Chapter III: Part 3

“They are not sending me bones,” replied the Dean with dignity, “but they are sending me the Amenotaph urn, and a sitting image of Annui. I believe with these two I shall be able to establish as a fact the survival of the Greek influence in ancient Egypt. My dear, you have no idea,” he added warmly, “how much this explains if it is true. There may be even Phoenician data before I finish investigating.”

“Phoenicians,” thought Kit, although she said nothing. “Yes, I do remember about them, too. Tin--ancient Britain--and something about Carthage.” Then she said aloud very positively and earnestly, “I know I can help you a lot with this, Uncle Bart, if you will only let me, because history is my favorite subject, and the reason I came to speak to you tonight is this. We girls are going to have a Founders’ Tea, Saturday afternoon. Just a little informal affair, but I’d like to give it a--” She hesitated for the right word, and the Dean nodded encouragingly, being in a better mood.

“Semblance of verity? Are you preparing a treatise?”

“No. I want something they can look at. And I knew if I told you about it, you’d let us take a few of the old things out of that cabinet in your room at the college. All I need would be--well, say a few portraits of any of the founders of Hope, and any of the relics of the Indians or French explorers.”

The Dean graciously detached a key from the ring at one end of his watch chain.

Kit left with it as though she bore a trophy. The next day the last preparations were completed for impressing on the girls of Hope College the honor of having a Founder’s granddaughter in their midst.

11. The Mysterious Guest

“I think you ought to preside, Kit,” Virginia said as she arranged the table. “It’s your party, and you ought to serve.”

“Takes too much concentration,” Kit returned. “Anne’ll help you. I want to have my mind perfectly clear to manage the thing. You see, Jeannette doesn’t know a thing about it yet, and there’s no knowing how she’ll take it. Wouldn’t it be funny if she got proud and haughty and marched away from our Founders’ Tea?”

“I don’t think you ought to spring it until after we’ve had refreshments. Food has such a mellowing effect on people. It’s all a question of tact, though. If I were you, I’d talk to them in an intimate sort of way instead of lingering too much on the historic value. Better straighten Malcolm, over there. He looks kind of topply.”

Kit regarded the framed steel engraving of Malcolm Douglas almost fondly. It occupied a prominent spot specially cleared for it in the middle of the wall.

Backed by Della’s approval and interest, Kit had called at several homes where the descendants of other founders lived, and the results were gratifying. Mrs. Peter Bradbury had contributed two Indian blankets and a hunting bag, besides an old pair of saddle bags used by an early missionary bishop in the Northwest. From the cabinet in the Dean’s room had come mostly records, old documents carefully framed, and several letters written by the founders themselves.

“Golly,” Kit said as she gave a last touch to her exhibit, “of course these are important, but I like the Indian and hunting things best. I wish I could run away with that double pair of buffalo horns that belonged to Dr. Gleason’s granduncle or somebody. I like them better than anything.”

A quick rap came on the door, and before Virginia could even call “come in” Peggy entered with her usual galaxy behind her, Amy, Georgia, and a newcomer from Iowa, Henrietta Jenkins.

“Tony Conyers sent word she’d be ready in five minutes,” said Georgia. “She’s got a lot of the girls in there with her. Ginny, I think this is a perfectly stupendous idea of yours.”

“’Tisn’t mine,” answered Virginia, “it’s Kit’s. This is her party. Her coming-out party at Hope.”

“Oh, are you the founder’s granddaughter?” Amy inquired, her eyes opening wide.

“No, I’m not,” replied Kit. “I wish this minute I could tell you about my ancestors. I’ve got some beauts. Peggy, don’t sit on the almonds. They’re right behind you in that glass dish.”

The room filled up rapidly with people. Kit declared after she had been the rounds four times that she felt exactly like the lecturer in a museum, telling the history of the relics over and over again. Nobody but Anne knew how anxious she was as the minutes slipped by and no Jeannette appeared. It would never do to have a climax happen without the surprise of her presence to carry it off. The refreshments had all been served, and the clock on top of the bookshelves showed that it was five, when Virginia called; “You’d better start in on your Founders’ talk, Kit. We’ve only got about half an hour.”

There was a baffled look in Kit’s eyes, as she picked up the challenge and rose from her chair. Virginia must know perfectly well how untimely it was to start to spring the surprise while there was a running chance of Jeannette appearing. Still there was a hush, and the girls faced her expectantly.

“As you all know,” began Kit, “the old bronze tablet in the lower hall carries names on its roll of honor which not only uphold the glory of Hope College, but also of the entire town of Delphi, of the entire state, I may say of Wisconsin.

“There are few of us here today, if any,” continued Kit slowly, one eye watching the concrete walk across the campus from the nearest window, “who can boast of a Hope founder in her family.”

