8. A Square Deal
The first batch of family letters arrived the following week. Kit nearly knocked the mailman over as he came up the walk, for she had been watching anxiously at each delivery. After all, it was the first time she had been away from home, and after the first excitement and novelty had worn off, her heart ached for news from home.
It seemed the Dean had written to her father on the night of her arrival, and this was a surprise to Kit.
“It is a great relief to us all to know that you have made such a favorable impression,” Mr. Craig’s letter read. “After all, it was an experiment, and I confess that I was rather skeptical of the result, knowing the Dean as I do. Try to adapt yourself as much as possible to their life there, Kit. You must be considerate of all the Dean’s notions, and make yourself as useful as you can while you are with them.
“The rebuilding of the house is going along splendidly, and we hope to have our Christmas there. I have followed the old plan, but with some improvements, I think, putting in a good furnace, and enlarging the dining room and kitchen. There will be an outdoor fireplace on the west side of the house also, and I know you will enjoy this.”
Enjoy it? Kit stared ahead of her at the shady lawn. Della was bending over nasturtium beds gathering black seeds, but instead, Kit saw in a vision a great hickory fire burning brightly against a black sky. Her mother’s letter came next. Kit read it with delight. She could tell just exactly the mood her mother was in when she wrote, just how her conscience pricked her for having been a party to Kit’s plan.
“Of course, while the Dean’s letter was very nice, still I am sure he felt put upon. I am ever so sorry that we did not write sooner, and tell them that you were coming. It rests with you now, Kit, to make yourself so adaptable that they will forget all about wanting a boy. I have no objection to your staying for the winter term at Hope College. Between ourselves, dear, our plans are a little unsettled. Dad is certain that the house will be ready for us this winter, but you know how slowly the carpenters work.
“Make all the friends that you possibly can. You won’t realize it now, but so many of these friendships become precious lifelong ones. Billie is leaving this week for school. You remember Frank Howard, who came to look after our trees? He has been staying up at the Judge’s, and took a great interest in Billie. Instead of going back to the school he went to last year, Billie is going on to a school in Virginia, not far from Washington, that Frank suggested sending him to. He is a great believer in the value of environment that is associated with historic traditions.”
Kit read this last over twice, but could not agree with it at all. She had always liked the pioneer outlook, the longing to break new trails, the starting of little colonies in clearings of one’s own making. If there was an ivy around her castle, she wanted to plant it herself.
“Historic tradition?” repeated Kit. “When all around here are the old Indian trails, and the footprints left by the French explorers. I just wish I could get Billie out here for a little while. He’ll settle down in some old school that thinks it is wonderful because John Smith built a campfire on its site once upon a time, or Pocahontas planted corn in its football field.”
Kit sighed, tucked her mother’s and father’s letters in her suit pocket and started off for her favorite lookout point on the bluff. Here, with Sandy crouching at her feet, she read the three letters from Doris, Jean, and Tommy. Jean’s was full of plans for going to New York again. Beth, their cousin with whom Jean had stayed the previous winter, had promised her three months at the Art Academy.
“I’m so excited to be going back to New York again. I had a letter from Ralph today and he asked me again if I had decided on an art career. I don’t know what to tell him, but I am going to study this winter anyway. Maybe I’ll find out this year whether it is worthwhile for me to go on or not. I do know that I love Ralph, but I still have that ambition to do something really important with my life. With the exception of my one trip to New York last year, I have never done anything on my own. Perhaps what I mean is, I want to be independent.
“I shall be coming home weekends this year so I can help Mother and Dad with the rebuilding plans. Besides, I do like living in the country more than the city and it’s more for the studying I’m going to do there that I want to go back to New York.”
Kit glanced over the rest of the letter hurriedly. Becky had given a neighborhood party and Frank Howard had interested Jean considerably, especially because he told her he was bound for France the first of November. Jean was always so easily impressed just the first few times she met a person. It took Kit a long time to really admit a stranger to her circle of selected ones, although she made friends easily. And she had never quite forgiven Frank Howard for trespassing in the berry patch, even though it had been in the cause of science. Besides, the last year, Jean had seemed to grow aloof from the others. Perhaps it had been her trip away from home or her ambition. Kit could not precisely define the change but it was there, and she felt that Jean troubled herself altogether too much over things unseen.
Doris’s letter was all about the opening of school, and Tommy asked questions about Delphi.
