ENTER THE ROYAL MUMMIES
Kit deliberately planned her campaign for the following week, and the only
girl she took into her confidence was Anne Bellamy. It had been the
greatest relief, somehow, when Anne returned to Delphi for the fall term.
There was something good-natured and comfortably serene about Anne that
made her companionship a relief from that of the other girls. Jean often
said back home that Kit was such a bunch of fireworks herself, she always
needed the background of a calm silent night or a flaccid temperament, to
set her off properly.
"You know, Anne," Kit exclaimed, sinking with a luxurious sigh of content
down among the cushions on the broad couch in Anne's room, "I'd give
anything, sometimes, if I'd been an only child; of course, you've got a
brother, but you're the only girl. You don't know what it is to be one of
four. I share my room with Helen, back home, and all honors with Jean.
Then, of course, Doris is the baby, and while we all love each other
devotedly, still you do have to elbow your way through a large family, if
you want to keep on being yourself. I read somewhere about old Joaquin
Miller, the poet of the Sierras. Know him?"
Anne shook her head, as she combed out her long brown hair, holding one
roll with her teeth.
"No, I don't suppose you do," Kit went on happily. "That's one reason why
you and I are going to be fearfully good friends, 'cause you don't know
everything in creation. It seems to me I can't speak of anything at all at
home now that Jean doesn't know more about it than I do, or Helen thinks
she does, which is worse. Don't mind me this morning. I just got a family
budget, full of don'ts."
"Yes, and you're just as likely as not to be homesick to-morrow," laughed
Anne. "Go on about your poet."
"Oh, nothing, except that he didn't believe there should be more than one
room in a house, and he built little individual houses all over 'The
Heights' out in California. I'd love to do that back home, with a
dining-room on one green hill, and the kitchen down in the, valley."
"You'd need a mountain railway on an up grade, when it came meal time."
"Well maybe," Kit assented, "but at least I'd have my own bower in a pine
grove, and each of the royal princesses could go and do likewise. But that
isn't what I came over for. You know Marcelle Beaubien? The girls don't
like her going to Hope."
"Don't they?" Anne asked, mildly. "Well, what are they going to do about
it? I thought that's what colleges were for. Who's against her?"
"I don't think it's exactly anything definite or violent, but you know how
mighty uncomfortable they can make her. There's Amy Roberts and Norma and
Peggy Porter and the Tony Conyers crowd."
"She won't miss anything special, even if they do try to snub her,"
answered Anne laughingly.
"This is my second year at Hope, and I want to tell you right now that
Charity rules in the Douglas Dormitory. If you can get her on Marcelle's
side, the other girls will trot along like little lambkins."
"Do you suppose," Kit leaned forward impressively, as she sprang her plan,
"do you suppose Charity would loan her room for a Founders' Tea?"
"A Founders' Tea," repeated Anne. "What's that?"
Kit proclaimed grandiloquently:
"A tea in honor of Malcolm Douglas, pioneer founder of Hope College, and
grandfather of Marcelle Beaubien."
Anne's blue eyes widened in amazement, and her hair-brush was suspended in
mid-air.
"How did you find out?" she whispered. "Does Marcelle know?"
"Of course she knows. She told me all about it herself, but I don't think
she's got sense enough to realize what a nice handy little club of
defense it gives her against the girls to spring it on them at the tea,
and you've got to help me get it up. We'll coax Charity into loaning us
her room first, and I'll look up all about Malcolm Douglas, and write a
cute little essay about the historic founding of Hope. Then we'll send out
mysterious little invitations, and just say on them, 'To meet a Founder's
granddaughter.'"
"When?" asked Anne, reflectively. "You ought to do it soon, so if it works
they'll take her into the different clubs right away. I think you ought to
try and see Charity to-day after classes and get her advice. Another
thing, Kit, do you suppose Marcelle would have any relics around of her
grandfather that we could kind of spring on them unexpectedly?"
Kit's eyes kindled with appreciation.
"That's a worthy thought. Sort of corroborative evidence, as it were.
Anne, you're a wonder." She sprang up from the couch, her hands deep in
her white sweater pockets, looking very fit and purposeful. "I think it's
up to me to go and prepare Charity. You make out a list of things that
we'll want for the tea. You'd better be the refreshment chairman, and
we'll try and make it a week from next Saturday."
"Too far off," Anne demurred. "Better do it while it's fresh in your mind,
before you start lectures."
"I believe I'll go over now. It's only a little after five, and that'll
keep me from answering that family budget until I've calmed down. If you
see any one looking for me, tell them I'll be right straight back. I'll
stop in the library and look up Malcolm's historic record, on my way, so
you may truthfully announce I'm delving into research."
Kit went up the hill road buoyantly. Dearly she loved to set a goal ahead
of her, and then run for it. Delphi had appeared rather barren as a field
for her real endeavor, but now with the opening of school, she could see
her way ahead to conscientiously starting something, which she sincerely
hoped she could finish. Coming along the sidewalk which bounded the campus
on the south, she met Charity on her way back from the post-office.
"This is ever so much better than going up-stairs," Kit said. "Let's walk
around the campus twice, while I unburden my soul."
