Kit of Greenacre Farm

STANLEY APOLOGIZES

After lunch they all went into the library to look over the Dean's newly arrived treasures.

"Well, for pity's sakes," exclaimed Kit, as she stood before the plain, squat, terra-cotta urn, "is that the royal urn? I expected to see something enormous, like everything else that is wonderful and ancient in Egypt."

"Dear child," the Dean responded, happily, as he bent down to trace the curious, cuneiform markings which circled the urn. "This antedates the time of the Captivity and Moses. I cannot tell positively, until I have opened it and deciphered what I can of the papyrus rolls within. If it should go back to Moses, it will be wonderful. I cannot believe that it is contemporary with Nineveh. Daphne, you can recall how overjoyed I was when we unearthed that library of precious clay under the Nineveh mounds years ago. Think of reading something which was written by living man several thousand years before that."

"What fun it must have been," Billie remarked. "If you wanted to write anything in those days, you just picked up a handful of mud and made a little brick out of it, and wrote away with a stick, didn't you?"

"Stylus, my boy, stylus," corrected the Dean, absently. "Yes, I doubt not but what it did away with much of our modern detail."

"Oh," exclaimed Kit, suddenly, "I left all the notes on Semele in the library. I'm awfully sorry, Uncle Cassius, but when I saw Billy standing there unexpectedly, I just forgot everything. We can walk up there this afternoon and get them. Is the statue very beautiful?"

"Perfect, perfect," murmured the Dean, as he still hung over the urn abstractedly. "It's just behind you, my dear."

Kit turned, expecting to face one of the usual blandly smiling Egyptian colossi, even in miniature, with a few wings scattered over it here and there. But instead, there stood in the center of the Dean's library table a strangely attenuated figure about three feet high. As Billie said afterwards, it appeared to be dancing the Grasshopper's Nocturnal Rhapsody. It had a head that was a cross between an intelligent antelope and a rather toploftical baby rat. Its arms were extended at sharp angles, and seemed to be pointing in arch accusation at one. Wings spread fanwise from the shoulders, and its feet were like the feet of a griffin.

"I never thought it would look just like that, did you, Billie?" Kit asked confidentially, when they started back to the campus, after the notes on Semele.

"Well, I knew well what to expect, because we've been doing the Smithsonian Institute pretty well," responded Billie, rather knowingly. "Some of them look worse than that. But they can't beat our own little Alaskan and Mexican beauties. I wonder what people were thinking about back in those days to worship that sort of thing?"

But Kit caught sight of five of the girls just rounding the corner after a hike along the shore, and she hailed them, much to Billie's inward disgust. While he approved thoroughly of Kit, he viewed the average girl from a safe altitude indifference. But Kit introduced him in an off-hand, casual manner which put him at his ease, and when they started up the primrose path, it was the "Jinx" herself who had taken possession of Billie, and was interesting him thoroughly, telling of her father's big stock farm outside of Maquoketa.

They found Stanley Howard awaiting them on one of the big tree seats, outside the Hall. Clayton was with him, strumming on a ukulele, as they talked, happily and lazily. The girls followed Kit into the library, as she went on a hunt after Semele, and here Amy faced her accusingly.

"You never told us a word about this Billie boy," she declared, "and ever since you came here, you've made believe to overlook boys. You haven't wanted them in any of our affairs. You made fun of the girls who did want them, and all the time you've had this one up your sleeve. Kathleen, explain."

"If he's a relative," Peggy interposed, serenely, "we'll let you off. You've never been initiated into anything. You haven't even had your freshman hazing, because the Dean doesn't approve of such doings, and we felt that we'd better keep it out of the family, but there are limits, aren't there, girls?"

Kit laughed up at them, as she groped about on the floor picking up the scattered pages of notes.

"Well, he's a relative, if you must know," she retorted. "He's my father's first cousin's husband's grandchild. Now haze me if you like."

Vowing that this connection was altogether too nebulous to save her from the threatened penalty, the girls buried the hatchet for the time being in the entertainment of the guests.

"I suppose Hope looks pretty small to you after the universities back east," Norma said to Billie, as they made the rounds of the buildings, after Amy had played hostess with Kit's help, and had brought down a goodly supply of fudge and peanut nougat.

"Looks mighty good," returned Billie, heartily. "I think you can have loads more fun in a place like this than you can at the big schools. And you know, I'm not going to a university or anything of that sort. I'm just at the 'Prep' and taking up special branches outside with Mr. Howard."

"What kind of branches?" queried Norma.

"Oh, science, and physics, but specially entomology and forestry. He's in government service, you know."

"He doesn't act a bit important or dignified, does he?" Norma said thoughtfully. "You'd almost think he was a sort of grown-up boy."

"I wish I knew all he does. It's mighty nice for a fellow to have a friend like Stanley. It's like being a little bicycle running in the track of a speeding motorcycle. You may not be able to keep up, but it's mighty good exercise trying to hit the pace."

Kit was walking behind the others with Amy and Anne. Now that they had joined the others, and the girls were talking about Stanley also, she had become strangely silent.

"You don't know him very well, do you?" Amy asked, curiously. "I mean, he isn't related to you."

Kit shook her head with bland indifference.

"He's a friend of Billie's. I only met him down east when he came to chase the gypsy moth in Gilead."

