4. Kit’s Plan
It appeared that Uncle Bart lived strictly up to tradition, for it had been over fifteen years since any word had been received from him. The letter which broke the long silence was read aloud several times that day, the girls and Tommy especially searching between its lines for any hidden sentiment or hint of family affection.
“I don’t see why he tries to be generous when he doesn’t know how,” Doris said musingly. “I wonder if he’s got bushy gray hair.”
“Wait a minute while I read this thing over carefully again,” Kit said. “I think while we’re alone we ought to discuss it freely. Mother just took it as if it were of no consequence. It seems to me, since it concerns us vitally, that we ought to have some selection in the matter ourselves.”
“But Kit, you didn’t read carefully,” Jean interrupted with a little laugh. “See here,” she followed the writing with her fingertip. “He says, ‘Send me the boy.’ That means Tommy.”
“Yes, I know it does, but Mom said she didn’t want Tommy to go now. She said he’s too young to go off alone.”
“Well then, that scotches the deal as far as the rest of us are concerned.”
“I don’t see why I can’t go,” said Kit rather sadly. “I should have been a boy anyway, I’m more like Dad than any of you.”
“No matter what you say,” Jean replied, “I don’t think you’re especially like Dad at all. He hasn’t a quick temper and he’s not the least bit domineering.”
Kit leaned over her tenderly. “Darling, am I domineering to you? Have I crushed your spirit? I’m awfully sorry. I didn’t mean that my bad habits were inherited from Dad. What I meant was my initiative and craving for something new and different. Just at the moment I can’t think of anything that would be more interesting or adventurous than going out to Uncle Bart’s, and trying to fulfill all his expectations.”
“Thought you wanted to go out to the Alameda Ranch with Uncle Hal more than anything in the world, a little while ago. You’re forever changing your mind, Kit.”
“Golly, I wouldn’t give a darn for a person who couldn’t face new emergencies and feel within them the surge of—of—”
“We admit the surge, but would you really and truly be willing to go to this place? I don’t even know what state it’s in.”
There was a footstep in the long hallway, and Mr. Craig came into the living room.
“Dad,” called Doris, “were you ever in Delphi, where Uncle Bart lives?”
Mr. Craig sat down on the arm of Jean’s chair and lit his pipe.
“Just once, long ago when I was about eight years old. We, that is, my mother and I, stayed for about a week at Delphi. It’s a little college town on Lake Michigan, perhaps sixty miles north of Chicago on the big bluffs that line the shore nearly all the way to Milwaukee. Uncle Bart helped to establish Hope College there in Wisconsin. I don’t remember so very much about it, though, it was so long ago. I seem to remember Uncle Bart’s house was rather cheerless and formal. He was a good deal of a scholar and antiquarian. Aunt Della seemed to me just a little shadow that followed after him, and made life smooth.”
Kit listened very closely to every word he said, and Jean was looking up at him seriously.
“I don’t think,” continued their father easily, “that it would be a very cheerful or sympathetic home for any young person. Your mother is right in not wanting to let Tommy go.”
“Oh, but Dad, gee,” Kit burst out eagerly, “Think what a challenge it would be to make them understand how much more interesting you can make life if you only take the right point of view.”
“Yes, but supposing what seemed to be the right point of view to you, Kit, was not the right point of view to them at all. Everyone looks at life from his own angle.”
“Aldo always said that, too,” Jean put in. “Remember, the boy from Italy I met when I was in New York last winter? I remember at our art class each student would see the subject from a different angle and sketch accordingly. Aldo said it was exactly like life, where each one gets his own perspective.”
“But you can’t get any perspective at all if you shut yourself up in the dark,” Kit argued. She leaned her chin on her hands. “Now just listen to this, and don’t all speak at once until I get through. You went away, Jean, to New York, and though maybe I shouldn’t say this, you came back home very much better satisfied and pleasanter to live with. I think after you’ve stayed in one place too long you get fed up and wish there were some way to get away somewhere. I haven’t any special talent for art or anything like that, but I’d like to get away and see something different for a change. And Dad darling, if you would only consent to let me go for even two or three months, I will come back to you a perfect angel, besides doing Uncle Bart and Aunt Della oodles of good.”
