Jean Craig Finds Romance

FALCON

BOOKS

Jean Craig Finds Romance

BY KAY LYTTLETON

Jean Craig had always wanted to be an artist. But when her family had moved to Woodhow in Connecticut, she had given up her art lessons. Later, when she was able to resume them, she realized how important a career was to her. But then Ralph McRae came along, and Jean found herself unable to make up her mind as to what she wanted most. And while Jean was trying to come to a decision, her sister Kit was having a fine adventure of her own out West.

Jean Craig Finds Romance is filled with gaiety and humor, another charming story of the wonderful, courageous Craigs and their family adventures.

Other FALCON BOOKS for Girls:

JEAN CRAIG GROWS UP
JEAN CRAIG IN NEW YORK
PATTY AND JO, DETECTIVES

A startling procession came from the river.

JEAN CRAIG
FINDS ROMANCE

by KAY LYTTLETON

THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK

Falcon Books
are published by THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
2231 West 110th Street · Cleveland 2 · Ohio

W

COPYRIGHT 1948 BY THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Contents

JEAN CRAIG FINDS ROMANCE

1. Kit Traps a Thief

Kit was on lookout duty, and had been for the past hour and a half. The windows of one of the upstairs bedrooms commanded a view of a large part of the countryside, and from here she had done sentry duty over the huckleberry patch.

It lay to the northeast of the house, a great, rambling, rocky, ten-acre lot that straggled unevenly from the wood road down to the river. To the casual onlooker, it seemed just a patch of underbrush. There were half-grown-birches all over it, and now and then a little dwarf spruce tree or cluster of hazel bushes. But to the Craig family that ten-acre lot represented profit in the month of August when huckleberries and blueberries were ripe.

The Craig family were newcomers to the country, newcomers in the eyes of the natives of Elmhurst, Connecticut, for they had moved there a year and a half ago seeking peace and rest for Mr. Craig, who was slowly recovering from a nervous breakdown. The family’s adventures and problems in making their home in the country were told in Jean Craig Grows Up. Jean, eighteen and ambitious for an artist’s career, had spent part of the previous winter studying in a New York art school and her experiences there were described in Jean Craig in New York.

Sixteen-year-old Kit, in whom the spirit of adventure ran high, was watching suspiciously a trim-looking, red-wheeled, black-bodied truck, driven by a strange man, as it pulled up at the pasture bars and stopped. The man took out of the truck not a burlap bag, but a tan leather case and also something else that looked like a large box with a handle on it.

“Camouflage,” said Kit to herself, scornfully. “He’s going to fill them with our berries, and then make believe he’s selling books.”

Downstairs she tore with the news. Her twelve-year-old brother Tommy and his pal Jack Davis, nine, were out in the barn negotiating peace terms with a half-grown calf that they had been trying to tame for days, and which still persisted in butting its head every time they came near it with friendly overtures. Jack, whose mother had died and whose father had not wanted to be bothered with him, had come to live with the Craigs after Jean and Tommy had discovered him in Nantic a few days before Christmas, lost and alone. Tommy had immediately assumed responsibility for Jack and protected and bossed him as if Jack were his special property.

Jean and Doris, who was fourteen, had gone up to Norwich with Mrs. Craig for the day, and Mr. Craig was out in the apple orchard with Philip Weaver, spraying the trees against the attacks of the gypsy moths. At least, Philip held to spraying, but Mr. Craig was anxious to experiment with some of the newer methods advocated by the government.

Kit called her news to Tommy and he and Jack started off after the trespasser, while she went back to telephone Mr. Hicks, the constable. The very last thing she had said to Tommy was to put the vandal in the corncrib and stand guard over him until Mr. Hicks came.

“Don’t you worry one bit, Miss Kit,” the Constable of Elmhurst Township assured her over the phone. “I’ll be there in my car in less than twenty minutes. You folks ain’t the only ones that’s suffering this year from fruit thieves, and it’s time we taught these high fliers from town that they can’t light anywhere they like and pick what they like. I’ll take him right down to the judge this afternoon.”

Kit sat by the open window and fanned herself with a feeling of triumphant indignation. If Jean or Doris had been home, she knew perfectly well they would have been soft-hearted and lenient, but every berry on every bush was precious to Kit, and she felt that now was the appointed hour to catch the thief.

Inside of a few minutes Tommy and Jack came back hot and red-faced, but filled with the pride of accomplishment.

“We’ve got him,” Tommy said, happily, “safe and sound in the corncrib, and it’s hotter than all get out in there. He can’t escape unless he slips through a crack in the floor. We just caught him as he was bending down right over the bushes, and what do you suppose he tried to tell us, Kit? He said he was looking for caterpillars.” Tommy laughed. “Did you call up Mr. Hicks?”

Kit nodded, looking out at the corncrib. The midsummer sun beat down upon it pitilessly, at the end of the lane behind the bar.

“Gosh, do you suppose he’ll survive, Tommy? I’ll bet it’s a hundred and six inside there.”

“Aw, it’ll do him good,” put in Jack. “Don’t you worry about him. He’s a strong man. It was all Tommy and I could do to keep a good hold on him.”

“Oh, kids,” exclaimed Kit. “I didn’t want you to touch him.”

“How else were we to catch him?” demanded Tommy. “You and your bright ideas. Come on, Jack, let’s go back and stand guard over him.”

Kit watched them leave rather dubiously. It was one thing to act on the impulse of the moment and quite another to face the consequences. Now that the prisoner was safe in the corncrib, she wondered uneasily just what her father would say when he found out what she had done to protect the berry patch. But just now he was in the upper orchard with old Mr. Weaver, deep in apple culture, and she thought she could get rid of the trespasser before he returned.

Mrs. Gorham was in the kitchen putting up peaches. She was humming and the sound came through the screen door. Mrs. Gorham was Judge Ellis’s housekeeper and helped out the Craigs occasionally when an extra hand was needed. Now that Judge Ellis had married Becky Craig, Mr. Craig’s cousin who had engineered the family’s move to Woodhow and was always at hand in an emergency, Mrs. Gorham was not needed as much at the Judge’s home. Billie, the Judge’s grandson who was sixteen and Doris’s best friend, completed the Ellis household.

Kit slipped around the drive behind the house out to the hill road. Mr. Hicks would have to come from this direction, and here she sat on the ground at the entrance to the driveway, thinking and waiting.

The minutes passed and still Mr. Hicks failed to appear. If Kit could have visualized his trip, she might have imagined him lingering here and there along the country roads, stopping to tell the news to any neighbor who might be nearby. Beside him sat Elvira, his youngest, drinking in every word with tense appreciation of the novelty. It was the first chance Mr. Hicks had had to make an arrest during his term of office, and as a special test and reward of diligence, Elvira had been permitted to come along and behold the climax with her own eyes. But the twenty minutes stretched out into nearly forty, and Kit’s heart sank when she saw her father strolling leisurely down the orchard path, just as Mr. Hicks hove in sight.

Mr. Weaver limped beside him, smiling contentedly.

“Well, I guess we’ve got ’em licked this time, Tom,” he chuckled. “If there’s a bug or a moth that can stand that dose of mine, I’ll eat the whole apple crop myself.”

“Still, I’ll feel better satisfied when Howard gets here, and gives an expert opinion,” Mr. Craig replied. “He wrote he expected to be here today without fail.”

“Well, of course you’re entitled to your opinion, Tom,” Mr. Weaver replied, doubtfully. “But I never did set any store at all by these here government boys with their little satchels and tree doctor books. I’d just as soon walk up to an apple tree and hand it a blue pill or a shin plaster.”

Kit stood up hastily as Mr. Hicks drove in from the road.

“Hello,” he called out, “How are you, Tom? Howdy, Philip? Miss Kit here tells me you’ve been harboring a fruit thief, and you’ve caught him.”

Kit’s cheeks were bright red as she laid one hand on her father’s shoulder.