At the second lap, the whole plan had been matured by Charity's quick
sympathy and understanding.
"And it will do them good, too," she said, as they parted. "That's not the
college spirit by a long shot, and you're perfectly right, Kit, but just
the same it's easier to get it on the girls in this way with a nice
friendly accompaniment of sandwiches, and iced tea, and whatever you do,
Kit, don't breathe one blessed word to anybody. I wouldn't even tell
Marcelle herself that she is to be the guest of honor. She'd run like a
deer, if she even suspected it."
The date of the Founders' Tea was set for the following Saturday. Kit
evolved the invitations herself and wrote them on blank cards, as she
remembered doing back at the Cove in the days of opulence and
entertainment.
_Saturday, October Second, Three to Five_.
You are invited to attend a Founders' Tea, Douglas Dormitory,
Hope College, Miss Allen's Study.
"Diffident, modest and correct," quoth Kit, critically, when she showed
them to Anne. "Now, what are you going to eat, Anne? Isn't there something
besides just plain tea? Couldn't we fix up some kind of glorified
lemonade?"
"I've got it all down," answered Anne. "Grape juice, ginger ale and
lemons. It's wonderful, and six kinds of sandwiches. Cheese with pimento,
and cheese with chopped walnuts, lettuce and egg, chopped raisins with
beaten white of egg, and raspberry jam and cream cheese, sardine on
lettuce with mayonnaise and deviled ham, with macaroons on the side."
"It's perfectly dandy," exclaimed Kit. "Aunt Daphne told me when I first
started in that I could give a spread for the girls, and this is it. After
it's all over, I'll tell her about Marcelle, and I know she'll enjoy it
and approve. I think we ought to get Peggy or Amy to write some kind of
an anniversary ode for us. It might begin like this:
"Oh, have you a family founder,
On your ancestral tree,
Who laid the corner-stone of Hope
On the campus at Del-phee."
"Better finish that up, and read it at the tea," advised Anne; "there's
something so spirited about it. Is Charity going to decorate the study for
the festal occasion? We ought to have something sort of different, don't
you think so?"
"Pioneer relics would be the only thing, and I don't know where we'd scare
those up."
"There's a whole cabinet of them in the Dean's room at the Assembly Hall."
The two girls looked at each other wisely. The subject really needed no
argument or discussion. Kit said briefly:
"I'll try. I think I can get some of them anyway if I approach Uncle
Cassius as a humble student seeking knowledge."
All unprepared for the onslaught, the Dean sat enjoying his after dinner
smoke that evening when Kit tapped at the door.
"Come in," he called, a little bit testily, looking over his eye-glasses
at the intruder. "I don't think I can talk with you just now, my dear," he
said. "I am very busy working out a dynasty problem."
"Oh, but I'd love to help," Kit pleaded, "and I did help before on the
aborigines of Japan, didn't I? I even remember their names, the Ainos."
"This is early Egyptian. Something you know nothing whatever about."
"Just mummies?" inquired Kit. "Oh, Uncle Cassius, we girls back home made
up a lovely little couplet about that when we were studying Egypt at high
school.
"'Heaven bless the royal mommies,
And the jewels in their tummies.'"
No answering gleam of amusement showed in the Dean's eyes. In fact, be
regarded her, Kit thought, rather severely for this unseemly display of
levity.
"Of course," she added, hastily, "that was when I was very much younger
than I am now. It was two years ago."
The Dean coughed deprecatingly, and turned back to the pamphlets before
him.
"Remains have been discovered," he began in quite the tone he used in
Assembly, "of the lost tribe of the Nemi. When the Greeks, my dear,
obtained a foothold in Carthage and along the Mediterranean coast, the
Nemi remained unconquered and retreated to the mountain fastnesses, west
of the source of the Nile."
"Well, I know all about that," Kit answered, encouragingly, perching
herself on the arm of a chair, across from him. "Just see," and she
counted off on her fingers, "Livingstone-Stanley,--Victoria
Falls--Zambesi--and Kipling wrote all about the people in 'Fuzzy-Wuzzy.'"
"No, no, no, not a bit like it!" the Dean exclaimed. "My dear child, learn
to think in centuries and epochs. The long and short of it is, there have
been some very wonderful remains of the Nemi recently discovered, and I
have been honored by a commission from the Institute to write a complete
summary of the results of the expedition and its historic significance."
"Don't you wish you'd been there when they dug them up? That's what I'd
love, the exploring part, don't you know. I should think it would be
fearfully dry trying to make bones sit up and talk, when you are so far
away from it all."
"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 some
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, or
was that Queen Dido?" Then she said aloud very positively and earnestly:
"I know I can help you a lot with this, Uncle Cassius, if you will only
let me, because history is my favorite study, and the reason I came to
speak to you to-night is this: We girls are going to have a Founders' Tea,
Saturday afternoon, up at Hope; 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," Kit explained, "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 Assembly Hall. 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 the slender
chain which barred his waistcoat.
Kit retired with it, as though she bore a trophy, and the next day the
last preparations were completed for impressing on the freshman class the
honor of having a Founder's granddaughter in their midst.