“It sounds right enough, dear,” Mr. Craig said, his gray eyes full of amusement, “but we can’t very well disguise you as a boy, and Uncle Bart is not the kind of person to trifle with.”
Kit thought this over seriously.
“Don’t tell them until I’ve started,” she suggested, “and be sure and mail the letter so it will get there after I do, and send me quick, so they won’t have any chance to change their minds. Jean will be here and you really and truly don’t need me here at all.”
“Well, I don’t know what to say, Kit. I’ll have to talk it over with your mother first. I wonder why Uncle Bart wanted Tommy specially.”
“Maybe he thought a boy would be more interested in antiques. Are they Chinese porcelains and jewels, or just mummy things?”
“Mostly ruins, as I remember,” laughed her father. “When he was young, Uncle Bart used to be sent away by the Geographical Society to explore buried cities in Chaldea and Egypt.”
“I wish I could coax him to start in again, right now, and take me with him,” Kit exclaimed, blithely. “Anyhow, I’m going to hope that it will come right and I can go. Can I borrow your trunk Jean? Just write a charming letter, Dad, sort of in the abstract, thanking him and calling us ‘the children’ so he can’t detect just what we are, then when I depart, you can wire them, ‘Kit arrives such and such a time.’ They’ll probably expect a Christopher, and once I land there, and they realize the treasure you have sent them, they will forgive me anything.”
Uncle Bart’s letter was read over again carefully by Mrs. Craig. Kit carried it out to the grape arbor where she was shelling peas for dinner.
“Just read that letter over, Mom, very, very carefully, and see if there isn’t some way you can smuggle me out to Delphi, without hurting Uncle Bart’s feelings.”
Mrs. Craig took the letter and together they read it again—
My dear Thomas:
I trust both you and Margaret are enjoying good health, and that this finds you both facing a more prosperous time than when I heard last from you.
It has occurred to both Della and myself that we may be able to relieve you of part of your responsibility and care, at least for a short time. If the experiment should prove advantageous to all concerned we might be able to arrange a longer stay. One suggestion, however, I feel privileged to make. We would prefer that you would send the boy, as you know this is a college town, and I am sure it would broaden his views to come west, even for a short time. I need hardly add that we will do all in our power to make his stay a pleasant and profitable one.
Another point to consider is this. I would like to interest him in a few of my little hobbies, archaeology, geology, etc. I have delved deeply into the mysteries of the past, and feel I should pass on what I have learned as a heritage to youth.
Trusting that you and Margaret will be able to coincide with our views in the matter, I remain,
Yours faithfully,
Barton C. Peabody.
“You know, Mom,” here Kit slipped her arm persuasively around her mother’s shoulder, “you’ve always said yourself that I was more like a boy. And Buzzy says I’m an awfully good pal, and he’d much rather talk to me than any of the boys around here because I understand what he’s driving at.”
“I don’t think it would matter, if you only visited them for a couple of months, but supposing Uncle Bart took a fancy to you.” Mrs. Craig’s eyes twinkled as she watched Kit’s grave face.
“You mean,” she said, “supposing he decided that my brain measured up to his expectation and they wanted me to stay all winter? Couldn’t I go to school there, just as well as here? You ought to realize, Mom, that I’m really not a child any longer. I’m sixteen.”
“Reaching years of discretion, aren’t you,” smiled her mother. “I suppose it would do you a lot of good in a broadening way to go through a new experience like this.”
“I’m not thinking about that.” Kit sent back an understanding gleam of fun, “but I’m perfectly positive that it would do Uncle Bart and Aunt Della an awful lot of good.”
“Then we shouldn’t deprive them of the opportunity. Do you think so, Matt?”
Matt stuck his head through the vines and clustering leaves. “Couldn’t do no harm either way, s’far as I can see,” he said. “And if the old folks need any sort of discipline, I’d certainly start Miss Kit after them.”