She did not add that with Shad's help and able cooperation, she had managed to curtail the chase of the gypsy moth, temporarily, by holding the chaser captive in the family corn-crib, but she inwardly suspected that Stanley was remembering it. Every once in a while she accidentally caught him looking at her, with a look of amused, interested retrospection that made her vaguely uncomfortable.

As they left the campus, Norma, leading with Billie, took the street that led to the bluffs overlooking the lake, and somehow or other in the subsequent scramble down the narrow pathways, Kit found Stanley at her elbow. Even Jean could not have been more dignified or distant in her manner, but Stanley refused to be frozen out.

"You know," he said, genially, "I've just found out something, Miss Kit. I forgave you long ago for locking me up in your corn-crib, and nearly landing me in the local calaboose, but you don't forgive me one bit for trespassing in your berry patch."

Kit's profile tilted ever so slightly heavenward. Jean had loved to quote to her in the old days that consistency was a jewel, and William of Avon had said so positively, whereupon Kit would swing always, feeling herself backed by Emerson's opinion that "consistency was a hobgoblin of little minds." Yet now she felt herself feeling almost righteously consistent. She had thoroughly made up her mind that very day when Mr. Hicks made his memorable and fruitless journey to Greenacres that not even government experts had any right to climb over fences into people's private property without first asking permission. Perhaps the sudden popularity of the trespasser with all the other members of the family had something to do with Kit's stand against him. Even Helen had remarked that she didn't see how on earth Kit could ever have imagined a person looking like Mr. Howard could be a berry hooker.

"I don't want you to forgive me," she said, calmly. "I've never been one bit sorry for it. I think you ought to have come up to the house and asked permission to go in there. And you never said that you were sorry. It always seemed to me as if you rather acted as if you thought it was a good joke"—she hesitated a moment, before adding pointedly,—"on me."

"Suppose I apologize now." Stanley's tone was absolutely serious, but Kit, with one quick look at the precipitous path, ahead of them, laughed.

"Not here, please. Wait until we hit the level shore. You do really have to pay attention on this path, or you miss your footing and toboggan all at once."

"Then, suppose," he persisted, "we just consider that I have apologized. And if you accept, you can raise your right hand at me."

Kit immediately raised her left one, and waggled it provocatively over her shoulder. Before he could say any more, she had hurried ahead and caught up with the rest.

THE COURT OF APPEAL

It was not until after they had gone, when Kit was by herself, that she remembered all Billie had told her, at the very last of his stay.

They had walked along the lake shore together, a little behind the others, after the Beaubien family had been visited.

"You haven't told me anything at all," Kit said, "about home. When were you in Gilead last?"

"Just before we came west," Billie answered.

"Was everything all right?" Billie hesitated. "Oh, for heaven's sake, Billie, tell me if there is anything. You can't give me any nervous shocks at all, and I'm dying to find an excuse to get back home."

"Why, there isn't anything the matter, exactly," Billie said, cheerfully, but with a certain reservation in his tone, that made Kit long to get him with a good grip in his curly hair and shake him the way she used to do two years ago. "The only thing that I know about, I heard grandfather telling Uncle Jerry. I don't suppose I ought to repeat it either."

"Billie, I wish I could shake you right here by the Michigander sea. How dare you keep back any news of my family from me?"

"It was something about there not being any more dividends until after the war, on some stock. I guess it hit grandfather, too, but I heard him say that there wasn't a farm up there that couldn't support itself, properly run, and he guessed they'd all weather the storm."

Kit frowned heavily.

"Stock," she repeated with scorn. "The very idea, anyway, of taking real money and giving it away for a lot of little certificates. If I had money I'd put it in a nice clean, dry, covered tin pail, and hang it down my well, just like Jerushy said she always did when she had a ten-dollar bill around that worried her. And there Dad's got all the expense of rebuilding Greenacres. It's going to be a regular White Elephant, I'm afraid, because it isn't all paid for anyway, and there's the yearly interest." She hesitated before she added, slowly, "I wonder why on earth it is, Bill Ellis, that the people with the most children who need the most money always seem to be hunting for it, and these nice, old, placid darlings, like the Dean and Miss Daphne, have simply got oodles planted away somewhere, and never have to think twice over where the next windfall is coming from."

But Billie was inclined to take an optimistic view of the whole affair.

"Grandfather said that there was no cause for worry; it was just a case of pitch in and get your living out of the farms again."

"Yes," said Kit, with fine scorn, "get your living out of the farms. That's all very well for him to say, when he's got everything to do with, and twenty of the best cows in Windham County, but we moved up there on hope and a shoe-string. And we've never really raised anything except chickens and children. You know, Billie, even with a small income, how you can play country gentleman to your heart's content in a little place like Gilead."

"Stanley says your place, if it was properly worked, would make one of the finest fruit farms up there, 'cause all your land slopes to the south as far as the river. He says if he had it he'd sell off the heavy timber for cash and put the money right into hardy varieties of fruit and hogs."

Kit laughed.

"Can't you see Helen's face over the hogs, when she has wanted to raise bulbuls and white peacocks, with a few antelopes and gazelles wandering around. But I suppose one could keep the hogs out of sight, they wouldn't have to graze on the front lawn. Did he tell Dad that?"