“I can, almost,” interrupted Tony, “my sister Marie was engaged for a little while to Bernard Giron. If she had only married him, we would have had a ‘Founder’ in the family.”

“Tony,” said Kit, severely, “I am dealing with facts, not prospects, and you ought not reveal any family secrets, either. I say it is a great honor to be a direct descendant of a ‘Founder,’ and we have one in our class. A girl, too modest to take advantage of her grandfather’s record.” She paused impressively, but with a quickening gleam in her eyes, as there suddenly came in view a hurrying figure in a gray suit on the campus walk. It was Jeannette herself, late, but in time to create the desired sensation.

Kit drew a deep breath, and plunged back to her subject, considering exactly the time it would take for the belated guest to reach the study.

“Since all the girls here belong to this dormitory, it seems appropriate that the founder whose memory we honor should be Malcolm Douglas. His portrait hangs on the wall, evidently taken from an old likeness.” Oh, how she wished the family could hear her now! “There is no more adventurous or thrilling career in the annals of historic Delphi than that of the illustrious Scotchman. Making his way through the perils of the wilderness, he came from Quebec with a party of fur traders and pioneer explorers.”

“Don’t hit too far back, Kit,” interrupted Peggy, alertly. “If he was a founder, you can’t have him trotting over wilderness trails with Marquette and Lasalle, you know.”

“Nevertheless,” responded Kit, ignoring her, “he is one of the founders of this college. He came here in his early twenties, and married Lucia, the daughter of Captain Peter Morton. Their daughter was Mary, and, girls, she was the mother of one of our classmates, the very same Mary who went through Hope and graduated with high honors. You’ll find her initials carved in Number 10 across the hall, and her portrait--the only one I could find--is in this graduating group.”

The girls all crowded forward to look at the group photograph which Kit held out to them, just as a knock came at the door. For one dramatic instant Kit held the knob, her back against the door as she announced in almost a whisper, “The granddaughter of Malcolm Douglas.”

The girls leaned forward, eagerly, every eye fixed upon the door. As Kit said later to Anne, “Goodness knows who they expected to see, but I almost felt as though I had promised them a two-headed man, and then had sprung Jeannette. Wasn’t she marvelous, Anne? The way she stood the introduction and the shock of finding herself the guest of honor. As I looked at her, I thought to myself, you may be Douglas, and you may be Morton, fine old Scotch and English stock, but if it wasn’t for the dash of debonair Flambeau in you too, you could never carry this off the way you’re doing.”

Jeannette was not the only person present who had to fall back on inherent caste for their manners of the moment, but Tony was the only one that gave an audible gasp. Even Peggy and Georgia smiled, and greeted the Founder’s granddaughter in the proper spirit.

She was dressed in a plain gray suit, but Kit gloried in the way she took her place beside Virginia at the table, and answered the questions of the girls with laughing ease.

“Of course,” she said, with the little slight accent she seemed to have caught from her father and old Grandmother Flambeau, “I thought everyone in Delphi knew. For myself, I am proud of him, and of all my mother’s people, but I am also proud of being a Flambeau. You girls do not know perhaps that some of my father’s people helped to found Fort Dearborn, and they were very brave and courageous voyagers in the early days of New France.”

Peggy really rose to the occasion remarkably, Kit thought. Probably the most jealously guarded membership in the prep classes was that of the Portia Club, and yet, before the tea was over, she had invited Jeannette to attend the next meeting and be proposed for membership.

“We’re not going to try a whole play at first, just famous scenes, and I know you’d fit in somewhere and enjoy it. Don’t you want to, Jeannette?”

Jeannette shrugged her shoulders, and said, “I shall be glad to help always, if you wish to make me one of you.”

“What do you think of that?” Anne said on the way home. “Kit, you certainly have discovered a flower that was born to blush unseen.”

“It will take her out of her shell, anyway,” Kit replied happily. “And I do think the girls came up to the mark splendidly. How I’d like to hear what they’re saying about us now, behind our backs, but they acted their parts nobly when I swung that door open, and there stood, just Jeannette!”

12. Homesick

No qualms of homesickness visited Kit the first two months after school opened. Not even New England could eclipse the glory of autumn when it swept in full splendor over this corner of the Lake States. Down east there was a sort of middle-aged relaxation to this season of the year.

But here autumn came as a gypsy. The stretches of forest that fringed the ravines rioted in color. The lakes seemed to take on the very deepest sapphire blue. No hush lay over the land as it did in the East, but there were wild sudden storm flurries, a feeling in the air as if there might be a regular tornado any minute.

Hardly a Saturday passed but what Kit was included in some fall picnic hike or else she was off to a football game. The Dean never joined these, but occasionally Della did and thoroughly enjoyed them. And once, toward the end of November, in the very last of Indian summer weather, they took a weekend tour up to Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls.

