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.