"I don't know," Billie said, doubtfully. "You know, Uncle Jerry's kind of hard to get confidential with over his own affairs, but I wouldn't worry, Kit, if I were you. Things always come out all right."

"They do not," returned Kit, calmly. "Even Cousin Roxy says that you have to give Providence a helping hand now and then. I'm going to think up a way to start those hogs rambling over the southern slopes of Greenacre Hall."

Billie smiled at her mischievously.

"That's the new name, isn't it? You'll be a nice crowd of farmerettes next summer, won't you?"

"Maybe it'll happen before next summer," prophesied Kit, sagely. "Jean and mother like to call it Greenacre Hall, but I like Greenacre Farm, if we're going to do any business there. Thanks ever so much for telling me, Billie. You may have changed the course of destiny, because I can tell you now I'm going home."

After dinner that night Kit was out on the veranda alone for a while with only Sandy at her feet. There was a light in the study bay window. Miss Daphne had gone over to a meeting of the Women's War Chest committee at the Bellamys'. Kit was wondering whether it would be best to write first to her mother or to Jean. Jean would be leaving a few days after Christmas for New York anyway. How she longed to know just exactly what the family's plans were for the winter. But the worst of it was, one of the Robbins' failings or virtues as a family was for each member to spare the other members all the worry and bother possible, by carefully concealing any little personal troubles. To Kit this was all wrong. What on earth, she used to argue, was the use of being a family if you didn't all lean on each other and derive mutual strength and support?

Finally, she decided to write to Cousin Roxy herself. There was always something satisfactory in making her the court of appeal, on any point of doubt; even though her decision might not be a favorable one, you always felt sure you were getting it straight without any affectionate bias.

Accordingly, a confidential appeal went speeding east, and back came the reply, by return mail, as Kit had known it would.

"DEAR CHILD:—

HOGS AND HORACE

Kit was delighted over the whole spirit of the letter, and went directly to the Dean with its message. He was deeply engrossed in getting up his first notes and commentaries on the urn and statue. It had not seemed for the past two or three weeks as if he resided any longer in Delphi at all. Kit told Miss Daphne she was positive he was wandering through Egypt all the time, the Egypt of five thousand years ago. And it was only the shadow of his self that seemed to sit closeted for hours in the study.

He hardly glanced up now as she came in, but smiled and nodded when he saw who it was, keeping on with his writing.

"Just hand me that volume on the second shelf to your right by the door. Second volume, 'Explorations in Upper Egypt.' Look up Seti I in the index."

Kit found the place and laid it before him, perching herself on one end of the desk, as she always did when she wanted to attract his attention. The little statuette of Annui smiled grotesquely down upon her from its pedestal. The urn stood in a handy place of honor upon the desk itself as the Dean had been deciphering the inscriptions upon it.

"I hate to disturb you, Uncle Cassius," Kit began, with the directness so characteristic of her, "but I really think I ought to go back home. You've been wonderful to give me such a long visit, and I've enjoyed the school work immensely, but somehow I begin to feel like a soldier who has been away on a furlough. It's time for me to get back to the firing line, because mother needs me."

The Dean glanced up in surprise, and came slowly out of his dream of concentration as the meaning of her words dawned upon him.

"Why, my dear child," he exclaimed, "this is very sudden. There has never been any question about your going back, at least——" He coughed deprecatingly. "Not since we became acquainted with you. Has anything happened?"

"Why, nothing special—I mean, nothing tragic. It's only this, Dad's lost a lot of money all at once. He did have a little income, enough so we never have had to depend on the farm entirely, but now, even that has been swept away. I suppose it will come back some time after the war, but as I understand it, the stock he had has stopped paying dividends."

"Jerry never had any head for business." The Dean tapped one hand lightly with his tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles in an absent-minded musing way that nearly drove Kit frantic. "But what can you do about it, my dear? Surely by returning at such a time you merely add to your father's burdens."

"No, I won't," Kit answered, decidedly, "because I've got a plan that I've been thinking about for ever and ever so long. I'm going to try and persuade Dad to let us put in hogs."

"Hogs," repeated the Dean, in a baffled tone. "Hogs, my dear. Who ever heard of raising hogs when they could raise anything else at all? I'm sure that Horace never tried hogs on his farm."

Now it just happened that Kit had a smattering knowledge of Horace, gleaned from Billie. In the old days back home, when they had studied together, they had seemed to always get the personal side of the old heroes and people of fame. And just now the only thing she could remember about Horace popped up in her mind.

"Well, I'll bet a cookie there was many a time when he wished he had. Don't you remember how he wrote,

"We've had our hollow tree, and I'm afraid unless we get right down to business now, we'll have all the crusts of bread and liberty we fancy. I just can't stay here in this beautiful place with nothing to worry over, while the family are practically in a lifeboat with breakers ahead."

If the Dean had known Kit better, he would have realized that in emotional moments she was prone to exaggerated similes, but as it was, he felt impressed.

"Why, God bless my heart and soul," he exclaimed, "I had no idea it was as bad as this. I thought Jerry was very comfortably fixed."

"Oh, we were at the Cove. We had everything we wanted, but father was sick an awfully long while after his breakdown, and he's never been able to do any work since."