“Tommy’s got him right over in the corncrib, Mr. Hicks. I haven’t told Dad yet, because it might worry him. It isn’t anything at all, Dad,” she added, hurriedly. “We have been keeping a watch on the berry patch, and today it was my turn. I just happened to see somebody over there after the berries, so I told Tommy and Jack to go and get him, and I called up Mr. Hicks.”

Mr. Craig shook his head with a little smile. “I’m afraid Kit has been overambitious, Mr. Hicks,” he said. “I don’t know anything about this, but we’ll go over to the corncrib and find out what it’s all about.”

Kit and Evie secured a good vantage point up on the porch while the others skirted around the garden over to the old corncrib where Tommy and Jack stood guard.

“My, I like your place over here,” Evie exclaimed, wistfully. “You’ve got so many flowers. Mom says she can’t even grow a nasturtium on our place without the hens scratching it up.”

Kit nodded, but could not answer. Already she felt that all was not as it should be at the corncrib. She saw Tommy stealthily and cautiously put back the wide wooden bars that held the door, then Mr. Hicks, fully on the defensive with a stout hickory cane held in readiness for any unseemly move on the part of the culprit, advanced into the corncrib. Evie drew closer, her little freckled face full of curiosity.

“Isn’t Pop brave?” she whispered, “and he never made but two arrests before in all his life. One was over at Miss Hornaby’s when she wouldn’t let Minnie and Myron go to school ’cause their shoes were all out on the ground, and the other time he got that weaver over at Beacon Hill for selling cider.”

Still Kit had no answer, for over at the corncrib she saw the strangest scene. Out stepped the prisoner as fearlessly and blithely as possible, spoke to her father, and the two of them instantly shook hands, while Tommy, Jack, Mr. Hicks, and Mr. Weaver stared with all their might. The next the girls knew, the whole party came strolling back leisurely, and Kit could see the stranger was regaling her father with a humorous view of the whole affair. Tommy tried to signal to her behind his back some mysterious warning, and even Mr. Hicks looked jocular.

Kit leaned both hands on the railing, and stared hard at the trespasser. He was a young man, dressed in a light gray suit with high laced boots to protect him from briars. He was fair-skinned, but tanned so deeply that his blond, curly hair seemed even lighter. He smiled at Kit, with one foot on the lower step, while Mr. Craig called up, “Kit, my dear, this is Mr. Howard, our fruit expert from Washington, whom I was expecting.”

And Kit nodded, blushing furiously and wishing with all her heart she might have silenced Evie’s audible and disappointed remark, “Didn’t he hook huckleberries after all?”

2. I Smell Smoke

“I was perfectly positive that if we went away and left you in charge for one single day, Kit, you would manage to get into some kind of trouble,” Jean said reproachfully that evening. “If you only wouldn’t act on the impulse of the moment. Why on earth didn’t you tell Dad, and ask his advice before you telephoned to Mr. Hicks?”

“That’s a sensible thing for you to say,” retorted Kit, hotly, “after you’ve all warned me not to worry Dad about anything. And I did not act upon impulse,” she went on stiffly, “I made certain logical deductions from certain facts. How was I to know he was hunting gypsy moths and other winged beasts when I saw him bending over bushes in our berry patch? Anyhow it would simplify matters if Dad would let us know when he expected visitors. You should have seen old Mr. Hicks’s face and Evie’s, too. They were so disappointed at not having a prisoner in tow to exhibit to the Elmhurst populace on the way over to the jail.”

Mrs. Gorham glanced up over her glasses at the circle of faces around the dining-room table. The girls had volunteered to help her pick over berries for canning the following day. It was a sacrifice to make, too, with the midsummer evening calling to them—katydids and peep frogs, the swish of the wind through the big Norway pines on the terraces, and the sound of Jack’s harmonica from the back porch. It was Friday evening, and Mr. and Mrs. Craig had driven over to the Judge’s for a visit. Mr. Craig had invited the erstwhile prisoner to accompany them, but he had decided instead to keep on his way to the old Inn on the hill above the village, much to Jean and Doris’s disappointment.

Doris had discovered that his first name was Frank, which relieved her mind considerably.

“If it had been Abijah or Silas, I know I could never have forgiven him for getting in the berry patch,” she said, “but there is something promising about Frank.”

“Wonder if I turned out that stove,” Mrs. Gorham said thoughtfully. “Seems like I smell something. Tommy,” she called raising her voice, “will you see if I turned out that fire under the syrup? I smell smoke.”

“OK,” called Tommy.

He got up slowly from his seat on the back steps and sauntered into the kitchen. The minute he walked in there poured out a spurt of flame and smoke from the woodwork behind the stove, and Tommy slammed the kitchen door and ran for a pail.

It seemed incredible how fast the flames spread. Summoned by his outcry, the girls opened the door leading into the kitchen from the dining room and quickly shut it again when they saw the flames. Tommy and Jack pulled the garden hose around to the back door and played the stream of water on the fire.

Mrs. Gorham made straight for the telephone, calling up the Judge, and two or three of the nearest neighbors for help. The Peckham boys from the sawmill were the first to respond, and five minutes later Matt was on the spot, having seen the rising smoke and flare in the sky from Maple Grove, Becky’s old home.

“You’ll never save the place,” old Mr. Peckham told them flatly. “Everything is dry as tinder and the water pressure is low. Better start carrying things out, girls, because the best we can do is to keep the roofs wet down and try to save the barn.”

While the fire was confined to the kitchen, the two older Peckham boys set to work upstairs, under Jean’s direction. Kit had made for her father’s room the first thing. When Jean opened the door she found her piling the contents of the desk and chest of drawers helter-skelter into blankets.

“It’s OK, Jean,” she called. “I’m not missing a thing. You tie the corners up and have the boys carry these downstairs and bring back the clothes basket and a couple of tubs for the books. Tell Doris to take the cat out of here.”

“All right,” answered Jean. “And Mrs. Gorham is getting all of the preserves out of the cellar, and Mr. Peckham says he’s sure they’ll save the piano and most of the best furniture, but, golly, Kit, just think of how Mom and Dad will feel when they see the flames in the sky, and know it’s Woodhow burning.”

“You’d better start in at mother’s room and stop thinking, or we’ll be sliding down a lightning rod to get out of here.”

Nobody quite noticed Jack in the excitement, but later when all was over, it was found that he had rescued all the treasures possible, the pictures, all the linen and family silver, and the glassware.

As the rising glow of the flames lighted up the sky help began to arrive from all directions. Mrs. Gorham’s thoughtfulness in telephoning immediately brought the Judge first, with all of the neighbors that had been at his home for the evening. Becky was bareheaded, little curly wisps of hair fluttering around her face.

“I made your father stay up at our place,” she told them. “You’ll all probably have to come back with me anyhow and excitement isn’t good for him. Besides, he wouldn’t be a bit of help around here. Seems like they’re getting the fire under pretty good control. I don’t believe all the house will go. It was so old anyway, and it needed to be rebuilt if you ever expect your great-grandchildren to live here.”

Kit noticed an entirely new and unsuspected trait in Becky on this night of excitement. It was the only time when she had not seen her take command of the situation. But tonight she helped Mrs. Gorham pack all the necessary household supplies into the trailer for Matt to drive up to Maple Grove. As soon as she had seen the extent of the damage she had said immediately that the family must move up the hill to her own old home, where she had lived before her marriage to Judge Ellis.

“It won’t take but a couple days to put it into shape for you, and Matt’s right up there to look after things. You’ll be back here before the snow flies, with a few modern improvements put in, and all of you the better for the change. Jack, go bring the family treasures from under that pine tree, and put them in the back of our car.”

“You know, Becky,” Kit exclaimed, “I thought the minute you showed up down here tonight you’d be the chief of the fire department.”

Becky laughed. “Did you, dear? Well, I’ve always held that there are times and seasons when you ought to let the men alone. After you’ve lived a lifetime in these parts, you’ll know that every boy born and bred around here is taught how to fight fire from the time he can tote a water bucket. Did you save all the chickens, Tommy?”

