10. The Surprise
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 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 placid temperament to set her off properly.
“Golly, Anne,” Kit exclaimed, sinking with a luxurious sigh of content down among the cushions on the broad couch in the Bellamy’s living 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 Doris, back home, and all honors with Jean. Then, of course, there’s Tommy, and while we are all crazy about each other, still you do have to elbow your way through a large family, if you want to keep on being yourself. Did you ever read anything of old Joaquin Miller, the poet of the Sierras?”
Anne shook her head.
“No, I don’t suppose you have,” Kit went on happily, “that’s one reason why you and I are going to be terribly 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 Doris thinks she does, which is worse. Don’t mind me this morning. I just got a family letter, full of don’ts.”
“Yes, and you’re just as likely as not going to be homesick tomorrow,” laughed Anne.
“That isn’t what I really came over for. You know Jeannette Flambeau. The kids 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 awfully uncomfortable they can make her. There’s Amy Roberts and Georgia Riggs and Peg Barrows 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 Ginny rules in the Douglas dorm. If you can get her on Jeannette’s side, the other girls will follow right along like sheep.”
“Do you suppose,” Kit leaned forward impressively, as she sprang her plan, “do you suppose Ginny would lend her room for a Founders’ Tea?”
“A Founders’ Tea,” repeated Anne. “What’s that?”
Kit spoke slowly and with great expression, “A tea in honor of Malcolm Douglas, pioneer founder of Hope College, and grandfather of Jeannette Flambeau.”
Anne’s blue eyes widened in amazement, and she gasped, “How did you find out? Does Jeannette know?”
“Of course she knows. She told me all about it herself, but I don’t think she realizes what a nice handy little club of defense it gives her against the girls. I want to spring it on them at the tea, and you’ve got to help me get it up. We’ll coax Ginny into lending us her room first, and I’ll look up all about Malcolm Douglas, and write something clever 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 to see Virginia today after classes and get her advice. Another thing, Kit, do you suppose Jeannette would have any things of her grandfather’s 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 genius.” She jumped up from the couch and started to leave. “I think it’s up to me to go and prepare Virginia. 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 warned. “Better do it while it’s fresh in your mind, before you start lectures.”
“I guess I’ll go over now. It’s only a little after five, and that’ll keep me from answering the family letters until I’ve calmed down. If you see anyone looking for me, tell them I’ll be right back. I’ll stop in the library and look up Malcolm’s historic record, on my way, so you may truthfully announce I’m doing research.”
Kit went up the hill road buoyantly. She liked to set a goal for herself this way. 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 starting something, which she sincerely hoped she could finish. Coming along the sidewalk that bounded the campus on the south, she met Ginny on her way back from the post office.
“This is ever so-much better than going upstairs,” 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 Virginia’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 across to the girls in this way with a nice friendly accompaniment of sandwiches, and iced tea. And whatever you do, don’t breathe a single word to anybody. I wouldn’t even tell Jeannette 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 composed the invitations herself and wrote them on small cards.
Saturday, October Second, Three to Five.
You are invited to attend a Founders’ Tea,
Douglas Dormitory, Hope College,
Virginia Parks’s Study.
“Diffident, modest, and correct,” said Kit, critically, when she showed them to Anne. “Now, what are you going to have 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. Sound good? And six kinds of sandwiches and cookies.”
“It’s perfectly swell,” exclaimed Kit. “Aunt Della told me when I first started in that I could give a party for the girls, and this is it. After it is all over I’ll tell her about Jeannette, and I know she’ll enjoy it and approve.”
“Is Ginny going to decorate the study for the occasion?” asked Anne. “We ought to have something sort of different, don’t you think?”
“Pioneer stuff would be the only thing, and I don’t know where we’d scare that up.”
“There’s a whole cabinet of them in the Dean’s room at the college.”
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 Bart as a humble student seeking knowledge.”
All unprepared for the onslaught, the Dean sat enjoying his after-dinner smoke that evening when Kit came to the door and knocked.
“Come in,” he called a little bit testily, looking over his glasses at the intruder. “I don’t think I can talk with you just now, my dear,” he said, “I’m 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.
The Dean coughed, 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, 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. I should think it would be dreadfully 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 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.” Then she said aloud very positively and earnestly, “I know I can help you a lot with this, Uncle Bart, if you will only let me, because history is my favorite subject, and the reason I came to speak to you tonight is this. We girls are going to have a Founders’ Tea, Saturday afternoon. 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. 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 the college. 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 his watch chain.
Kit left with it as though she bore a trophy. The next day the last preparations were completed for impressing on the girls of Hope College the honor of having a Founder’s granddaughter in their midst.