"But how ridiculous for a man to bury himself and all his capital in a place like Gilead," the Dean protested, somewhat testily. "He could have done a great many other things, I should imagine."

Kit leaned over and looked at him, right in the eye.

"Uncle Cassius, what would you do if everything was just swept away from you, health, money, home and your work; what do you suppose you would do? If there was any spot of earth that was peaceful and restful, and that you loved best, wouldn't you want to go to it? That's what Gilead means, 'the place of healing.'"

There was silence in the old study. The Dean was looking straight at Annui as if for inspiration, and yet it was not the old image which he saw, but a vision of Gilead as he remembered it in his boyhood, a vision of green hills spanning the horizon, of fertile valleys and many watercourses. Memories stirred in his mind of Jerry Robbins' mother, his sister. Sometimes Kit reminded him of her, in her buoyant self-reliance and optimism.

The bonds of relationship had always been somewhat intangible to him, since he had grown up. He had laid out his own career himself, and had carried every ambition to completion and reality. The last twenty years had been years of fruition, of honors freely given, years of fulfillment. He had not been, like Judge Ellis, intolerant of other men's failures; he had simply ignored them, never feeling any responsibility towards the weaker ones who fell in the race. In his way, he prided himself upon a gentle, aloof philosophy of life which left him the boundaries of the old study as a horizon of happiness.

Probably not until that moment had he realized the gradual revolutionary process Kit had been putting him through ever since her arrival. She had trained him into having an interest in other people and things, until now it was impossible for him not to see the picture of Greenacres as she did.

"How did you find out about this, my dear?" he asked.

"Well," Kit replied, honestly, "partly from Billie and partly from this letter from Cousin Roxy. You know Cousin Roxy, don't you, Uncle Cassius?"

The Dean's eyes twinkled reminiscently as he took the letter.

"Oh, yes, I remember Roxana well. She used to bully me outrageously." He opened the letter and started to read slowly, just as Kit suddenly remembered Cousin Roxy's remarks on Cassius Cato Peabody. But there was no turning back now. Straight through to the end he read, and several deep chuckles broke the silence, real chuckles of delight, such as Kit had never heard from the Dean. When he had finished, he handed it back to her.

"Perfectly true, my dear," he said. "I can quite see why you feel that you are needed. You had better take your midwinter examinations, and prepare to return home about Christmas. In all likelihood your Aunt Daphne and I will accompany you."

THE CIRCLE OF RA

The next thing was to break the news gently and convincingly to the family. Kit figured it out from all sides, and finally decided to walk right up to the horns of the dilemma in a fearless attack. Writing back a long, chatty letter to the Mother Bird, she simply tacked on the postscript:

"Don't be at all surprised to see me arrive with the other Christmas packages, and have a fire laid in the guest room."

At first she had thought only the Dean would accompany her, but when Miss Daphne heard of the plan, she declared she would not be left out of it.

"Why, brother, I haven't seen any of the folks down east in years and years, and it would hearten me up wonderfully to visit them. I think I'd like to be with Roxy as much as possible, because we were girl friends together."

Whether it was the prospect of going home or the longing to leave a good record behind her, no one could say, not even Kit herself, but she took her midwinter examinations with full speed up and colors flying, as Billie would say.

The girls took her coming departure with many objections, but they proceeded to give her various send-offs. Charity and Anne decided on a formal tea, up in the former's room, but the solemnity of the occasion was banished when Peggy rose to read some farewell poesy, concocted by herself and the "Jinx."

After which, Amy led a procession of solemn-visaged, sombre-clad academic maidens, who approached the divan where Kit sat, and each presented her with some sage advice, in couplets. Amy explained later that she got the idea from Sargent's "Gifts of the Hours."

"Although, if it had been summer time, we would have tried to make it more like Tennyson's 'Princess,' but I think this carries the idea all right. Norma wrote the couplets, and they almost have a prophetic note. Don't you think so, Kit?"

Kit agreed that they did, and long afterwards, up in the old cupola council room, she read them aloud to Helen and some of the Gilead girls. One in particular rather hit her fancy, because Kit hated early rising.

The Saturday before they left was Kit's day for entertaining. Miss Daphne took the keenest delight in making it a success. There was a luncheon at one, followed by a whole afternoon of entertaining. Even the Dean emerged from his sanctum to mingle a little, and the "Jinx" declared she had never seen him so human before. He brought out the royal statuette of Annui and even the sacred memorial urn to show the girls. As Miss Daphne said afterwards, this showed what a friendly, benign mood he was in.

Kit was standing on the outskirts of the group around the old grand piano, where he had placed both antiques, when she suddenly saw, through the long French windows, Marcelle Beaubien coming up the drive. The Dean was deep in a happy, explanatory speech and she slipped away unnoticed by the rest.

"It was awfully nice of you to come, Marcelle," she exclaimed. "I've been watching for you ever since lunch. Why didn't you come earlier?"

"But I am early," smiled Marcelle. "It is only about three o'clock. Generally, I have to stay in all day Saturday, and give the boys a chance to go out. Will you write to me when you are away?"

"I'd love to. You know it's a queer thing, Marcelle, but really and truly, out of all the girls I have met here I feel better acquainted with you than with any of them."