“Didn’t lose even a guinea hen!” Tommy assured her. “The barn wasn’t touched, and so I’m going to sleep over the harness room and watch the cow and her calf and the mare. Jack will stay too, and keep me company.”

3. The Important Letter

The morning after the fire found the family at breakfast with the Judge’s family. It was impossible as yet for the girls to feel the full reaction over their loss. Kit and Billie rode down before breakfast to look at the ruins, and came back with an encouraging report. The back of the house was badly damaged, but the main building stood intact, though the charred clapboards and wide vacant windows looked desolate enough.

“It was a good thing the wind was from the south and blew the flames away from the pines,” said Kit, dropping into her chair at the table. “Doesn’t it seem good to get some of Becky’s huckleberry pancakes again? Oh, yes, we met my prisoner on the road. He was tapping chestnut trees over on Peck’s Hill like a woodpecker. You needn’t laugh, Doris, ’cause Billie saw him too, didn’t you, Bill? And he’s got a sweet forgiving nature. He waved to me and I smiled back just as though I’d never caught him in our berry patch, and had Tommy lock him up in the corncrib.”

“Was he heading this way?” the Judge asked. “I want him to look at my peach trees and tell me what ails them.”

“Tom will be glad to go up with you to the peach orchard,” put in Becky, “I want Jean and Kit and their mother to drive over and help fix Maple Grove.”

The family had taken up its new quarters at Maple Grove before a week had passed, and two of the local carpenters, Mr. Horace Weaver, Philip’s brother, and Mr. Delaplaine, had been persuaded to devote a portion of their valuable time to rehabilitating Woodhow. It took tact and persuasion to induce these men to desert their favorite chairs on the sidewalk in front of Byers’ Grocery Store, and approach anything resembling daily toil. There had been a Squire in the Weaver family three generations back, and Horace held firmly to established precedent. He might be landed gentry, but he was no tiller of the soil, and he secretly looked down on his elder brother for personally cultivating the family acres.

Mr. Delaplaine was likewise addicted to reverie and historic retrospect. Nothing delighted Billie and Doris so much as to ride down to the store and get a chance to converse with both of the old men on local history. Mr. Delaplaine’s mail, which consisted mostly of catalogues, came addressed to N. L. Delaplaine, Esq., but to Elmhurst he was just Niles Delaplaine.

Every day that first week found the girls and Tommy down at the old home prying around the ruins for any lost treasures. Frank Howard struck up a friendship with both the Judge and Mr. Craig, and usually drove by on his way from the village. He would stop and talk for a few minutes with them, but Kit was elusive. Vaguely, she felt that the proper thing for her to do was to offer an apology for even considering him an unlawful trespasser. When Frank would drive away, Jean would laugh at her teasingly.

“Gosh, why do you act so high and mighty? He seems very nice and he’s awfully good-looking, even if he does chase caterpillars for a living. I never did see anyone but you, Kit, who hated to acknowledge herself in the wrong. The rest of us all have the most peaceful, forgiving sort of dispositions, but you can be a regular porcupine when you want to be.”

“It could come from Uncle Bart,” retorted Kit. “Did you hear them all talking about him over at the Judge’s while we were there? Let’s sit here under the pines a minute until the mailman goes by. I’m sick of poking over cinders. Becky said he was the only notable in our family. Dean Barton Cato Peabody. We ought to tell Mr. Delaplaine that.”

“Sh-h,” warned Jean, “he might hear you and it would hurt his feelings.” She glanced back over her shoulder to where Mr. Delaplaine worked, taking off the outer layer of charred clapboards from the front of the house.

“Still it is nice to own a dean, almost as good as a squire,” repeated Kit placidly.

“I didn’t pay much attention to what they were saying about him,” said Jean dreamily. “Is he still alive?”

“He is, but I guess he might as well be dead as far as the rest of the family is concerned. Becky said he’d never married, and he lived with his sister out in the middle west somewhere. Not the real west—I mean the interesting west like Saskatchewan and Saskatoon and—you know what I mean, Jean?”

Jean was particularly interested in Saskatoon for it was there that Ralph McRae lived. Ralph, who was twenty-five, had been the owner of Woodhow before the Craigs bought it and the first summer they were in Elmhurst, he had come to visit them and was immediately attracted to Jean. He had returned last spring with Buzzy Hancock, his cousin and a great friend of Kit’s, who had spent the year with him. Then he had gone West again, taking Buzzy’s sister, Sally, and Mrs. Hancock with him to make their home in Saskatoon. Jean missed him very much, more than she would admit to Kit or the others, and she looked forward to his frequent letters.

“There comes the mail,” called Jean, starting up and running down the drive as the truck came in sight. The carrier waved a newspaper and letter at them.

“Nothing for you girls today, only a letter for your father and a weekly newspaper for Matt. I’ll leave it up at the old place as I go by.” He added as a happy afterthought to relieve any possible anxiety on their part, “It’s from Delphi, Wisconsin.”

Kit stood transfixed with wonder, as he passed on up the hill. “Jean,” she said slowly, “there’s something awfully queer about me. That letter was from Uncle Barton Cato Peabody.”

“Well, what if it is?” asked Jean, shaking the needles from her blouse.

“But, don’t you get the significance? I was just telling you about him and now there’s a letter from him for Dad.”

4. Kit’s Plan

It appeared that Uncle Bart lived strictly up to tradition, for it had been over fifteen years since any word had been received from him. The letter which broke the long silence was read aloud several times that day, the girls and Tommy especially searching between its lines for any hidden sentiment or hint of family affection.

“I don’t see why he tries to be generous when he doesn’t know how,” Doris said musingly. “I wonder if he’s got bushy gray hair.”

“Wait a minute while I read this thing over carefully again,” Kit said. “I think while we’re alone we ought to discuss it freely. Mother just took it as if it were of no consequence. It seems to me, since it concerns us vitally, that we ought to have some selection in the matter ourselves.”

“But Kit, you didn’t read carefully,” Jean interrupted with a little laugh. “See here,” she followed the writing with her fingertip. “He says, ‘Send me the boy.’ That means Tommy.”

“Yes, I know it does, but Mom said she didn’t want Tommy to go now. She said he’s too young to go off alone.”

“Well then, that scotches the deal as far as the rest of us are concerned.”

“I don’t see why I can’t go,” said Kit rather sadly. “I should have been a boy anyway, I’m more like Dad than any of you.”

“No matter what you say,” Jean replied, “I don’t think you’re especially like Dad at all. He hasn’t a quick temper and he’s not the least bit domineering.”

Kit leaned over her tenderly. “Darling, am I domineering to you? Have I crushed your spirit? I’m awfully sorry. I didn’t mean that my bad habits were inherited from Dad. What I meant was my initiative and craving for something new and different. Just at the moment I can’t think of anything that would be more interesting or adventurous than going out to Uncle Bart’s, and trying to fulfill all his expectations.”

“Thought you wanted to go out to the Alameda Ranch with Uncle Hal more than anything in the world, a little while ago. You’re forever changing your mind, Kit.”

“Golly, I wouldn’t give a darn for a person who couldn’t face new emergencies and feel within them the surge of—of—”

“We admit the surge, but would you really and truly be willing to go to this place? I don’t even know what state it’s in.”

There was a footstep in the long hallway, and Mr. Craig came into the living room.

“Dad,” called Doris, “were you ever in Delphi, where Uncle Bart lives?”

Mr. Craig sat down on the arm of Jean’s chair and lit his pipe.

“Just once, long ago when I was about eight years old. We, that is, my mother and I, stayed for about a week at Delphi. It’s a little college town on Lake Michigan, perhaps sixty miles north of Chicago on the big bluffs that line the shore nearly all the way to Milwaukee. Uncle Bart helped to establish Hope College there in Wisconsin. I don’t remember so very much about it, though, it was so long ago. I seem to remember Uncle Bart’s house was rather cheerless and formal. He was a good deal of a scholar and antiquarian. Aunt Della seemed to me just a little shadow that followed after him, and made life smooth.”