“I only wish,” Rex said, “that we could come up here next spring when they have their big logging time. It’s one of the greatest sights you ever saw, Kit. I have seen the logs jammed out there in the river until they looked like a giant’s game of jackstraws. Maybe we could arrange a trip, don’t you think so, Mom?”

“I don’t see any reason why not,” replied Mrs. Bellamy.

“But I won’t be here then,” protested Kit.

“Oh, you’ll stay till the end of the spring term, dear,” Della corrected, and right then Kit experienced her first pang of homesickness. Would she really be away from home until next June? Even with this novelty of recreation, backed by wealth, she felt suddenly as though she could have slipped away from it all without a single regret, just to find herself safely back home with the family.

One weekend while Jean was home at Maple Grove, she and her mother were talking together about Jean’s work. Doris and Tommy with Jack had walked over to Woodhow to help Mr. Craig, so Jean and her mother were alone.

Each time Jean came home she found herself turning with a sigh of relief and safety from the city life to the peace of the hills. It was her comment on this to her mother that had prompted their talk.

“Are you going to begin looking into job possibilities while you are in New York, Jean?” asked her mother. “I think if you are really serious about a career, you should begin getting interviews for a job next year.”

“No Mom,” replied Jean. “I think I have reached an important decision. I wasn’t going to tell you until my course was over and I was positive I was right, but I’ll tell you now since you asked. I love Ralph more than I do a career and if he asks me to marry him, I’ll say yes. I’ve learned to analyze my feelings and I am quite sure my love for art is only a hobby. To have a happy marriage like yours and Dad’s is, is the most important thing I want.”

“You have made a wise and difficult decision, my dear,” said Mrs. Craig tenderly. “Your father and I have felt all along that Ralph was ideally suited for you, but we wanted you to make your own decisions first.”

Just then, the mailman brought Kit’s next letter and Jean read it over her mother’s shoulder. A little puzzled frown drew Jean’s straight dark brows together.

“She’s getting homesick, Mother. Kit never writes tenderly like that unless she feels a heart throb. I never thought she’d last as long as she has--”

But Mrs. Craig looked dubious.

“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.

13. Frank Apologizes

Kit was doing some homework in the library one Saturday morning, when all at once she was conscious of someone who stood at the west end of the room, looking at her. For a moment Kit was absolutely speechless, not believing the evidence of her own eyes. But the next minute Billie’s own laugh, when he found out he had been discovered, startled her with its reality.

“Billie Ellis,” she exclaimed, springing to her feet and scattering reference books and notepaper helter-skelter. “How on earth did you ever get way out here?”

Billie colored slightly, as he always did at any display of emotion, and tried to act as if it were the most natural and ordinary thing in the world for him to appear at Delphi, when he was supposed to be in Washington in school.

“We had our exams last week, and Frank had to come out to Minnesota for the government, so he took me along to help him.”

“Billie, are you really after bugs and things--I mean, are you going to really be a naturalist?”

“I guess you’d kind of call it being a business naturalist,” laughed Billie. “I don’t think I’ll ever live in a shack on a mountainside, and write beautiful things about them, now that I know Frank. You want to roll up your sleeves and pitch in like he does.”

“Is he here now?” asked Kit eagerly.

“Yep.” Billie nodded out of the window toward Kemp Hall, the boys’ dormitory. “After we found out that you didn’t live here, we were going on down to the Dean’s to find you, but he looked over the boys’ freshman class, and found he had a cousin or nephew or somebody on the list, Clayton Diggs.”

“I know him,” Kit said. “He’s awfully nice. I’ve got to be back for lunch, and you’re coming down with me, of course. How long can you stay?”

“Just this afternoon. We’re going back on the five forty-five, and catch the night express out of Chicago. If you wait here, I’ll chase after Frank, ’cause he’ll want to have lunch with the Diggs boy, and he can join us later.”

Kit walked along the path which crossed the campus. The coming of Billie unexpectedly, just at a time when she was feeling her first homesickness, struck Kit as a rare piece of luck. But with only five hours to visit with him, she knew it would be all the harder after he had gone. He joined her on a run as she reached the sidewalk, and they hurried down to the Dean’s just in time for lunch. Kit beamed when she introduced her friend from the hills to Della and the Dean.

“Don’t you remember, Uncle Bart,” she asked eagerly, “my talking about Billie? Well, here he is.”

The Dean’s gray eyes twinkled as he surveyed Billie over the tops of his glasses. “You come highly recommended, young man,” he said.

“You could have a lovely time studying over Uncle Bart’s Egyptian Scarabs, Bill,” said Kit. “Weren’t you telling me something about a place in China where they had a whole grove filled with sacred silkworms, Aunt Della? You see, Billie’s main interest is insects and birds.”