Kit said this rather slowly, as if it were a sort of self-revelation which she had just discovered that minute. And yet it was true. She had enjoyed the class friendships at Hope immensely, but Marcelle had seemed to stand out from the rest of the girls as such a distinctly interesting personality. In a way, she was like Billie, because she loved nature and all the romance of adventure. There was in her nature the mingling of the three races, the French, the Indian, and the Scotch, and besides, Kit felt personally responsible for her success up at Hope. The girls had played absolutely fair and square, once they had decided to bury the hatchet, and given the chance, Marcelle herself had justified the opening of doors to her. As Amy said:

"It doth not behoove us to say a blessed word against Marcelle when she is racing ahead in all our classes, and plucking honors right and left."

Marcelle smiled at Kit's remark.

"I have heard my grandmother say that in her girlhood her people of the northern forests pledged their friendships by saying, 'While the grass grows and the waters run, so long shall we be friends.'" She turned and smiled at Kit her grave-eyed slow smile. "I will say that to you now, before you go."

Kit laid one arm around her shoulders.

"Me too," she answered, heartily. "Sounds like the blood brother vow they used to take."

They went up the steps together and into the long double parlors. The girls were singing at the piano while Amy played one class song after another, and the Dean hung broodingly over the urn. Kit thought she had never seen the house so full of life and happiness, and the look on Miss Daphne's face was one of positive radiance.

"You know," she said, confidentially to Kit, in a low voice, "after we return from the east, I have undertaken something that I know will do me good and the Dean, too. I've just been appointed head of the Junior Red Cross in Delphi, and the girls will meet here every Saturday. We shall miss you, Kit, but if it gives you any pleasure, my dear, to know it, I want to tell you it was your coming which opened my eyes to the folly of sitting with empty hands while there was work to be done. I don't think I can ever belong to what the Dean calls 'the rocking-chair squad' again, without a guilty conscience."

Kit hugged her fervently.

"Oh, but you're a dear, Aunt Daphne, to say such things. I only wish I could stay right here and be in two places at once. I'll tell you what I've learned here, organization." Kit said this very firmly and earnestly. "Back home they always said that I knew just what I wanted to do, but I didn't know how to do it. Well, I know what I want to do now. I want to go back home and organize."

Miss Daphne laughed and shook her head.

"Oh, Kit, child, do go easy," she said. "Organize yourself all you like, but be terribly careful how you start organizing other people's lives."

The girls had to leave early, as the Shakespearian entertainment was to happen that night up at Assembly Hall.

"Your very last chance to mingle, Kit," Norma called, as they all trooped out of the lower hall. "Don't lose your presence of mind to-night, when you find yourself in doublet and hose."

Kit stood on the veranda steps waving to them until they turned the corner of Maple Avenue.

"Oh, dear," she sighed, "I do wish that friendships lasted longer. I mean, I wish I could have all my friends here down in Gilead. You see, there us girls are all so scattered around on adjacent hilltops that it's hard to get together regularly. We've only got our hiking club. I think when I go back I'm going to start some more."

"The Dean wanted to have a little talk with you before dinner, dear. I think you'd better go in now, because we want to reach the Hall in good time for you to dress, and I'm going to have an early dinner. Don't talk too long. You know how he is when he gets absorbed in anything."

Kit promised and joined the Dean. He had carried back the statue of Annui and stood before it regarding it with perplexity. Kit slipped her arm through his. It seemed as though there had sprung up a new comradeship and understanding between them since their last talk.

"Won't he tell you his secrets, Uncle Cassius?" she asked. "He has such an aggravating smile, just as if he were amused at baffling you."

"I am baffled," the Dean conceded, genially. "I've reached a certain point and there there is a blank which no historic record seems to fill. I thought when I had restored the inscription on the urn that it would tell me several of the missing points, but it seems to be merely a sort of sacred invocation. I am amazed at the urn being hollow. Every other memorial urn which I found during our excavations in Egypt was sealed, and upon being opened we always found rolls of papyrii within. I am disappointed."

Kit went into the back parlor and lifted the urn from the piano very carefully, carrying it out to its customary place on the Dean's desk. Then she stood staring at it, reflectively. It certainly was not exactly a thing of beauty, although, as the Dean had pointed out to her, one saw the influence of Grecian art in its graceful lines. It always reminded Kit of Indian pottery down among the Zunis and Mexicans.

"What does the inscription say?" Kit leaned forward anxiously.

"It merely traces the origin of King Amenotaph to the god Thoth," said the Dean, thoughtfully; "that is, the Egyptian Hermes, or Mercury, as we know him, and it is extremely vague, being a curious mixture of the Coptic and the ancient Aramaic."

"But what does it say?" asked Kit again.

The Dean followed the curious markings on the urn with his finger-tip, bending forward and peering over the rims of his tortoise-shell glasses.

"It says, 'Amenotaph, born of Thoth, shall reign in wisdom. Kings shall serve at his footstool. Ra shall shine upon him. He shall lie in peace, encompassed by Ra.'"

"Is that all?"

"That is all," sighed the Dean. "It seems merely a laudatory sentiment."

"Who was Ra?" asked Kit, curiously, running her hand around the top of the urn.

"The Sun god. His symbol was the circle. You see it here."

