“She seems to have made such a good impression. I hate to have her spoil it by jumping back too soon. It’s such an opportunity for her.”
Jean stopped washing the dishes and gazed out of the kitchen window toward the fields, where none but the crows could find a living now.
“I don’t blame her a bit if she wants to come back home before summer, Mom. Money isn’t everything.”
“That’s true,” sighed her mother. “But it’s a shame not to take advantage of it when it comes your way.”
“Just the same, if I were you, I’d write and tell Kit that she could come home at the Christmas vacation if she wanted to.”
But Becky took an entirely different view of the matter when she was consulted. “Fiddlesticks,” she said. “No girl of Kit’s age knows what she wants two minutes of the time. She isn’t needed here at all, Margaret. Doris is getting plenty old enough to take hold and help.”
So two letters went back to Kit, and in hers Mrs. Craig could not resist slipping a hint that perhaps it would be a wise thing to ask the Dean about ending her visit at Christmas time.
But Jean added in hers, “Mother’s afraid you are homesick, or that they may be tired of you by this time, but if I were in your place, I’d try to stay until June. Dad thinks the house may be done in time for us to go into it next month, but we’ve had lots of wet weather, and Becky says it would be horribly unhealthful to move in before the plaster has had a chance to thoroughly dry. Matt goes down every day with Dad, and they’ve kept the fire going in the furnace, so I suppose that will help some, but there isn’t a particle of need for your coming back, except Mother’s dread that you may be homesick, and you’re getting too old to mollycoddle yourself, where there’s a big interest at stake.”
Kit read this with a frown. “It’s so nice to have been born Jean, and speak on any subject as the oldest,” she said scornfully. “I know perfectly well that Mom needs me when she is moving back into the new house, and I never expected to stay so long when I came, anyway.”
She stopped short, meditating on just what this queer, choky feeling was that had swept over her. She knew that she would have given up everything, the new friends she had made, and all the winter’s fun at Hope College, just to be safely back home.