Kit laughed at them and said, “Well, he’s a relative, if you must know. He’s my father’s first cousin’s husband’s grandson. Now what are you going to do about it?”
Rather mollified, the girls rejoined the boys on the steps in front of the dorm. “I suppose Hope looks pretty small to you after the universities back East,” Georgia said to Billie.
“Looks swell to me,” returned Billie. “I think you can have lots more fun in a place like this than you can at the big schools. But don’t get the idea I’m going to college now, I’m just at prep school and taking up a few extra courses outside with Frank.”
“What kind of courses?” asked Georgia.
“Science and physics, but specially entomology and forestry. He’s in government service. I wish I knew all he does. It’s wonderful to have a friend like Frank.”
Kit was behind the others with Amy and Anne. Now that they had joined the others, and the girls were talking about Frank also, she had become strangely silent.
“You don’t know him very well, do you?” Amy asked. “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 at home when he came to chase a gypsy moth in Elmhurst.”
She did not add that with Tommy’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 corncrib, but she inwardly suspected that Frank was remembering it. Every once in a while she caught him looking at her, with a look of amused retrospection that made her vaguely uncomfortable.