The Dean looked up at her over his glasses with a quizzical expression, and Miss Daphne fairly caught her breath.
"The Beaubiens on the shore, my dear?" she asked. "Those half-breed French Canadians?"
"Well, I didn't know just what they were," answered Kit, cheerfully, "but I think they're awfully interesting. Don't you think that they look like the Breton fisher people in some of the old French paintings? That girl looked just exactly like the youngest one crossing the sands at low tide at St. Malo. We have the painting at home, and I love it. And there was another girl about thirteen that I saw staring at me from the kitchen, and she looked just like 'The Song of the Lark' girl where she's crossing the fields at dawn."
"The Beaubiens have not a very good reputation, my dear," the Dean coughed slightly behind his hand as he spoke. "The present generation may be law-abiding, but even within my memory, the Beaubiens had a little habit of smuggling."
"Smuggling?" repeated Kit, interestedly. "How could they smuggle way off here?"
"Very easily. There were schooners that used to make the run down from the Canadian shore around the Straits carrying contraband goods in war time. Besides, there is the Indian strain in them, and they are squatters. There have been several lawsuits against them, and they have persisted in staying there on the shore when the property owners on the bluff distinctly purchased riparian rights."
"But, brother, the Beaubiens won all their suits, didn't they?" asked Miss Daphne, pleasantly. "I'm sure the older boys are very industrious, and I think the girl Marcelle is strikingly attractive. You're not really forbidding Kit to go down there, I'm sure."
The Dean said something that was lost in a murmur, for he had been one of the property owners vanquished in the lawsuits by the Beaubiens. After breakfast Kit went up-stairs with Miss Daphne into her own little sitting-room. This looked towards the street, out over the maple and pine-shaded lawn. Also, you could command a very fair view of the college. This was built of gray stone like a Norman castle, with square towers, and was overgrown with woodbine just beginning to show a tinge of crimson.
"It seems awfully queer, Aunt Daphne," Kit said as she leaned out of the window, "to think that I am going there into the 'prep' class. Rex said on the way up here——"
She leaned suddenly farther out and waved.