Kit repeated again, slowly:

"'He shall lie in peace, encompassed by Ra,' That means surrounded by Ra, doesn't it, Uncle Cassius?" She picked up the um in both hands and shook it close to her ear.

"My dear child, do be careful," cried the Dean; "it is priceless."

But Kit put it under one arm as though it had been a milk pail and tapped around the inside with her knuckles, listening.

"That's a perfectly good hollow jug," she said, solemnly. "Just you tap it, and listen, uncle. I'll bet a cookie they've hidden something inside the outside and that Ra has guarded it all these years."

"Just a moment, just a moment, my dear," exclaimed the Dean, smiling like a happy boy. "You've given me an idea. This may be a cryptogram, or an ideographic cypher. Just a moment, now; don't speak to me."

He sat down at the desk and figured laboriously for nearly twenty minutes, working out the inscription in cypher, while Kit stared at him delightedly. After all, it was rather gratifying, she thought, to have somebody in the family who could take a little remark made thousands of years ago in old Egypt and make sense out of it to-day. She waited patiently until he had finished. His hands were trembling as he reached for the urn.

"The circle," he repeated, "the circle. 'Ra in his circle shall guard Amenotaph.' The secret lies in the circle, Kit. Do you suppose it could mean the rim of the urn?"

Kit knelt beside him, following the inscription on the outside of the urn carefully with her finger-tip, the same as the Dean had done, and stopping when she came to a small circle in black and red outline.

"Do you suppose Ra lives here, Uncle Cassius?" she asked, poking at it thoughtfully. She peered on the inner side at the corresponding spot to the circle, and gave a little cry of excitement. There was the faintest sign of a circle here also, like one of the age cracks on Cousin Roxy's antique china. "See," she cried. "When you push on this side, the other gives a little bit."

The Dean could not speak. He took the urn from her over to the window and carefully examined the inner circle through a microscope.

"Yes," he said, fervently, "you are perfectly right, my dear. The circle moves. I think I shall have to take it to Washington on our way east. I would not take the responsibility of trying to remove it myself."

"Oh, dear, it seems awful to have to wait so long," Kit exclaimed, regretfully. "You know it seemed to me as if you could just press it through with your thumb, like this."

She had not intended pressing so hard, but merely to show him what she meant, and lo, as Cousin Roxy would have said, under the pressure of Kit's strong, young, capable thumb, the circle of Ra depressed and pushed slowly through, just exactly as Kit told the girls long afterwards, like when you plug a watermelon. The Dean looked on in utter amazement, as Kit lifted the urn and tested the inner section by shaking it. Then she peered into the circular hole, about the size of a quarter. The urn was fully two inches thick, and by inserting her finger into the space she found that it was made in two sections, with enough room between for a place of concealment.

"There's something in here like asbestos, Uncle Cassius," she began, and turning the urn upside down, she tried shaking it, using a little pressure on the circle to separate the two rims. Slowly they gave, while the Dean hovered over her, cautioning and directing the operation, until two complete urns lay before them. But it was not these which the Dean literally snatched at. It was the curious cap-shaped mass which fell out in the form of a cone. To Kit it appeared to be of no significance whatever, but the Dean handled it as tenderly as a new-born infant, and under his deft and tender touch it unrolled in long scrolls of papyrus.

The Dean rose to his feet solemnly, and his voice was hushed, as he said:

"Kit, you do not know what you have done. Some day the significance of this occasion will recur to you. All I can say is that you have lifted the veil of the past, and revealed the secret of Amenotaph."

HEADED FOR GILEAD

It was very hard for Kit to keep her mind on Orlando that evening, between the excitement of the coming trip and the revelation of the urn. But after it was over the girls clustered around her for one last send-off, and she realized then how closely the ties of friendship had been cemented in her few months at Hope.

She looked around at them with eyes filled with tears, and Kit was not at all of the crying type, but it seemed as if each girl of her own special crowd had filled a particular niche in her life for the time being. There was Charity, with her eye-glasses, and placid face, upturned smiling lips and quizzical eyes. How often she had taken the edge off Kit's rancor and indignation with just a few timely, humorous words. Amy, Norma, Peggy, and High Jinks had been the starters in all kinds of fun and recreation, while Anne had seemed to come the nearest to her of them all in actual comradeship. Then last of all, Marcelle. It was she who clasped Kit's hand, as she repeated in her low voice:

"While the grass grows and the waters run, so long shall we be friends."

"For pity's sakes, girls," exclaimed Miss Daphne, "don't act as if you were never going to see her again. I shall see that she comes back in vacation next year, because the Dean and I couldn't possibly do without her, now."

Just before it was time to leave for the train Monday morning, Rex and Anne brought over their farewell gift.

"It's supposed to be like a steamer basket," Anne said, "only this is a train basket. We figured on your being on the train for at least two days, if you do happen to stop over in Washington."

Kit did not open it until they boarded the limited in Chicago and were well on their way, speeding eastward. There was no sign of snow as yet, but the land seemed to lie locked in a frosty grip of barrenness. The Dean seemed to smile perpetually now. He occupied the lower part of the section across the aisle, and Kit loved to watch him as he sat by the window, his little black skullcap making him look like a portrait of an old-time French savant. Every now and then he would glance up and meet her eyes with a little smile of mutual understanding. It was as if they, too, were united in a close bond of sympathy, ever since they had solved the mystery of Amenotaph and Ra's circle.

