HOPE'S PRIMROSE PATH
"Well, we waited fifteen minutes for you," protested Amy, laughingly, "and
Norma had to come down-town to try and find some high boots like Julia
Marlowe wore for Rosalind. She's had that old picture of her pinned up on
the wall for two weeks."
"Oh, and listen, Kit," Norma broke in; "you know that suede brown leather
table cover of mine; I just took and slashed it around the edges and bent
it over an old tam-o'-shanter crown and it looks exactly like the hat she
wore. You know I've been considering rather seriously. Don't you really
think that I'm peculiarly fitted for this sort of a career? Of course I'd
only play Shakespearian parts, although I'd love to be Joan of Arc like
Maude Adams was at Harvard, or play the old Greek tragedies at that
Stadium place, somewhere in California. I've been studying Electra a
little bit."
"Have you?" questioned Kit, kindly. "You dear child, you. So young and yet
so aspiring. Finish your chocolate ice cream soda, and we'll run along.
Rex just came with his car and we can all pile into it."
The rehearsal passed off splendidly, barring sundry interpolations by Kit
into Orlando's flights of fancy.
"I think he would have had to have been much more interesting to have held
the love of such a girl as Rosalind," she protested. "Heroes are awful
people anyway, I think. The only ones I really like are explorers. Uncle
Cassius said the other day that the most unique experience was to be the
first white man to step foot on new territory. I may take up forestry as a
profession, but I'd much rather be a woman explorer."
"Deserts, islands or mountain peaks?" queried Amy, as she dipped into her
store of supplies under the couch for some hasty refreshments.
"Caves, I think," said Kit, darkly; "caves or islands. Don't give me
anything to eat, 'cause I have to look up something in the library before
I go home, and I'm late for lunch now."
"Just pimento cheese on crackers, and I've got some chocolate marshmallows
here somewhere." Amy's voice was muffled under the couch cover. But the
clock on the mantel pointed at twelve-fifteen, and Kit knew the Dean's
punctilious regard for keeping meal hours.
The library was unoccupied, apparently. Kit went over to the lower book
shelves which contained the reference books on archæology, dragging a low
stool after her.
"A-men-o-taph," she said, under her breath. "Likewise Semele."
With the two volumes on her knees, she started to read up the references
which the Dean wanted, when all at once she was conscious of some one who
stood in the embrasured window 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 moment 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 note paper helter-skelter. "How on earth did you ever
get way out here?"
Billie shook hands with her, coloring boyishly, as he always did at any
display of emotion, and trying to act as if it were the most natural and
ordinary thing in the world for him to appear at Delphi, Wis., when he was
supposed to be at Washington in school.
"We got our test exams last week, and Stanley had to run 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 Stanley. You want to
roll up your sleeves and go to work like he does."
"Is he here, now?" asked Kit, eagerly.
"Yep." Billie nodded oat of the window, towards 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 exclaimed. "He's High Jinks' cousin. Regular bean pole,
with freckles, but mighty 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 east. If you wait here, I'll chase after Stanley, 'cause
he'll want to have lunch with the Diggs boy, and he can join us later."
Kit walked along the macadamized path which crossed the campus. It was
bordered by dwarf evergreen, but the students had named it Hope's primrose
path, owing to the temptation to dally along it, whenever one had the
chance.
The coming of Billie unexpectedly, just at a time when she was feeling her
first homesickness, struck Kit as being a special little gift handed out
to her by Providence. 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 luncheon. Kit's face was fairly radiant as she presented her old-time
chum of the hills to Miss Daphne and the Dean.
"Don't you remember, Uncle Cassius," she asked eagerly, "how, when I first
came, I told you all about the boy back home who would have just suited
you? Well, that was Billie."
The Dean's gray eyes wrinkled as he surveyed Billie over the tops of his
eye-glasses.
"You come highly recommended, young man," he said. "Kit almost persuaded
me that if she didn't suit I might be able to coax you away from your
grandfather."
"I'll bet you wouldn't change now," Billie responded, gallantly. "Kit
knows a hundred per cent, more than I do, sir. I used to hate history
until she took to telling me stories about it, and making it interesting.
All I really care about is natural history, especially insects and birds."
"Well, you could have a lovely time studying over uncle's Egyptian
scarabs," said Kit, placidly. "Weren't you telling me something about a
place in China where they had a whole grove filled with sacred silkworms,
Aunt Daphne?"
Miss Peabody smiled and nodded, looking from one young face to the other.
Never before had youth sat lunching at that table with her and her brother
in quite such a radiant guise. The Dean usually took his noontide meal in
absolute silence when they were alone together, as 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 to be absent.