"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.