Kit listened very closely to every word he said, and Jean was looking up at him seriously.

“I don’t think,” continued their father easily, “that it would be a very cheerful or sympathetic home for any young person. Your mother is right in not wanting to let Tommy go.”

“Oh, but Dad, gee,” Kit burst out eagerly, “Think what a challenge it would be to make them understand how much more interesting you can make life if you only take the right point of view.”

“Yes, but supposing what seemed to be the right point of view to you, Kit, was not the right point of view to them at all. Everyone looks at life from his own angle.”

“Aldo always said that, too,” Jean put in. “Remember, the boy from Italy I met when I was in New York last winter? I remember at our art class each student would see the subject from a different angle and sketch accordingly. Aldo said it was exactly like life, where each one gets his own perspective.”

“But you can’t get any perspective at all if you shut yourself up in the dark,” Kit argued. She leaned her chin on her hands. “Now just listen to this, and don’t all speak at once until I get through. You went away, Jean, to New York, and though maybe I shouldn’t say this, you came back home very much better satisfied and pleasanter to live with. I think after you’ve stayed in one place too long you get fed up and wish there were some way to get away somewhere. I haven’t any special talent for art or anything like that, but I’d like to get away and see something different for a change. And Dad darling, if you would only consent to let me go for even two or three months, I will come back to you a perfect angel, besides doing Uncle Bart and Aunt Della oodles of good.”

“It sounds right enough, dear,” Mr. Craig said, his gray eyes full of amusement, “but we can’t very well disguise you as a boy, and Uncle Bart is not the kind of person to trifle with.”

Kit thought this over seriously.

“Don’t tell them until I’ve started,” she suggested, “and be sure and mail the letter so it will get there after I do, and send me quick, so they won’t have any chance to change their minds. Jean will be here and you really and truly don’t need me here at all.”

“Well, I don’t know what to say, Kit. I’ll have to talk it over with your mother first. I wonder why Uncle Bart wanted Tommy specially.”

“Maybe he thought a boy would be more interested in antiques. Are they Chinese porcelains and jewels, or just mummy things?”

“Mostly ruins, as I remember,” laughed her father. “When he was young, Uncle Bart used to be sent away by the Geographical Society to explore buried cities in Chaldea and Egypt.”

“I wish I could coax him to start in again, right now, and take me with him,” Kit exclaimed, blithely. “Anyhow, I’m going to hope that it will come right and I can go. Can I borrow your trunk Jean? Just write a charming letter, Dad, sort of in the abstract, thanking him and calling us ‘the children’ so he can’t detect just what we are, then when I depart, you can wire them, ‘Kit arrives such and such a time.’ They’ll probably expect a Christopher, and once I land there, and they realize the treasure you have sent them, they will forgive me anything.”

Uncle Bart’s letter was read over again carefully by Mrs. Craig. Kit carried it out to the grape arbor where she was shelling peas for dinner.

“Just read that letter over, Mom, very, very carefully, and see if there isn’t some way you can smuggle me out to Delphi, without hurting Uncle Bart’s feelings.”

Mrs. Craig took the letter and together they read it again—

My dear Thomas:

I trust both you and Margaret are enjoying good health, and that this finds you both facing a more prosperous time than when I heard last from you.

It has occurred to both Della and myself that we may be able to relieve you of part of your responsibility and care, at least for a short time. If the experiment should prove advantageous to all concerned we might be able to arrange a longer stay. One suggestion, however, I feel privileged to make. We would prefer that you would send the boy, as you know this is a college town, and I am sure it would broaden his views to come west, even for a short time. I need hardly add that we will do all in our power to make his stay a pleasant and profitable one.

Another point to consider is this. I would like to interest him in a few of my little hobbies, archaeology, geology, etc. I have delved deeply into the mysteries of the past, and feel I should pass on what I have learned as a heritage to youth.

Trusting that you and Margaret will be able to coincide with our views in the matter, I remain,

Yours faithfully,

Barton C. Peabody.

“You know, Mom,” here Kit slipped her arm persuasively around her mother’s shoulder, “you’ve always said yourself that I was more like a boy. And Buzzy says I’m an awfully good pal, and he’d much rather talk to me than any of the boys around here because I understand what he’s driving at.”

“I don’t think it would matter, if you only visited them for a couple of months, but supposing Uncle Bart took a fancy to you.” Mrs. Craig’s eyes twinkled as she watched Kit’s grave face.

“You mean,” she said, “supposing he decided that my brain measured up to his expectation and they wanted me to stay all winter? Couldn’t I go to school there, just as well as here? You ought to realize, Mom, that I’m really not a child any longer. I’m sixteen.”

“Reaching years of discretion, aren’t you,” smiled her mother. “I suppose it would do you a lot of good in a broadening way to go through a new experience like this.”

“I’m not thinking about that.” Kit sent back an understanding gleam of fun, “but I’m perfectly positive that it would do Uncle Bart and Aunt Della an awful lot of good.”

“Then we shouldn’t deprive them of the opportunity. Do you think so, Matt?”

Matt stuck his head through the vines and clustering leaves. “Couldn’t do no harm either way, s’far as I can see,” he said. “And if the old folks need any sort of discipline, I’d certainly start Miss Kit after them.”

5. Farewell Party

That was the end of August. Becky approved of the plan, and said no doubt the fire down at Woodhow had been a good thing after all.

“You were all of you settling down into a rut before it happened, and the old place needed a thorough going over anyhow. You know you couldn’t have afforded it, Tom, if it hadn’t been for the fire insurance money coming in so handy. Now, you’ll all move back the first part of the winter, with the new furnace set up, and no cracks for the wind to whistle through. Jean will be here and I don’t think Kit’s a bit too young to be going off alone. Land alive, Margaret, you ought to be so thankful that you’ve got children with any get-up to them in this day and age. The Judge and I were saying just the other night it seems as if most of the young people up around here haven’t got any pluck or initiative at all. They’re born to feel that they’re heirs of grace, and most of them are sure of having a farm or wood lot in their own right, sooner or later.”

So the trunk stood open most of the time, and Kit prepared for her trip to Delphi. Mr. Craig was inclined to take it as rather a good joke on the Dean, but Mrs. Craig could not get over a certain little feeling of conscience in the matter. The rest of the family pinned its faith on Kit’s persuasive adaptability.

Tommy was a little disappointed at first not to be going, but then he thought of leaving Jack behind. He knew that Jack would be sure to get into trouble if he weren’t there to look after him and he was extremely proud of his responsibility. Doris dreaded going back to school without Kit.

“Lucy Peckham will go over with you,” Kit told her cheerfully, “and just think of the wonderful letters you’ll have from me, Doris. Miss Cogswell says that I always shine best when I’m writing, and I’ll tell you all the news of Hope College. By the way, Dad told me last night that he’s pretty sure in those little family colleges they run a prep department, which takes in the last two years of high school. Perhaps I could persuade them that the great-grandniece of Barton Cato would be a deserving object of their consideration. Don’t forget to pack my skates, Doris. I let you have them last, and they’re hanging in your closet.”

Becky decided to have a farewell party, two nights before Kit left, and the girls and Tommy were delighted. Any party launched by Becky promised novelty and excitement.

They danced in the living room to the tune of the records on the phonograph. In the library, some of the younger ones were playing forfeits. Abby Tucker was giving out forfeits, sitting blindfolded on a chair.

It happened that Doris’s little turquoise for-get-me-not ring was the particular forfeit dangling over Abby’s head, when Billie stuck his head in at the open window, and Abby lifted her chin at the sound of his voice.

“She must catch Billie Ellis, and bring him back to kneel at my feet, and hand over his forfeit.”

Billie had evaded this, whirling about in the driveway and speeding down the long lane with Doris in fast pursuit. Overhead the mulberry trees met in a leafy arcade, and out of the hazel thicket a whippoorwill called, flying low down the lane after the two darting forms, as if it were trying to find out what the excitement was about at that time of night. At the turn of the lane there were three apple trees, early Shepherd Sweetings, and here Billie slipped down and lay breathing heavily, his hands hunting for windfalls in the tall grass. Doris passed him by, speeding the full length of the lane and bringing up at the end of the log run before the old mill.

“Billie Ellis, you come out of there,” she called. “I’ve got my shoes wet already chasing after you, and I’m not going to climb all over those old timbers hunting for you.”

Only the whippoorwill answered, calling now from a clump of elderberry bushes close by the water’s edge, and while she stood listening, there was the dull splash in the pond where some big bullfrog had taken alarm at her coming.

Billie gathered a goodly supply of apples, and stole after her in the shadows.

“Well, I’m not going to stay out here all night waiting for you,” Doris said, addressing the wide dark entrance to the mill, when all at once there came his voice, directly behind her shoulder.

“Why didn’t you try to catch me? I was resting back under the apple tree. Let’s sit down over the falls and eat some apples. If Abby’s waiting for me to kneel in front of her, she’ll wait all night. I’d like to see myself kneeling in front of a girl!”

The words had hardly left his lips, before Doris played an old-time schoolgirl trick on him. Catching him by his collar, she twirled him about with an odd twist until he knelt in front of her. Although Billie was older than she was, she had managed to catch him off guard. Billie shook himself ruefully when he rose.

“You always catch a guy when he’s not expecting anything,” he said.

“Do you good,” she retorted serenely. “Ever since you went away to school, you’ve had a high and mighty opinion of yourself. I hope you get over it. Aren’t these apples swell, though? Do you suppose they’ll mind very much if we stay just a few minutes? Don’t you love this old pond, Bill? Remember your flat-bottomed boat that always leaked when we used to go fishing in it. How I hated to take turns bailing it out.”

“Yeah. Gee, I wish I didn’t have to go back to school so soon.”

“Wouldn’t it be strange, Bill, if either of us were famous some day? I know you’re going to be somebody special. Maybe it will be in natural history.”

Billie laughed comfortably, perching himself just below her on the heavy timbers of the old sluice gate. “Grandfather says I have a great responsibility on my shoulders, because I’m the last of the Ellis family. He says there’s always been an Ellis in the State Legislature at Hartford, ever since there was a legislature, and just as soon as I’m old enough, he’s going to send me to law school. Gee, I wish he wouldn’t. Think of being shut up all day long in an office.”

Far down the lane they heard the others calling them and Doris sprang up, scattering apples as she did so.

“I’d forgotten all about the party,” she exclaimed. “Anyway, I’m glad we had a chance to talk. If I were you, I’d just read and study everything I could lay my hands on about insects and things, all the time I was in school, and then when the Judge sees that you’re in dead earnest about it, he’ll let you go on. I heard Dad say that Mr. Howard knew more about insects than any man he’d ever met, and that he was considered one of the coming experts in government work. Why, Bill, it’s just like a great scientist or doctor, who is able to discover a certain germ that can be used as a toxin, only you doctor plants and things.”

“I know,” Billie agreed enthusiastically. “There’s some man who discovered the cause of the wheat blight in the south and somebody else figuring out what was killing our chestnuts off. Doris, you’re a swell pal. If it wasn’t for you, I don’t know whether I’d ever have seen a chance to study what I want to, but you encourage me.”

Doris laughed and tagged him on the shoulder as she broke into a run. “You’re it. Don’t give anyone else the credit for starting you off in the way you know you ought to go. Just take a deep breath and race for it.”

6. “The Boy’s” Arrival

Mr. Craig had answered the first letter from Delphi, under Kit’s careful supervision, and the acceptance was vague enough to please her.

It aroused no suspicions whatever in the minds of Dean Peabody or Aunt Della. The only question was, who was to meet the child in Chicago. The through express would leave him there, and in order to connect with the Wisconsin trains it was necessary to make the change over to the Northwestern Depot.

Della was far more perturbed over it than her brother. Having set in motion the coming guest, he believed firmly that an unfaltering Fate would direct his footsteps safely to Delphi. Barton Cato Peabody had been peculiar all his life. He had been a strange boy, unsettled, studious, impractical. Miss Della was his younger sister, and ever since her youth had tried to give him all the love and encouragement that others refused. She had followed him faithfully and happily on all of his exploring expeditions. Perhaps one reason why these had been so successful was because she had always managed to surround him with home comforts, even in the wilds of the upper Nile.

And perhaps the quaintest thing about it all was that Della herself, no matter on what particular point of the globe she had happened to pitch her tent, had always retained her courage, although she had faced dangers that the average woman would have fled from.

Their house stood on the same hill as Hope College, the highest point in the rising ridge of bluffs along the Lake Shore at Delphi. It was built of dark red brick, a square house with long French windows. A grove of pine trees almost hid it from view on its street side, the stately Norway pines that Kit loved. The back of the house looked directly out over the lake, and the land here was frankly left to nature. Trees, grass, and underbrush rioted at will, until they suddenly ended on the brow of the bluff, where there was a sheer drop to the beach. Looking at it from below, Kit afterwards thought it was like a miniature section of the Yosemite; the sand had hardened into fantastic shapes, and the rock strata in places was plainly visible.

Mrs. Craig’s telegram arrived the night before Kit herself. It was brief and noncommittal. “Kit arrives Union Station, Chicago, Thursday, 10:22 A.M.”

“Kit,” repeated the Dean. “Humph! Nickname. Superfluous and derogatory.”

Della took the telegram from his desk with a little smile that was almost tremulous with excitement. “It’s probably the diminutive for Christopher, Bart,” she said. “I think it’s a nice name. I always liked the legend of St. Christopher. Somebody’ll have to meet him down in Chicago. He might lose his head and take the wrong train.”

“He’s about sixteen, isn’t he? Old enough to change from one train to another, and use his tongue if he’s in doubt. When I was sixteen, Della, I was earning my own living working on a farm summers, and going to a school in the winter where we all had to work for our board. Never hurt us a bit. The greatest trait of character you can instill in a child is self-reliance.”

Della had a little way of appearing to listen while her brother expounded on any of his favorite subjects. It had grown to be a habit with her, and she had a way of answering absently, “Yes, dear, I’m quite sure of it,” which always satisfied him that he had her attention. But now, she sat looking out the window and thinking, a perplexed expression on her face.

It had not altogether been her desire that the coming child should be a boy, although not one word had she breathed of this to Dean Peabody. The determination to take one of the Craig children had been a sudden one. The Dean had been reading somebody’s theory about the obligations of age to youth.

“Della, my dear,” he had remarked one evening, as the two sat quietly in the old library, “we have been leading very narrow, selfish lives, and we will suffer for it as we grow older. We have shut ourselves away from youth. I am seventy-four now, and what heritage am I leaving to the world beyond a few books of reference, and my collections? What I should do is to take some child, still in the impressionable stage, and impart to it all I know.”

Della glanced up with a little amused twinkle in her eyes. “But, Bart, what about the child? Surely you would require an exceptional child for such an experiment. One who would have the mentality to grasp all that you were trying to impart to it.”

The Dean thought this over, pursing his lips and tapping his knuckles with his rimless glasses. “Possibly,” he granted, “and yet, Della, surely there would be far more credit attached to planting the seed of knowledge where it needed much cultivating. It has surprised and amazed me up at the college to find that usually the children who appreciate an education are the farmer boys, and very often the foreign element.”

Della rocked to and fro gently. She knew her brother well enough to understand that this had become a fixed idea with him, and the easiest way out was to find him an impressionable child. And then, it happened that she thought of Thomas Craig, their nephew, and all his children. She remembered having one letter after the breaking up of the home on Long Island.

“You know what I think, Bart,” began Della in the bright, abrupt way she had, “I think it would be the right thing if we took one of the Craig children. There are four or five of them—”

“Boys or girls?” interrupted the Dean.

“Well, now I’m not quite sure, but if my memory serves me, I think there’s a boy among them. I know the eldest one is a girl. They’re all of them over ten, I’m sure. Why don’t you just write to Thomas and make known your willingness? I am sure they would take it in the spirit in which it was offered.”

So this was how it happened that the Dean’s letter went forth to Elmhurst, and produced the hour when Kit stood on the platform of the Union Station in Chicago, looking around her to discover anyone who might appear to be seeking a small boy.

Gradually the long platform that led up to the concourse cleared. Kit went slowly on, following the porter who carried her suitcase. She was looking for someone who might resemble either the Dean or Della from her father’s description of them.

“As I remember him,” Mr. Craig had said, “the Dean was very tall, rather sparely built, but broad-shouldered and always with his head up to the wind. His hair was gray and curly. Aunt Della was like a little bird, a gentle, plump, busy woman, with bright brown eyes and a little smile that never left her lips. I am sure you can’t mistake them, Kit, for in their way they are very distinctive.”

Yet Kit was positive now that neither the Dean nor his sister had come to meet her. She stood in the waiting room wearing a dark brown gabardine coat with a brown hat to match. There was about her an air of buoyant and friendly self-possession, which always endeared her to even casual acquaintances. Therefore it was no wonder that Rex Bellamy glanced at her several times with interest, even while his gaze sought through the crowd for a young New England boy, bound for Delphi, Wisconsin.

But Kit noticed Rex Bellamy. Noticed his alert anxiety as he walked up and down, eyeing every newcomer. He was eighteen or nineteen, and unmistakably looking for someone. Even while Kit watched, she saw a girl of about her own age hurry up to him. Her voice reached Kit plainly, as she said, “I’ve looked up and down that end, and I’m positive he isn’t there. Oh, but the Dean will lecture you, Rex, if you miss him.”

At this identical moment, Rex’s eyes met a pair of dancing, mischievous ones, and Kit crossed over to where they stood.

“I do believe you must be looking for me,” she said. “I’m Kit Craig.”

“Oh, but we were expecting your brother,” exclaimed the other girl, eagerly.

“I know, but you see my brother’s only twelve,” said Kit, “and the family thought he was too young to come. I begged to come instead. I’m afraid the Dean made a little mistake, didn’t he? Do you think he’ll mind so very much when he sees me?”

“Mind?” repeated Rex. “Why, I think he’ll be perfectly delighted. My name is Rex Bellamy, Kit, and this is my sister, Anne. We’re next-door neighbors of the Dean and Miss Della, and as we happened to be coming in town today they asked us to be sure to meet your—” Here he hesitated.

“My brother,” laughed Kit. “Well, here I am, and I only hope that Mother’s letter reached them this morning, explaining everything. Of course, they did write for a boy, and it takes so long for a letter to get out here and be answered, that I told Mom and Dad I knew it would be perfectly all right for me to come instead. Don’t you think it will be?”

Anne’s blue eyes were full of merriment. “Oh, golly,” she exclaimed, “I do wish I could go back with you, so I could see their faces when they find out. Mother and I have been here in Chicago this summer and Rex has been living at home alone. We’ll be back in a week, so I’ll see you then, and anyway, we’re sure to visit back and forth. I’m awfully glad you’re a girl.”

“But I won’t be here all winter,” Kit answered. “I’ve only come for a couple of months. On trial, you see. Maybe it’ll be only a couple of days, if they’re terribly disappointed.” Anne exchanged quick glances with her brother and he smiled as he led the way to the car.

“You don’t know the elaborate plans the Dean has laid out for your education,” he said. “It will take you all winter long to live up to them, but I’m sure he won’t be disappointed.”

Kit had her own opinion about this, still it was impossible for her to feel apprehensive or unhappy, as the car sped over toward the Lake Shore Drive. The newness of everything after two years up in the Elmhurst hills was wonderfully stimulating. But it was not until they had left the city and river behind and had reached Lincoln Park that she really gave vent to her feelings. It was a wonderful day and the lake lay in sparkling ripples beyond the long stretch of shore.

“Are we going all the way in the car?” she asked.

Rex shook his head. “No, only as far as Evanston. We’ll drop Anne off, and have lunch with Mother and then catch the train to Delphi. I have an errand for the Dean out at the University.”

“Gee,” said Kit, “we lived right on the edge of Long Island Sound before we moved up to Connecticut, and ever since I was small I can remember going away somewhere to the seashore every summer, but I think your lake is ever so much more interesting than the ocean. Somehow it seems to belong to you more. I always felt with the ocean as if it just condescended to come over to my special beach, after it had rambled all over the world, and belonged to everybody.”

“But you have all the shells and the seaweed, and we haven’t,” argued Anne. “Before I ever went East, we had a couple of clam shells, just plain everyday round clam shells that had come from Cape May, and I used to think they were perfectly wonderful because they had belonged in the real ocean.”

After the rugged landscape of New England, Kit found this level land very attractive. They passed through one suburb after another, with the beautiful Drive following the curving shoreline out to Evanston. Here she caught her first glimpse of Northwestern University, its buildings showing picturesquely through the beautiful trees around the campus.

They left Rex at the main entrance and drove on to where Mrs. Bellamy was stopping. Mrs. Bellamy was filled with amusement when she heard the story of Kit’s substitution of herself for her brother that the Dean had asked for. She was a tall, slender woman with blonde hair and gray eyes, who seemed almost like an older sister of Anne’s. They were staying in a small apartment near the campus.

Early in the afternoon Rex returned, and they caught the 2:45 local to Delphi. Kit could hardly keep her eyes off the beautiful scenery they were passing through. Every now and then the rich blueness of the lake would flash through the trees in the distance, and to the west there stretched long level fields of prairie-land, dipping ravines that unexpectedly led into woodland. Gradually the bluffs heightened as they neared the Wisconsin line above Waukegan, and just beyond the state line, between the shore and the region of the small lakes, Oconomowoc and Delevan, they came suddenly upon Delphi. It stood high upon the bluff, its college dominating the shady serenity of its quiet avenues.

“The Dean doesn’t keep a car,” said Rex as they walked through the gray stone station. “Besides, he thought I was bringing a boy who would not mind the hike up the hill.”

“I don’t mind a bit,” replied Kit. “I like it. It seems good to find real hills after all. I thought everything out here was just flat. I do hope they won’t be watching for us. It will be ever so much easier if I can just walk in before they get any kind of a shock, don’t you think?”

Rex did not tell her which was the house until they came to the two tall poplars at the entrance to the drive. Kit caught the murmur of the waves as they broke on the shore below and lifted her chin eagerly.

“Oh, I like it,” she cried. “This is it, isn’t it? Isn’t it dreamy? I only hope they’ll let me stay.”

7. The House Under the Bluff

Dear Family,

I can’t stop to write separate letters tonight to all of you, because I’m so full of Delphi that I can hardly think of anything else. First of all, Rex met me at the train with his sister Anne. They live next door and Rex is Uncle Bart’s pet educational proposition next to me.

Mother’s letter had not arrived and they were expecting Tommy any moment, when Rex and I walked in on them, and right here I must say they showed presence of mind. The Dean’s eyes twinkled as Rex explained things, and then I kissed Aunt Della, and explained to her too, and I’m sure that she was relieved. After Rex had gone, the Dean took me into his study after dinner, and we had a long heart-to-heart talk. I want you all to understand that he thinks I’m a good specimen of the undeveloped female brain.

I am going to enter the preparatory class at the college in October, and take what the Dean calls supplementary lessons from him along special lines. I don’t quite know all that this means, but I guess I can weather it. It probably has to do with cosmic makings (those were Rex’s words) of geology and all sorts of prehistoric stuff. I know the Dean mentioned one thing that began with a ‘paleo’ but I have forgotten the rest of it. I’ll let you know later.

I have a perfectly darling room. It looks right out over Lake Michigan. There’s a big square window to it that overhangs the edge of the bluff like the balcony of a Spanish villa. Our garden just topples right over into a ravine that ends up short on the shore. I never saw such abrupt cliffs in my life. Uncle Bart was showing me the layers of strata there that a little recent landslide had shown up, and he says that the formation is just exactly like it is out in Wyoming and Colorado.

Aunt Della is darling. It’s more fun to hear her tell of how she worried over a boy coming into the family. The whole house is filled from one end to the other with Uncle Bart’s treasures that he’s been collecting for years. You’re liable to stumble over a stuffed armadillo or a petrified slice of some prehistoric monster anywhere at all. I found a mummy case in the library closet, but there wasn’t anything in it at all, and I was awfully disappointed. I don’t know but what I like it after all, although I miss you dreadfully. I don’t even dare to think there are about a thousand miles between us.

So I won’t feel too out of touch with all of you, you must promise to write me often. Jean, I want you to tell me all that you hear from Ralph. I strongly suspect something is going on between you two, even though you haven’t said anything about it to me. We always talked things over together before, so now that I’m away we’ll have to do the discussing by letter.

Doris, be sure to keep me posted on all the things you are doing at school, and, Tommy, you are to give me the details on the progress of rebuilding Woodhow.

If you will do this, I know I’ll feel as if I’m right there at home and I won’t be homesick at all.

This is all I can write to you tonight because I’m so sleepy I can hardly keep my eyes open. Aunt Della was just in to say good night. She told me again how glad she is that I’m not a boy. Uncle Bart hasn’t committed himself yet, but I think he’s curious about me anyway. Good night all, and write me oodles of news.

Love,

Kit.

At the same time that Kit was writing home, the Dean and Della stepped out on the broad porch. Every evening about nine-thirty passersby might have seen the flickering glow of the Dean’s good-night cigar. His evening cigar was a sort of nocturnal ceremonial. It gave him an excuse to step out into the fragrant darkness of the garden walk for a quiet little stroll before bedtime, and usually Della joined him.

So tonight they walked together, discussing the girl with the dark curls who had come to them from far-off New England, instead of the boy they had sent for.

“There’s no reason,” remarked the Dean reflectively, “why the child should not have a pleasant visit, since she is here. I have had a long conversation with her, and while I could not say that she was exceptionally—er—”

“Bright,” suggested Della.

“I should like to call it intellectual,” the Dean said kindly, “she is keenly impressionable and self-reliant. I think I may be able to interest her, at least in a simplified course of study. I have always believed that boys were more able to accept routine discipline in education than girls, but we shall see.”

Della’s eyes, if he could only have seen them, held a twinkle of mirth, and her smile was a little more pronounced than usual.

“I think,” she said, softly, “that she is a very lovable, attractive girl. I am quite relieved, Barton, not to have a boy in the house.”

Kit woke up the following morning with the sunlight calling to her. It was early, but back on the farm she usually got up about six. There did not seem to be anyone stirring yet, so she dressed quietly, and found her way downstairs. The Dean kept a cook and gardener. Kit heard Carrie, the cook, singing in the dining room and went out at once to make friends with her.

“Is it very far down the bluff to the shore, Carrie?” she asked, eagerly. “I’m dying to climb down there, if I have time before breakfast.”

“Sure, Miss, it’s as easy as rolling off a log. You take the roundabout way through the garden, and the little path behind the tool shed, and you just follow it until you can’t go any farther, and there’s the bluff. I haven’t been down myself, but Dan says there’s a little path you take to the shore if you don’t mind scrambling a bit.”

Kit waved goodbye to her and went in search of the path. She found Dan, the gardener, raking up leaves in the garden. He was a plump, rosy-cheeked old Irishman, his face wrinkled like a winter apple, and he lifted his cap at her approach with a smile of frank curiosity and approval.

A half-grown black retriever came bounding to meet her, his nose and forepaws tipped with white.

“That’s a welcome he’s giving you you wouldn’t have had if you’d been a boy, Miss,” Dan said shrewdly. “I’m glad to meet you and hope you’ll like it here.”

Kit was stroking Sandy’s head. His real name, Dan told her, was Lysander. Anything that the Dean had the naming of received the benediction of ancient Greece, but Sandy, in his puppyhood, had managed to acquire a happy nickname.

“I don’t see,” Kit said laughing, “why you dreaded a boy coming. I know some awfully nice boys back home, and there’s one especially, named Buzzy. He’s out West now. I think he’s just the kind of a boy the Dean expected to see, but perhaps he’ll get used to me. Do you think he will?”

“Sure he will,” answered Dan. “If you leave it to Sandy to find the shore, he’ll take you the quickest way.”

Everything was so different from the Connecticut countryside. Instead of the thick, lush growth which came from richly watered black loam, here one found sand cherries and dwarf willows and beeches springing up from the sand. Tall sword grass waved almost like Becky’s striped ribbon grass in her home garden, and wild sunflowers showed like golden glow here and there.

The beach was level and rockless, different entirely from the Eastern Atlantic shores, but the sand was beautifully white and fine, and there were great weatherbeaten, wave-washed boulders lying half-buried in the sand, also trunks of trees, their roots sticking out grotesquely like the heads of strange animals. Kit thought to herself how the Dean might have added them with profit to his prehistoric collection. There was no glimpse or hint of the town to be seen down here. Not even a boathouse, only one long pier. About a mile and a half from shore was a lighthouse, and farther out a dark freighter showed in perfect outline against the blueness of the morning sky.

Kit followed Sandy’s lead, hardly realizing the distance she was covering, until he suddenly disappeared behind a headland. When she rounded it, she saw a cottage built close under the shelter of the bluff. The sand drifted like snow halfway up to its windows. It had been painted red once, but now its old clapboards were the color of sorrel, and weatherbeaten and wave-washed like the boulders. There were fish nets drying on tall staples driven in behind a couple of overturned rowboats, and at that first glimpse it seemed to her as if there were children everywhere. Four strong boys from fourteen to eighteen worked over the nets, mending them. Around the back door there were four or five more, and sitting in the sunlight in a low rocking chair was an old woman.

Sandy seemed to greet them as old acquaintances, so Kit called good morning in her friendly way. The boys eyed her, and all of the children scurried like a flock of startled chickens as she came up the boardwalk to the kitchen door, but the old grandmother kept serenely on paring potatoes, calm-eyed and unembarrassed.

“How do you do?” said Kit, and she smiled. “I’m Dean Peabody’s grandniece. I just came here yesterday, and Sandy brought me here this morning. I didn’t know where he was going, but he seemed to know the way.”

The old woman’s brown eyes followed the movement of the dog. “He’s very fine, that dog,” she said deliberately. “He comes very often, I’ve known him since he was un petit chien, very small pup—so big.” She measured with her hand from the ground.

“Do you know the Dean?” Kit asked, sitting down on the doorstep beside her. “He lives up in the big house on the bluff, where the pine and maples are.”

The old woman shook her head placidly. “I not go up that bluff in forty-eight years.”

Kit’s eyes widened with quick interest. Just then a girl a little older than herself came out of the kitchen door. Two pigtails of straight brown hair hung to her shoulders, and her dress was gypsy-like. She looked at Kit with quiet, steady scrutiny, and then questioningly over at the boys. But Kit herself relieved the tension.

“Hi,” she said. “I think you’ve got an awfully nice place down here. I like it because it looks old like our houses back home. All the other places I’ve seen since I came out here have looked so newly-painted.”

“This isn’t new,” the girl told her slowly. “This place belonged to my grandfather’s father, Charles Flambeau. There were Indians around here then. Most of them Ojibways.”

Kit’s curiosity was aroused by this entirely new field of adventure to be uncovered. The wonderful old grandmother, basking in the sun with memories of the past. The strong, tanned boys working at the nets, the flock of dark-skinned youngsters, and the girl, Jeannette, whom she was to know so well before her stay in Delphi was over.

She hurried back, eager to ask questions about the Flambeaus, and found herself late for breakfast the very first morning she was there. The Dean’s face was a study as she entered, and Della’s fingers fluttered nervously over the coffee pot and cups. Kit was out of breath, and so full of excitement that she did not even notice the air was chill.

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful time,” she began. “No coffee, Aunt Della, please. It’s all Sandy’s fault. I just wanted to run down the bluff to the shore, and he led me way around that headland to the quaintest old house, half-sunken in the sand, and I got acquainted with the old grandmother and Jeannette. The boys and the little kids seemed half-scared to death at the sight of me, and so I didn’t bother to get acquainted with them yet.”

The Dean looked up at her over his glasses with a quizzical expression, and Della fairly caught her breath.

“The Flambeaus on the shore, my dear?” she asked. “Those half-breed French Canadians?”

“Well, I didn’t know just what they were,” answered Kit cheerfully, “but I think they’re awfully interesting. Don’t you think that they look like the Breton fishermen in some of the old French paintings?”

“The Flambeaus have not a very good reputation, my dear,” the Dean coughed slightly behind his hand as he spoke. “The present generation may be law-abiding, but even within my memory, the Flambeaus had a little habit of stealing.”

“Stealing?” repeated Kit.

“Yes, fishing tackle and that sort of thing. Besides, there is the Indian strain in them, and they are squatters. There have been several lawsuits against them, and they have persisted in staying there on the shore when the property owners on the bluff distinctly purchased shore rights.”

“But, Bart, the Flambeaus won all their suits, didn’t they?” asked Della pleasantly. “I’m sure the older boys are very industrious, and I think the girl Jeanette is strikingly attractive. You’re not really forbidding Kit to go down there, I’m sure.”

The Dean said something that was lost in a murmur, for he had been one of the property owners defeated in the lawsuits by the Flambeaus. After breakfast Kit went upstairs with Della into her own little sitting room. This looked toward the street, out over the maple and pine-shaded lawn. Also, it commanded a good view of the college. This was built of gray stone and was overgrown with woodbine just beginning to show a tinge of crimson.

“It seems awfully queer, Aunt Della,” Kit said as she leaned out of the window, “to think that I’m going there into the prep class. Rex said on the way up here—”

She leaned suddenly farther out and waved. “Hi, Rex, are you coming over?”

Rex glanced up at the radiant face as he came along the hedge-bordered drive between his home and the Dean’s and waved back in neighborly fashion.

“I’m going up to the campus now,” he said. “Ask Miss Della if she’d let you be in the dramatic club. There’s a meeting this morning.”

“Could I, Aunt Della? Please say yes. I’m dying to join something. I haven’t joined anything in ages,” Kit begged. “I can meet everyone and get acquainted. If you don’t need me this morning—” She hesitated, but some of her enthusiasm had caught Della, and she immediately succumbed to the whim of the moment.

“Why, I don’t see why not. You go on down with Rex if you want to.”

The Dean’s desk stood overlooking the driveway. He had settled down to his morning’s portion of work and was blocking out a curriculum of study for Kit, when he happened to glance up, and saw the two passing gayly through the gates. Certainly he did not realize at that moment that already the spirit of youth was at work in the old shadowy house behind the pines.

8. A Square Deal

The first batch of family letters arrived the following week. Kit nearly knocked the mailman over as he came up the walk, for she had been watching anxiously at each delivery. After all, it was the first time she had been away from home, and after the first excitement and novelty had worn off, her heart ached for news from home.

It seemed the Dean had written to her father on the night of her arrival, and this was a surprise to Kit.

“It is a great relief to us all to know that you have made such a favorable impression,” Mr. Craig’s letter read. “After all, it was an experiment, and I confess that I was rather skeptical of the result, knowing the Dean as I do. Try to adapt yourself as much as possible to their life there, Kit. You must be considerate of all the Dean’s notions, and make yourself as useful as you can while you are with them.

“The rebuilding of the house is going along splendidly, and we hope to have our Christmas there. I have followed the old plan, but with some improvements, I think, putting in a good furnace, and enlarging the dining room and kitchen. There will be an outdoor fireplace on the west side of the house also, and I know you will enjoy this.”

Enjoy it? Kit stared ahead of her at the shady lawn. Della was bending over nasturtium beds gathering black seeds, but instead, Kit saw in a vision a great hickory fire burning brightly against a black sky. Her mother’s letter came next. Kit read it with delight. She could tell just exactly the mood her mother was in when she wrote, just how her conscience pricked her for having been a party to Kit’s plan.

“Of course, while the Dean’s letter was very nice, still I am sure he felt put upon. I am ever so sorry that we did not write sooner, and tell them that you were coming. It rests with you now, Kit, to make yourself so adaptable that they will forget all about wanting a boy. I have no objection to your staying for the winter term at Hope College. Between ourselves, dear, our plans are a little unsettled. Dad is certain that the house will be ready for us this winter, but you know how slowly the carpenters work.

“Make all the friends that you possibly can. You won’t realize it now, but so many of these friendships become precious lifelong ones. Billie is leaving this week for school. You remember Frank Howard, who came to look after our trees? He has been staying up at the Judge’s, and took a great interest in Billie. Instead of going back to the school he went to last year, Billie is going on to a school in Virginia, not far from Washington, that Frank suggested sending him to. He is a great believer in the value of environment that is associated with historic traditions.”

Kit read this last over twice, but could not agree with it at all. She had always liked the pioneer outlook, the longing to break new trails, the starting of little colonies in clearings of one’s own making. If there was an ivy around her castle, she wanted to plant it herself.

“Historic tradition?” repeated Kit. “When all around here are the old Indian trails, and the footprints left by the French explorers. I just wish I could get Billie out here for a little while. He’ll settle down in some old school that thinks it is wonderful because John Smith built a campfire on its site once upon a time, or Pocahontas planted corn in its football field.”

Kit sighed, tucked her mother’s and father’s letters in her suit pocket and started off for her favorite lookout point on the bluff. Here, with Sandy crouching at her feet, she read the three letters from Doris, Jean, and Tommy. Jean’s was full of plans for going to New York again. Beth, their cousin with whom Jean had stayed the previous winter, had promised her three months at the Art Academy.

“I’m so excited to be going back to New York again. I had a letter from Ralph today and he asked me again if I had decided on an art career. I don’t know what to tell him, but I am going to study this winter anyway. Maybe I’ll find out this year whether it is worthwhile for me to go on or not. I do know that I love Ralph, but I still have that ambition to do something really important with my life. With the exception of my one trip to New York last year, I have never done anything on my own. Perhaps what I mean is, I want to be independent.

“I shall be coming home weekends this year so I can help Mother and Dad with the rebuilding plans. Besides, I do like living in the country more than the city and it’s more for the studying I’m going to do there that I want to go back to New York.”

Kit glanced over the rest of the letter hurriedly. Becky had given a neighborhood party and Frank Howard had interested Jean considerably, especially because he told her he was bound for France the first of November. Jean was always so easily impressed just the first few times she met a person. It took Kit a long time to really admit a stranger to her circle of selected ones, although she made friends easily. And she had never quite forgiven Frank Howard for trespassing in the berry patch, even though it had been in the cause of science. Besides, the last year, Jean had seemed to grow aloof from the others. Perhaps it had been her trip away from home or her ambition. Kit could not precisely define the change but it was there, and she felt that Jean troubled herself altogether too much over things unseen.

Doris’s letter was all about the opening of school, and Tommy asked questions about Delphi.

“When you write, do tell us about the things that happen there, and just what you think about it. I don’t like descriptions in books, I like the talk part. You know what I mean. Jack and I have been helping the carpenters at Woodhow every day after school. The house is coming along fine and the men say we help a lot. Has Uncle Bart got any pets at all?”

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.