Miss Peabody smiled and nodded, looking from one young face to the other. Never before had youngsters sat lunching at that table with her and her brother in quite such a way. The Dean usually took his meals in absolute silence when they were alone together, for he held that desultory conversation disturbed his train of thought. But since Kit’s coming, it had been impossible to check her flow of talk, until now the Dean actually missed it if she happened not to be there.

After lunch they all went into the library to look over the Dean’s newly arrived treasures, the Amenotaph urn and the statue of Annui.

“Well, gol-lee,” exclaimed Kit, as she stood before the plain, squat, terra-cotta urn, “is that the royal urn? I expected to see something enormous, like everything else that is wonderful and ancient in Egypt.”

“My dear,” the Dean replied happily as he bent down to trace the curious, cuneiform markings that circled the urn. “This antedates the time of the Captivity and Moses. I cannot tell positively, until I have opened it and deciphered what I can of the papyrus rolls within. If it should go back to Moses, it will be wonderful. I cannot believe that it is contemporary with Nineveh. Della, you can recall how overjoyed I was when we unearthed that library of precious clay under the Nineveh mounds years ago. Think of reading something which was written by living man several thousand years before that.”

“What fun it must have been,” Billie remarked. “If you wanted to write anything in those days, you just picked up a handful of mud and made a little brick out of it, and wrote away with a stick, didn’t you?”

“Stylus, my boy, stylus,” corrected the Dean absently. “Yes, it did away with much of our modern detail.”

“Where’s the statue, Uncle Bart?” Kit asked.

“It’s just behind you, my dear. And it’s perfect. Perfect,” murmured the Dean.

Kit turned, expecting to face one of the usual blandly smiling Egyptian pieces of art, with a few wings scattered over it here and there. But instead, there stood in the center of the table a strangely attenuated figure about three feet high. It had a head that was a cross between an intelligent antelope and a rather toplofty baby rat. Its arms were extended at sharp angles, and seemed to be pointing in arch accusation at someone. Wings spread fanwise from the shoulders, and its feet were like those of a griffin.

“I never thought it would look just like that, did you, Billie?” Kit asked confidentially, when they started back to the campus later.

“Well, I knew what to expect, because we’ve been going to the Smithsonian Institute pretty often,” replied Billie. “Some of them look worse than that. But they can’t beat our own Alaskan and Mexican ones. I wonder what people were thinking about back in those days to worship that sort of thing?”

But Kit caught sight of five of the girls just rounding the corner and she waved to them to come over, much to Billie’s inward disgust. While he thoroughly approved of Kit, he viewed the average girl with indifference. But Kit introduced him in a casual manner which put him at his ease, and when they started up the path, it was Tony Conyer who had taken possession of Billie, and was interesting him by telling of her father’s big stock farm in northern Wisconsin.

They found Frank Howard waiting for them outside the boys’ dorm and Clayton was with him. The girls got Kit aside and Amy faced her accusingly.

“You never told us a word about this boy,” she declared, “and all the time you’ve had him up your sleeve. Explain please.”

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.

As they left the campus, Georgia, leading with Billie, took the street that led to the bluffs overlooking the lake, and somehow or other in the scramble down the narrow pathways, Kit found Frank at her elbow. No one could have been more dignified or distant in her manner than Kit, but Frank refused to be frozen out.

“I’ve just found out something, Kit,” he said genially. “I forgave you long ago for locking me up in your corncrib and nearly landing me in the local jail, but you don’t forgive me one bit for trespassing in your berry patch.”

Kit’s profile tilted ever so slightly upward. She had thoroughly made up her mind that very day when Mr. Hicks made his memorable and fruitless journey to Woodhow 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 rest of the family had something to do with Kit’s stand against him. Even Doris had remarked that she didn’t see how Kit could ever have imagined that a person looking like Frank could be a berry thief.

“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.” Frank’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. Before he could say any more, she had hurried ahead and caught up with the rest.

14. The Secret in the Urn

It was not until after they had gone, when Kit was by herself, that she remembered all Billie had told her at the very last of his stay.

They had walked along the lake shore together, a little behind the others, after they had visited the Flambeau family.

“You haven’t told me anything at all,” Kit said, “about home. When were you in Elmhurst last?”

“Just before we came here,” Billie answered.

“Was everything all right?” Billie hesitated. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Billie, tell me if there is anything. You can’t give me any nervous shocks at all, and I’m dying to find an excuse to get back home.”

“Why, there isn’t anything the matter, exactly,” Billie said cheerfully, but with a reservation in his tone that made Kit impatient. “The only thing that I know about, I heard Grandfather telling Uncle Tom. I don’t suppose I ought to repeat it either.”