When lunch time drew near Kit opened the train basket. There were fruit and home-made preserves, little tempting jars of sweet pickles and stuffed olives, home-made fruit cake and jars of club cheese with thin wafers that just matched them. The girls at Hope had sent down five pounds of fudge as a parting gift to be included in the basket, but best of all, Kit thought, was a young wild turkey, roasted to perfection, and stuffed with chestnuts.

"Isn't this just like Anne!" Kit exclaimed, exultantly. "She knows how I love to nibble on good things to eat. Now we won't have to go into the dining-car for lunch, and it will seem like a regular picnic having it here."

The Dean was like a boy in his enjoyment of the unconventional luncheon. He ordered a wonderful salad as his share and a pot of French cocoa.

"Doesn't this remind you, Daphne, of some of the basket luncheons we used to have in England and France years ago?" he said, happily.

"Cousin Beth told us last year about a party she was with that went to the North Cape," Kit related, "and just when they were all transfixed by the majesty of the midnight sun one of the ladies said it was the most unique experience of her whole life, eating crackers and cheese on the North Cape."

"She would have left peanut shells on Fujiyama," the Dean replied, gravely.

They reached Washington the following day, and here the weather was even milder, with almost a touch of autumn left in the air. Christmas was Thursday, and Kit had pleaded for them not to miss Christmas Eve at home, so while the Dean took the urn up to the Institute, and left his records there, Miss Daphne and Kit spent nearly four hours driving around the city and visiting famous points of interest.

"Be sure and take a taxi, so you'll cover more ground," the Dean suggested when he left them, but Kit could not resist the beaming smile of one of the old-time darky coachmen, who sat drowsing on the seat of an open victoria outside the Capitol grounds. He was dressed in an old Colonial blue livery, with a tall silk hat, curving out at the top like those of the seventies.

"But, Aunt Daphne, doesn't he act just exactly as though he had been a retainer in our honored family for generations?" Kit regarded his back with distinct approbation as they drove along Pennsylvania Avenue, and when the old fellow raised his whip in salute to every other old retainer perched on the box of a victoria that they met, she was delighted.

The Dean joined them for dinner at one of the old exclusive hotels in the White House section of town, and here Kit fairly reveled in the general atmosphere of diplomatic tone. She sighed involuntarily, watching a very beautiful woman who sat at an adjoining table, when she extended her hand in greeting to two foreign-appearing gentlemen in uniform, and they both bowed over it and kissed it.

"That's the Continental custom, my dear," Miss Daphne murmured.

"Oh, dear, I wish they'd do it here still," Kit said. "It makes one think of powdered hair and lovely, flouncy hoop skirts. I'm going to practice it when I get home."

It was not until they took the through train from Washington for New London that Kit relaxed. It was the last home stretch, and now that the end of the journey drew near, the full importance of the Dean's visit at such a time grew upon her. The little hint she had given about the guest chamber being ready was the only thing that would have made the family suspect she was bringing any guests with her. Not a word had been sent to notify them of their arrival, but the last two hours in Washington had been given up to the purchasing of gifts, and Kit had looked positively dazed when the Dean handed her twenty-five dollars with the remark:

"You'll want to buy a few little things too, my dear."

A few little things. Kit wondered if he had any idea at all of how little cash had figured in the purchasing of home gifts at Greenacres the past two years.

THE DEAN SEES THE STAR

They arrived at Nantic a little past noon, after leaving Washington on the midnight express. There was no stop-over at New York in the morning, the train going straight through to New England, and here they found the first snowstorm.

"There are the old gray rock walls, bless them," exclaimed the Dean, delightedly, "and the evergreens. The west may keep its towering white pines, but give me the old hemlocks and junipers, with the birches and oaks behind them."

Kit was so glad to see Mr. Briggs' smiling face on the platform at Nantic that she almost threw her arms around him, as she jumped from the platform of the train.

"Well, well," he ejaculated, "didn't expect to see you around so soon, Miss Robbins. Come to stay a while? Brought company with you, too, didn't you? Home folks or just visitors?"

"Home folks," said the Dean, directly behind them, as he extended his hand, "who haven't been home in thirty years."

"You don't say so," Mr. Briggs smiled at him, curiously. "Well, you won't find many things changed around here in only that time. Want me to 'phone over for a rig to take you up? The Robbinses are settled in the Hall now. Shouldn't wonder if it was kind of damp there yet. Had quite a spell 'round here of rainy weather before the frost set in. Looks as if 'twas going to stay in for a spell of snow now, though. Some boxes came up from New York yesterday for your folks, but I couldn't tell what was in 'em off-hand. Felt sort of hefty, though."

"It seems so good," Kit said, fervently, as he moved away from them out of hearing, "to be around where even the baggage man knows all about you, and takes an interest in everything. People don't do that out west, do they, Uncle Cassius? Not even in a little place like Delphi. I wonder if any one will remember you."

Perhaps the Dean was wondering the same thing as they drove up through the old hill road towards Gilead. One by one he recognized the old familiar landmarks and farms as they passed them, but Miss Daphne was far too engrossed in watching the Dean's own face to care for familiar spots on the landscape.