“When you write, do tell us about the things that happen there, and just what you think about it. I don’t like descriptions in books, I like the talk part. You know what I mean. Jack and I have been helping the carpenters at Woodhow every day after school. The house is coming along fine and the men say we help a lot. Has Uncle Bart got any pets at all?”
Kit laughed over this. If he could only have seen Uncle Bart’s pets. His mummy and horned toads, the chimpanzee skull beaming at one from a dark corner, and the Cambodian war mask from another. It seemed as if every time she looked around the house she found something new, and with each curio there went a story. Oddly enough, the Dean thawed more under Kit’s persuasion when she begged for the stories than at any other time. After each meal, it was his custom to take a few moments’ relaxation in his study. Kit found at these times that he was in his best mood. Relaxed and thoughtful, he would lean back in the deep leather chair between the flat-topped desk and the fireplace, and smoke leisurely. Even his pipe had come from Persia, its amber stem very slender and beautifully curved, its bowl a marvel of carving.
Kit sat pondering over her father’s and mother’s letters. School would begin in another week, and she was to enter the third year in high school. And yet, after what her father had written, she felt that she was not giving the Dean a square deal.
The odor of tobacco came through the study window, and acting on the spur of the moment, she stepped around the corner of the porch and perched herself on the window sill.
“Are you busy, Uncle Bart?” Anybody who was well-acquainted with Kit would have suspected the gentleness of her tone, but the Dean looked over at her with a little pleased smile. Her coming was almost an answer to his reverie.
“Not at all, my dear, not at all. In fact, I was just thinking of you. I am inclined to think after all that we will begin with the geological periods. I wish you to get your data on prehistoric peoples assembled in your mind before we take up any definite groups.”
“That’s all right,” Kit answered, “I don’t mind one bit. I’ll do anything you tell me to, Uncle Bart, because,” this very earnestly, “I do feel as if I hadn’t played quite fair. I mean in coming out here, and landing on you suddenly, without warning you I was a girl, and I want to make up to you for it in every possible way. I’ll study bones and ruins and rocks, and anything you tell me to, but I want to make sure first that you really like me. Just as I am, I mean, before you know for certain whether all this is going to take.”
The Dean glanced up in a startled manner and looked at the face framed by the window quite as if he had never really given it an interested scrutiny before. Not being inclined to sentiment by nature, he had regarded Kit so far solely from the experimental standpoint. Since she had turned out to be a girl, he had decided to make the best of it, and at least try the effect of the course of instruction upon her. The personal equation had never entered into his calculation, and yet here was Kit forcing it upon him, quite as plainly as though she had said, “Do you like me or don’t you? If you don’t, I think I had better go back home.”
“Well, bless my heart,” he said, rubbing his head. “I thought that we had settled all that. Of course, my dear, the reason I preferred a boy was because, well—” the Dean floundered, “because scientists hold a consensus of opinion that through—hem—through centuries of cultivation, I may say, collegiate development—the male brain offers a better soil, as it were, for the—er—er—”
“The flower of genius?” suggested Kit. “I don’t think that’s so at all, Uncle Bart, and I’ll tell you why. You take the farm at home. Dad says that our land in Elmhurst is no good because it’s been worked over and over, and it’s all worn out, but if you plow deep and strike a brand new subsoil you get wonderful crops. Just think what a lovely time you’ll have planting crops in my unplowed brain cells.”
The first laugh she had ever heard came from the Dean’s lips, although it was more of a chuckle. His next question was apparently irrelevant.
“How do you think you’re going to like Hope College?”
“All right,” Kit responded cheerfully. “I only hope it likes me. I’ve met a few of the boys and girls through Rex and Aunt Della, and I like them awfully well. At home they’re nice to you if they know who you are, and all about your family. But here it seems as if they either like you or not. Just when they first meet you, you’re taken right into the fold on the strength of what you are yourself.”
The door opened with a little, light, deprecating tap first from Della’s fingertips. She glanced around the side of it cautiously to be sure she was not disturbing the Dean, and smiled when she saw the two. The Dean’s pipe had gone out, and he was leaning over the desk listening as eagerly as though he had been a boy himself, while Kit, with her hands clasped behind her head and leaning against the window frame, chatted. Usually people conversed with the Dean, they never chatted, and Della realized that Kit had already passed the outposts of the Dean’s defenses.