“Honestly, Billie, you make me so exasperated at times. How dare you keep back any news of my family from me?”

“It was something about losing some stocks or dividends or something like that. I guess it hit Grandfather, too, but I heard him say that there wasn’t a farm up there that couldn’t support itself, properly run, and he guessed they’d all weather the storm.”

Billie was inclined to take an optimistic view of the whole affair. “Grandfather said that there was no cause for worry,” he went on. “It was just a case of pitch in and get your living out of the farms again.”

“Yes,” said Kit with scorn, “get your living out of the farms. That’s all very well for him to say, when he’s got everything to do with, and twenty of the best cows in the county, but we moved up there on hope and a shoestring. And we’ve never really raised anything except children and chickens.”

“Frank says your place, if it was properly worked, would make one of the finest fruit farms up there, ’cause your land all slopes to the south as far as the river. He says if he had it he’d sell off the heavy timber for cash and put the money right into hardy varieties of fruit and hogs.”

Kit laughed. “Can’t you see Doris’s face over the hogs, with all her aristocratic ideas? Did he tell Dad that?”

“I don’t know,” Billie said doubtfully. “Uncle Tom’s kind of hard to get confidential with over his own affairs, but I wouldn’t worry, Kit, if I were you. Things always come out all right.”

“They do not,” returned Kit calmly. “Even so, thanks ever so much for telling me, Billie. You may have changed the course of destiny, because I can tell you now I’m going home.”

After dinner that night Kit was out for a walk alone with only Sandy for company. Kit was wondering whether it would be best to write first to her mother or to Jean. Jean would be in New York anyway, so perhaps she wouldn’t know any more about it than Kit did. How she wished to know just exactly what the family’s plans were for the winter.

Finally she decided to write to Becky. Even though her decision might not be a favorable one, you always felt sure you were getting it straight without any affectionate bias.

Accordingly, a confidential appeal went East, and back came the reply by return mail, as Kit had known it would.

Dear Kit,

I had been thinking about you when your letter came, so I suppose our
thoughts must have crossed.

There’s no doubt at all but what your mother needs you badly right
here, especially with Jean in New York. What Billie told you was
about the truth.

If I were you, I’d have a heart-to-heart talk with the Dean himself,
and I know your mother will be just as relieved as can be to hear
you’re homeward bound.

Lovingly,
Becky.

Kit was delighted over the letter, and went directly to the Dean with its message. He was deeply engrossed in getting up his first notes and commentaries on the urn and statue. It had not seemed for the past two or three weeks as if he resided any longer in Delphi at all. Kit told Della she was positive he was wandering through Egypt all the time, the Egypt of five thousand years ago. And it was only the shadow of his self that seemed to sit closeted for hours in the study.

He hardly glanced up now as she came in, but smiled and nodded when he saw who it was, keeping on with his writing.

“Just hand me that volume on the second shelf to your right by the door. Second volume, _Explorations in Upper Egypt_, look up Seti the First in the index.”

Kit found the place and laid it before him, perching herself on one end of the desk, as she always did when she wanted to attract his attention. The little statuette of Annui smiled grotesquely down upon her from its pedestal. The urn stood in a handy place of honor upon the desk itself as the Dean had been deciphering the inscriptions upon it.

“I hate to disturb you, Uncle Bart,” Kit began, with the directness so characteristic of her, “but I really think I ought to go back home. You’ve been wonderful to give me such a long visit, and I’ve enjoyed the school work immensely, but somehow I begin to feel like a soldier who has been away on a furlough. It’s time for me to get back, because Mother needs me.”

The Dean glanced up in surprise; and came slowly out of his dream of concentration as the meaning of her words dawned upon him.

“Why, my dear child,” he exclaimed, “this is very sudden. There has never been any question about your going back, at least--” He coughed. “Not since we became acquainted with you. Has anything happened?”

“Why, nothing special--I mean, nothing tragic. It’s only this, Dad’s lost a lot of money all at once. He did have a little income, enough so we never have had to depend on the farm entirely, but now, even that has been swept away.”

“Tom never had any head for business.” The Dean tapped one hand lightly with his glasses in an absent-minded musing way that nearly drove Kit frantic. “But what can you do about it, my dear? Surely by returning at such a time you merely add to your father’s burdens.”

“No, I won’t,” Kit answered. “Because I’ve got a plan that I’ve been thinking about for ever and ever so long. I’m going to try and persuade Dad to let us put in hogs.”

“Hogs,” repeated the Dean in a baffled tone. “Hogs, my dear. Who ever heard of raising hogs when they could raise anything else at all?”

“Well, we’re going to if Dad will let me. I just can’t stay here in this beautiful place with nothing to worry over, while the family are all worried to death.”