It was not until they got up near the Peckham mill that they met any of the old neighbors, but here Mr. Peckham himself came leisurely down from the mill path to the bridge and hailed Kit.

"Howdy, Kit. Home for Christmas?" he called cheerily, then taking a good look at the other occupants of the old station surrey, "Well, Cass Peabody, who in creation ever thought of seeing you around these parts again."

The Dean leaned forward, peering over the tops of his glasses with almost the smile of a boy.

"It's Dan Peckham, isn't it?" he said. "Yours is the first voice to welcome me home, Dan."

Mr. Peckham insisted on their waiting a moment while he hurried up to the house to call Elvira. Kit sat back in the carriage enjoying the reunion. Miss Daphne had gone to school years before at the Select Academy for Young Ladies, over in Willimantic, with Elvira Evans long before she became Mrs. Peckham. Kit felt, listening to the four of them go over dear old reminiscences, that it was as though she stood at the curtain of the past, on tiptoe at a peep-hole.

The early twilight had already begun to set in by the time they reached the turn of the road below the Greenacre entrance gates. On the silent, frosty air, Kit heard Shad's clear whistle, and over the fringe of pines along the river there came the murmur of the waterfall. There was none of the family in sight when they turned up the drive, but suddenly Kit's eager eyes saw a familiar figure out by the chicken coops, and leaning forward she gave a shrill co-oee!

Doris' head went up like a startled deer. She dropped the pan of feed to the ground and fairly flew to meet them, and then before Kit could even detach herself from these clinging arms, the big front door swung open, and there in the lamplight was the Mother Bird and Helen.

Jean was up-stairs as usual at this hour when she was home, reading with her father, but Kit never forgot the feeling of relief that came to her when she finally found herself before the open fire in the big living-room with all of the family around her, and the full satisfaction of having brought home the Peabodys after all these years of estrangement.

That night, after dinner, while Shad and the Dean were closeted in the big front room erecting the huge hemlock Christmas tree, the girls assembled in Jean's room.

"Cousin Roxy invited us all over to their place," Helen said, as she dove into a lower bureau drawer, filled with carefully wrapped parcels, "but mother wanted to have a home Christmas, because the house does seem new to us all, and we never expected to see you home at all."

"You didn't? Well, I wrote and told you to be sure and have the guest chamber ready. I didn't know myself that Uncle Cassius and Aunt Daphne were coming until the last minute." Kit sat perched on the bed in a pink kimono, brushing her hair. And just at this moment she caught Jean's eye in the mirror, such an amused, knowing eye that Kit caught the full significance of that glance immediately, and laughed.

"I suppose you feel as though you had brought home the wealth of the Indies, Kit Robbins. You can't tell me that it wasn't intentional, because I know you. All I want to know is, who told you?"

"Told me what?" asked Kit innocently. Not for worlds would she have betrayed Cousin Roxy's confidence. "Any one to hear you talk, Jean, would think that you didn't want to see me at all."

Jean laughed. It was impossible to get past Kit's wall of evasion when she chose to take refuge behind it.

"Well, never mind how it has happened," she said happily. "I'm sure that you managed it in some way, and I can tell you right now, it has happened in the nick of time. You have no idea, Kit, how I have dreaded going back to the city and leaving things as they are. Dad seems to get so discouraged now when matters go wrong, and that throws the load of keeping up right on mother's shoulders."

"I know it," Kit rejoined, "but if it's anything to you all, I'd be willing to bet anything that right this minute Uncle Cassius is springing some glad tidings down-stairs that will turn the tide of fortune."

"Oh, Kit," begged Doris, "don't you and Jean talk like that, because I can't understand what you're driving at; tell it all out at once."

But Kit only slipped from the bed, and started to dance around the room provokingly, with many mysterious gestures.

"Supposing, curious damsel, that I were to speak unto you in the mystic language of past ages, and say that this windfall has come to the robins' nest out of the tomb of Amenotaph, out of the desert of Ra, supposing," she had to stop and chuckle at the look of utter astonishment on Doris' round eager face, "supposing I was to tell you that Annui had smiled upon the revelation, and that the sacred circle had given up its secret at the punch of your sister's delicate thumb. You see, even when I tell you, you don't understand, so you'll just have to wait until Uncle Cassius himself tells the story."

"Kit, you poor child," Jean exclaimed, laughingly, "you're raving. They'll have the tree up by now, and it's long after ten. Mother said that we were to take turns going down in the dark and putting our presents wherever we wanted to."

"I want to be last of all," Kit announced. "Doris, you come on in my room and help me wrap and tie the bundles. Good-night, sweet sisters; happy dreams."

But for the next hour after the lights went out, strange, flitting figures slipped through the halls and down-stairs into the front room, where the giant hemlock stood. And the very last one of all was clad in a bath robe and wore a black skullcap.

Perhaps no one in all Gilead, or indeed wherever the message of the angels might reach in the hearts of men that night, had grasped the inner meaning of their song as the old Dean. He had just finished placing his gifts upon the tree, and was turning to leave, when suddenly from the room above, where Jean and Helen slept, there came a wonderful sound. The old clock down the hall was striking midnight, and keeping to the custom of those fortunate enough to have been born in the Robbins family, the girls had opened their windows to the silent moonlit glory of the night, and sang in chorus: