As they left the campus, Norma, leading with Billie, took the street that led to the bluffs overlooking the lake, and somehow or other in the subsequent scramble down the narrow pathways, Kit found Stanley at her elbow. Even Jean could not have been more dignified or distant in her manner, but Stanley refused to be frozen out.
"You know," he said, genially, "I've just found out something, Miss Kit. I forgave you long ago for locking me up in your corn-crib, and nearly landing me in the local calaboose, but you don't forgive me one bit for trespassing in your berry patch."
Kit's profile tilted ever so slightly heavenward. Jean had loved to quote to her in the old days that consistency was a jewel, and William of Avon had said so positively, whereupon Kit would swing always, feeling herself backed by Emerson's opinion that "consistency was a hobgoblin of little minds." Yet now she felt herself feeling almost righteously consistent. She had thoroughly made up her mind that very day when Mr. Hicks made his memorable and fruitless journey to Greenacres that not even government experts had any right to climb over fences into people's private property without first asking permission. Perhaps the sudden popularity of the trespasser with all the other members of the family had something to do with Kit's stand against him. Even Helen had remarked that she didn't see how on earth Kit could ever have imagined a person looking like Mr. Howard could be a berry hooker.
"I don't want you to forgive me," she said, calmly. "I've never been one bit sorry for it. I think you ought to have come up to the house and asked permission to go in there. And you never said that you were sorry. It always seemed to me as if you rather acted as if you thought it was a good joke"—she hesitated a moment, before adding pointedly,—"on me."
"Suppose I apologize now." Stanley's tone was absolutely serious, but Kit, with one quick look at the precipitous path, ahead of them, laughed.
"Not here, please. Wait until we hit the level shore. You do really have to pay attention on this path, or you miss your footing and toboggan all at once."
"Then, suppose," he persisted, "we just consider that I have apologized. And if you accept, you can raise your right hand at me."
Kit immediately raised her left one, and waggled it provocatively over her shoulder. Before he could say any more, she had hurried ahead and caught up with the rest.