There was silence in the old study. The Dean was looking straight at Annui as if for inspiration. He had laid out his own career himself, and had carried every ambition to completion and reality. The last twenty years had been years of fruition, of honors freely given, years of fulfillment. He had not been, like Judge Ellis, intolerant of other men’s failures; he had simply ignored them, never feeling any responsibility toward the weaker ones who fell in the race. In his way, he prided himself on a gentle, aloof philosophy of life which left him the boundaries of the study as a horizon of happiness.

Probably not until that moment had he realized the gradual revolutionary process Kit had been putting him through ever since her arrival. She had trained him into having an interest in other people and things, until now it was impossible for him not to see the picture of Woodhow as she did. He resolved to help Tom Craig out as well.

“How did you find out about this, my dear?” he asked.

“Well,” Kit replied, honestly, “partly from Billie and partly from a letter from Becky. You know Becky, don’t you, Uncle Bart?”

The Dean’s eyes twinkled reminiscently. “Oh, yes, I remember Rebecca well. She used to bully me outrageously. But you’re perfectly right, my dear. I can quite see why you feel that you are needed. You had better start for home as soon as you can.”

The next thing was to break the news gently and convincingly to the family. Kit figured it out from all sides, and finally decided to walk right up to the horns of the dilemma in a fearless attack. Writing back a long, newsy letter to her mother, she simply tacked on the postscript, “Don’t be at all surprised to see me arrive around Christmas.”

The girls took her coming departure with many objections, but Kit was not to be persuaded to stay. The Saturday before she left the many friends she had made came over in the afternoon to say goodbye. Late in the day, Kit saw Jeannette Flambeau coming up the drive.

“It was awfully nice of you to come, Jeannette,” she exclaimed. “I’ve been watching for you.”

“I tried to come earlier, but I couldn’t,” smiled Jeannette. “Will you write to me when you are away?”

“I’d love to. You know it’s a queer thing, Jeannette, but really and truly, out of all the girls I have met here I feel better acquainted with you than with any of them.”

Kit said this rather slowly, as if it were a sort of self-revelation which she had just discovered that minute. And yet it was true. She had enjoyed the class friendships at Hope immensely, but Jeannette had seemed to stand out from the rest of the girls as a distinctly interesting personality.

Jeannette smiled at Kit’s remark.

“I have heard my grandmother say that in her girlhood her people of the northern forests pledged their friendships by saying, ‘While the grass grows and the waters run, so long shall we be friends.’” She turned and smiled at Kit her grave-eyed slow smile. “I will say that to you now, before you go.”

Kit laid one arm around her shoulders. “Me too,” she answered, “sounds like the blood-brother vow they used to take.”

The next evening Kit was to leave Delphi. She found it hard to say goodbye to her aunt and uncle.

“We shall miss you, Kit,” said Della, “but if it gives you any pleasure, my dear, I want to tell you it was your coming which opened my eyes to the folly of sitting with empty hands while there was work to be done. I don’t think I can ever belong to the rocking-chair squad again, without a guilty conscience.”

Kit hugged her fervently. “Oh, but you’re a dear, Aunt Della, to say such things. I only wish I could stay right here and be in two places at once. I’ll tell you what I’ve learned here, organization.” Kit said this very firmly and earnestly. “Back home they say I know just what I want to do, but I don’t know how to do it. Now, I know what I want to do. I want to go back home and organize.”

“The Dean wanted to have a little talk with you before dinner, dear. I think you’d better go in now, because we want to reach the station in plenty of time. Don’t talk too long. You know how he is when he gets absorbed in anything.”

Kit promised and joined the Dean. He had carried back the statue of Annui and stood before it regarding it with perplexity. Kit slipped her arm through his. It seemed as though there had sprung up a new comradeship and understanding between them since their last talk.

“Won’t he tell you his secrets, Uncle Bart?” she asked. “He has such an aggravating smile, just as if he were amused at baffling you.”

“I am baffled,” the Dean conceded genially. “I’ve reached a certain point and there is a blank which no historic record seems to fill. I thought when I had restored the inscription on the urn that it would tell me several of the missing points, but it seems to be merely a sort of sacred invocation. I am amazed at the urn being hollow. Every other memorial urn which I found during our excavations in Egypt was sealed, and upon being opened we always found rolls of papyrus within. I am disappointed.”

Kit lifted the urn very carefully and stared at it, reflectively. “What does the inscription say?” Kit asked.

“It merely traces the origin of King Amenotaph to the god Thoth,” said the Dean, thoughtfully, “that is, the Egyptian Hermes, or Mercury, as we know him, and it is extremely vague, being a curious mixture of the Coptic and the ancient Aramaic.”

“But what does it say?” asked Kit again.

