one asked Doris her favorite color, and she said, 'plaid.'"

"We're going to be late to rehearsal," Anne declared with a sigh, as they rose to leave.

"We are late now," rejoined Kit, cheerfully. "They'll prize us all the more if we keep ourselves kind of scarce. Rex told me to order walnut sundae for him, and wait until he comes back."

Just at this moment Anne laid her finger on her lips and glanced impressively at a table on the other side of the room. There sat Amy with Peggy Porter and Norma, all of them dreamily imbibing ice cream sodas, just as though Shakespearian rehearsals were occasions unknown in their engagement calendars.

Kit rose and crossed the room with caution until she stood behind Amy and intoned sepulchrally from Macbeth:

"What ho! Ye secret, black and midnight hags, what is't ye do?"

HOPE'S PRIMROSE PATH

"Well, we waited fifteen minutes for you," protested Amy, laughingly, "and Norma had to come down-town to try and find some high boots like Julia Marlowe wore for Rosalind. She's had that old picture of her pinned up on the wall for two weeks."

"Oh, and listen, Kit," Norma broke in; "you know that suede brown leather table cover of mine; I just took and slashed it around the edges and bent it over an old tam-o'-shanter crown and it looks exactly like the hat she wore. You know I've been considering rather seriously. Don't you really think that I'm peculiarly fitted for this sort of a career? Of course I'd only play Shakespearian parts, although I'd love to be Joan of Arc like Maude Adams was at Harvard, or play the old Greek tragedies at that Stadium place, somewhere in California. I've been studying Electra a little bit."

"Have you?" questioned Kit, kindly. "You dear child, you. So young and yet so aspiring. Finish your chocolate ice cream soda, and we'll run along. Rex just came with his car and we can all pile into it."

The rehearsal passed off splendidly, barring sundry interpolations by Kit into Orlando's flights of fancy.

"I think he would have had to have been much more interesting to have held the love of such a girl as Rosalind," she protested. "Heroes are awful people anyway, I think. The only ones I really like are explorers. Uncle Cassius said the other day that the most unique experience was to be the first white man to step foot on new territory. I may take up forestry as a profession, but I'd much rather be a woman explorer."

"Deserts, islands or mountain peaks?" queried Amy, as she dipped into her store of supplies under the couch for some hasty refreshments.

"Caves, I think," said Kit, darkly; "caves or islands. Don't give me anything to eat, 'cause I have to look up something in the library before I go home, and I'm late for lunch now."

"Just pimento cheese on crackers, and I've got some chocolate marshmallows here somewhere." Amy's voice was muffled under the couch cover. But the clock on the mantel pointed at twelve-fifteen, and Kit knew the Dean's punctilious regard for keeping meal hours.

The library was unoccupied, apparently. Kit went over to the lower book shelves which contained the reference books on archæology, dragging a low stool after her.

"A-men-o-taph," she said, under her breath. "Likewise Semele."

With the two volumes on her knees, she started to read up the references which the Dean wanted, when all at once she was conscious of some one who stood in the embrasured window at the west end of the room, looking at her. For a moment Kit was absolutely speechless, not believing the evidence of her own eyes. But the next moment Billie's own laugh, when he found out he had been discovered, startled her with its reality.

"Billie Ellis," she exclaimed, springing to her feet and scattering reference books and note paper helter-skelter. "How on earth did you ever get way out here?"

Billie shook hands with her, coloring boyishly, as he always did at any display of emotion, and trying to act as if it were the most natural and ordinary thing in the world for him to appear at Delphi, Wis., when he was supposed to be at Washington in school.

"We got our test exams last week, and Stanley had to run out to Minnesota for the government, so he took me along to help him."

"Billie, are you really after bugs and things—I mean, are you going to really be a naturalist?"

"I guess you'd kind of call it being a business naturalist," laughed Billie. "I don't think I'll ever live in a shack on a mountainside, and write beautiful things about them, now that I know Stanley. You want to roll up your sleeves and go to work like he does."

"Is he here, now?" asked Kit, eagerly.

"Yep." Billie nodded oat of the window, towards Kemp Hall, the boys' dormitory. "After we found out that you didn't live here, we were going on down to the Dean's to find you, but he looked over the boys' freshman class, and found he had a cousin or nephew or somebody on the list, Clayton Diggs."

"I know him," Kit exclaimed. "He's High Jinks' cousin. Regular bean pole, with freckles, but mighty nice. I've got to be back for lunch, and you're coming down with me, of course. How long can you stay?"

"Just this afternoon. We're going back on the five forty-five, and catch the night express east. If you wait here, I'll chase after Stanley, 'cause he'll want to have lunch with the Diggs boy, and he can join us later."

Kit walked along the macadamized path which crossed the campus. It was bordered by dwarf evergreen, but the students had named it Hope's primrose path, owing to the temptation to dally along it, whenever one had the chance.

The coming of Billie unexpectedly, just at a time when she was feeling her first homesickness, struck Kit as being a special little gift handed out to her by Providence. But with only five hours to visit with him, she knew it would be all the harder after he had gone. He joined her on a run as she reached the sidewalk, and they hurried down to the Dean's just in time for luncheon. Kit's face was fairly radiant as she presented her old-time chum of the hills to Miss Daphne and the Dean.

"Don't you remember, Uncle Cassius," she asked eagerly, "how, when I first came, I told you all about the boy back home who would have just suited you? Well, that was Billie."

The Dean's gray eyes wrinkled as he surveyed Billie over the tops of his eye-glasses.

"You come highly recommended, young man," he said. "Kit almost persuaded me that if she didn't suit I might be able to coax you away from your grandfather."

"I'll bet you wouldn't change now," Billie responded, gallantly. "Kit knows a hundred per cent, more than I do, sir. I used to hate history until she took to telling me stories about it, and making it interesting. All I really care about is natural history, especially insects and birds."

"Well, you could have a lovely time studying over uncle's Egyptian scarabs," said Kit, placidly. "Weren't you telling me something about a place in China where they had a whole grove filled with sacred silkworms, Aunt Daphne?"

Miss Peabody smiled and nodded, looking from one young face to the other. Never before had youth sat lunching at that table with her and her brother in quite such a radiant guise. The Dean usually took his noontide meal in absolute silence when they were alone together, as he held that desultory conversation disturbed his train of thought. But since Kit's coming, it had been impossible to check her flow of talk, until now the Dean actually missed it if she happened to be absent.