The Dean followed the curious markings on the urn with his fingertip, bending forward as he did so. “It says, ‘Amenotaph, born of Thoth, shall reign in wisdom. Kings shall serve at his foot stool. Ra shall shine upon him. He shall lie in peace, encompassed by Ra.’”

“Is that all?”

“That is all,” sighed the Dean. “It seems merely a laudatory sentiment.”

“Who was Ra?” asked Kit curiously, running her hand around the top of the urn.

“The Sun god. His symbol was the circle. You see it here.”

Kit repeated again slowly, what her uncle had just read. Then she shook the urn close to her ear.

“My dear child, do be careful,” cried the Dean, “it’s priceless.”

But Kit put it under one arm as though it had been a milk pail and tapped around the inside with her knuckles, listening.

“That’s a perfectly good hollow jug,” she said solemnly. “Just you tap it, and listen, Uncle Bart. I’ll bet they’ve hidden something inside the outside and that Ra has guarded it all these years.”

“Just a moment, just a moment, my dear,” exclaimed the Dean, smiling like a happy boy. “You’ve given me an idea. This may be a cryptogram, or an ideographic cipher. Just a moment, now, don’t speak to me.”

He sat down at the desk and figured laboriously for nearly twenty minutes, working out the inscription in cipher, while Kit stared at him delightedly. After all, it was gratifying, she thought, to have somebody in the family who could take a little remark made thousands of years ago in Egypt and make sense out of it today. She waited patiently until he had finished. His hands were trembling as he reached for the urn.

“The circle,” he repeated, “the circle. ‘Ra in his circle shall guard Amenotaph.’ The secret lies in the circle, Kit. Do you suppose it could mean the rim of the urn?”

Kit studied the urn again and with the fingertip she traced the inscription and stopped when she came to a small circle in black and red outline.

“Do you suppose Ra lives here, Uncle Bart?” she asked, poking at it thoughtfully. She peered on the inner side at the corresponding spot to the circle, and gave a little cry of excitement. There was the faintest sign of a circle here also. “See,” she cried, “when you push on this side, the other gives a little bit.”

The Dean could not speak. He took the urn from her over to the window and carefully examined the inner circle through a microscope.

“Yes,” he said, fervently, “you are perfectly right, my dear. The circle moves. I think I shall have to send it to Washington. I would not take the responsibility of trying to remove it myself.”

“Oh, jeepers, it seems awful to have to wait so long,” Kit exclaimed regretfully. “It seemed to me as if you could just press it through with your thumb, like this.”

She had not intended pressing so hard, but merely to show him what she meant, and, under the pressure of her thumb, the circle of Ra depressed and pushed slowly through. The Dean looked on in utter amazement, as Kit lifted the urn and tested the inner section by shaking it. Then she peered into the circular hole, about the size of a quarter. The urn was fully two inches thick, and by inserting her finger into the space she found that it was made in two sections, with enough room between for a place of concealment.

“There’s something in here like asbestos, Uncle Bart,” she began, and turning the urn upside down, she tried shaking it, using a little pressure on the circle to separate the two rims. Slowly they gave, while the Dean hovered over her, cautioning and directing the operation, until two complete urns lay before them. But it was not these that the Dean snatched at. It was the curious cap-shaped mass which fell out in the form of a cone. To Kit it appeared to be of no significance whatever, but the Dean handled it as tenderly as a newborn child, and under his deft and tender touch it unrolled in long scrolls of papyrus.

The Dean rose to his feet solemnly, and his voice was hushed, as he said, “Kit, you do not know what you have done. Some day the significance of this occasion will recur to you. All I can say is that you have lifted the veil of the past, and revealed the secret of Amenotaph.”

15. Home Again

Kit arrived in Nantic a little past noon in the middle of the first snow storm of the winter. She was so glad to see Mr. Briggs’s smiling face on the platform, that she almost threw her arms around him, as she jumped from the platform of the train.

“Well, well,” he said, “didn’t expect to see you around so soon, Kit.”

“It’s good to be back, Mr. Briggs,” said Kit, as she looked around for the one taxi that Nantic had. She had not told her family just when she was arriving, so no one was there to meet her. She located the cab and after a hurried goodbye to Mr. Briggs she got in and was soon on the way up the familiar highway.

There was none of the family in sight when they turned up the drive, but suddenly Kit’s eager eyes saw a familiar figure out by the barn, and leaning forward she gave a shrill whistle.

Tommy turned in the direction of the whistle and when he saw who it was he came along the drive at a dead run. Before Kit could catch her breath, the big front door opened and there was the rest of the family. The reunion was indeed a happy one, everyone laughing and talking at once and deluging Kit with questions. It wasn’t until they were all settled in the living-room that Kit obligingly answered all their questions, telling them about Delphi, Hope College, the friends she had made, and last of all, the secret she and Uncle Bart had discovered in the Egyptian urn.

After the Christmas holidays when Jean had gone back to New York again, Kit found her opportunity of laying her summer plan before her mother and father. She had discarded hogs for a new idea she had thought up on the train coming home. Before Jean had left, Kit had told her about her scheme and together they had worked out the details. With Jean’s additional suggestions in mind, Kit felt she was ready to approach her parents.

“There are acres and acres here that we never use at all. All that wonderful land on both sides of the river up through the valley, and the two islands besides. What I thought we could do was this, if you could just let us kids manage it. Couldn’t we start a regular summer camp? You know those hunters’ cabins that are scattered along the valley would be ideal. Jean was telling me before she left about an artists’ colony up in the Catskills, where they have cabins fitted up so that you can cook in them and everything. I’m sure we could do it here.”

It had taken much argument and figuring on paper before the consent of both was won, but Becky approved of the scheme highly.

“Land alive, Margaret,” she exclaimed, “don’t crush anything that looks like budding initiative in your children. I’d let them put cabins all over the place until it blossomed like the wilderness. There’s a stack of old furniture up in the attic at Maple Grove and over at our place, too, and they’re welcome to it. Get some cans of paint and go to work, Kit.”

Kit acted immediately on the suggestion and drove up with Tommy and Jack to look over the collection of discarded furniture. What she liked best of all were the three-drawer, old-fashioned chests and handmade wooden chairs. There were several old single bedsteads, too.

“We’re going to paint them all over, Mom, and Tommy and Jack promised to put up any shelves or things like that we may need.”

“Don’t forget that they’ll have to eat sometime,” Becky reminded. “Get some two-burner oil stoves and folding tables. Lay in a stock of candles and lamps. I’d make them bring up their own bedding if I were you, because that would be the only nuisance you’d have to contend with.”

“It’s too bad,” Kit said, “that we’re so far away from any kind of stores. There are eight cabins altogether, and there’ll be ever so many things people will want to buy. Do you suppose, Mother, that Mr. Peckham would let Lucy manage anything like that up here? She’s just dying to do something besides housework all her life.”

“But where would you put her, dear?”

“I’ll bet the boys down there at the mill could throw together a perfectly swell little shack. They could either have it down by the mill or put it right here at the crossroads. Lucy could put in all kinds of supplies, films for cameras and post cards and candy.”

“Better put in a few canned goods, too, and staples,” add Becky. “I declare, I’d kind of like to have a hand in that myself. Kit, I do believe you’ve started something that may wake this town up.”

Kit herself attacked the problem of winning over the Peckhams to her idea of Lucy’s taking charge of a little store at the crossroads. Lucy sat with wide anxious eyes on the extreme edge of her chair, while her mother said over and over again it was utterly impossible.

“Why, I couldn’t get along without Lucy, especially in the summer, with all the fruit to put up and the young ones home from school.”

“But, Mrs. Peckham,” pleaded Kit, “when you were our age, wasn’t there ever anything that you wanted to do or be with all your heart and soul? Didn’t you ever just want to get away from what you had been doing for years, and start something new?”

“Well, come to think of it now,” smiled Mrs. Peckham, “I’d have given my eye-teeth to have left home and gone to be a teacher in some town.”

“Then please let Lucy do this. Becky says she’s willing to keep an eye on everything, and one of us girls will probably be helping her out most of the time, too. It would only be until the middle of September, and Anne’s fifteen and Charlotte’s twelve. Why, it isn’t fair to them to let them think all Lucy’s good for is to stay at home and do housework. You will let her go, won’t you, Mrs. Peckham?”

Mrs. Peckham sighed and smiled. “You’re a fearfully good pleader. I don’t suppose it would hurt the other girls any to take hold and help. I’m willing, and if her father is, why, she can go. Seems to me you are starting something you can’t finish, but maybe you can.”

The first part of April was unusually mild. A sort of balmy hush seemed to lie over the barren land, as though spring had chosen to steal upon it sleeping. On one of these warm spring days Kit, Doris, Tommy, and Jack went out to inspect the cabins to see if they needed repairing. Matt had promised to help them mend any leaking roofs and replace rotten boards, but except for two of them, they seemed to be in excellent condition. The furniture had all been scraped and painted and almost daily something was added to the store of supplies for the summer venture. The next problem to be solved was finding the occupants for the cabins, and here it was Jean who helped out.

“You don’t want to get a lot of people,” she wrote, “who will be expecting all the comforts of a typical summer resort, so I suggest my spreading the word among the art students here. They are sure to pass it along to their friends.”

When Jean came home to stay the end of May, the first thing she asked was, “Who do you suppose wants to rent one of our cabins for the whole summer?”

“Ralph McRae,” Kit replied immediately.

“But how did you know?” asked Jean. She had thought it would be a surprise.