STANLEY APOLOGIZES
After lunch they all went into the library to look over the Dean's newly
arrived treasures.
"Well, for pity's sakes," 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."
"Dear child," the Dean responded, happily, as he bent down to trace the
curious, cuneiform markings which 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. Daphne, 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, I doubt not
but what it did away with much of our modern detail."
"Oh," exclaimed Kit, suddenly, "I left all the notes on Semele in the
library. I'm awfully sorry, Uncle Cassius, but when I saw Billy standing
there unexpectedly, I just forgot everything. We can walk up there this
afternoon and get them. Is the statue very beautiful?"
"Perfect, perfect," murmured the Dean, as he still hung over the urn
abstractedly. "It's just behind you, my dear."
Kit turned, expecting to face one of the usual blandly smiling Egyptian
colossi, even in miniature, with a few wings scattered over it here and
there. But instead, there stood in the center of the Dean's library table
a strangely attenuated figure about three feet high. As Billie said
afterwards, it appeared to be dancing the Grasshopper's Nocturnal
Rhapsody. It had a head that was a cross between an intelligent antelope
and a rather toploftical baby rat. Its arms were extended at sharp angles,
and seemed to be pointing in arch accusation at one. Wings spread fanwise
from the shoulders, and its feet were like the feet 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, after the notes on
Semele.
"Well, I knew well what to expect, because we've been doing the
Smithsonian Institute pretty well," responded Billie, rather knowingly.
"Some of them look worse than that. But they can't beat our own little
Alaskan and Mexican beauties. 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 after a
hike along the shore, and she hailed them, much to Billie's inward
disgust. While he approved thoroughly of Kit, he viewed the average girl
from a safe altitude indifference. But Kit introduced him in an off-hand,
casual manner which put him at his ease, and when they started up the
primrose path, it was the "Jinx" herself who had taken possession of
Billie, and was interesting him thoroughly, telling of her father's big
stock farm outside of Maquoketa.
They found Stanley Howard awaiting them on one of the big tree seats,
outside the Hall. Clayton was with him, strumming on a ukulele, as they
talked, happily and lazily. The girls followed Kit into the library, as
she went on a hunt after Semele, and here Amy faced her accusingly.
"You never told us a word about this Billie boy," she declared, "and ever
since you came here, you've made believe to overlook boys. You haven't
wanted them in any of our affairs. You made fun of the girls who did want
them, and all the time you've had this one up your sleeve. Kathleen,
explain."
"If he's a relative," Peggy interposed, serenely, "we'll let you off.
You've never been initiated into anything. You haven't even had your
freshman hazing, because the Dean doesn't approve of such doings, and we
felt that we'd better keep it out of the family, but there are limits,
aren't there, girls?"
Kit laughed up at them, as she groped about on the floor picking up the
scattered pages of notes.
"Well, he's a relative, if you must know," she retorted. "He's my father's
first cousin's husband's grandchild. Now haze me if you like."
Vowing that this connection was altogether too nebulous to save her from
the threatened penalty, the girls buried the hatchet for the time being in
the entertainment of the guests.
"I suppose Hope looks pretty small to you after the universities back
east," Norma said to Billie, as they made the rounds of the buildings,
after Amy had played hostess with Kit's help, and had brought down a
goodly supply of fudge and peanut nougat.
"Looks mighty good," returned Billie, heartily. "I think you can have
loads more fun in a place like this than you can at the big schools. And
you know, I'm not going to a university or anything of that sort. I'm just
at the 'Prep' and taking up special branches outside with Mr. Howard."
"What kind of branches?" queried Norma.
"Oh, science, and physics, but specially entomology and forestry. He's in
government service, you know."
"He doesn't act a bit important or dignified, does he?" Norma said
thoughtfully. "You'd almost think he was a sort of grown-up boy."
"I wish I knew all he does. It's mighty nice for a fellow to have a friend
like Stanley. It's like being a little bicycle running in the track of a
speeding motorcycle. You may not be able to keep up, but it's mighty good
exercise trying to hit the pace."
Kit was walking behind the others with Amy and Anne. Now that they had
joined the others, and the girls were talking about Stanley also, she had
become strangely silent.
"You don't know him very well, do you?" Amy asked, curiously. "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 down east when he came to chase
the gypsy moth in Gilead."
She did not add that with Shad'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 corn-crib, but she inwardly suspected
that Stanley was remembering it. Every once in a while she accidentally
caught him looking at her, with a look of amused, interested retrospection
that made her vaguely uncomfortable.
As they left the campus, Norma, leading with Billie, took the street that
led to the bluffs overlooking the lake, and somehow or other in the
subsequent scramble down the narrow pathways, Kit found Stanley at her
elbow. Even Jean could not have been more dignified or distant in her
manner, but Stanley refused to be frozen out.
"You know," he said, genially, "I've just found out something, Miss Kit. I
forgave you long ago for locking me up in your corn-crib, and nearly
landing me in the local calaboose, but you don't forgive me one bit for
trespassing in your berry patch."
Kit's profile tilted ever so slightly heavenward. Jean had loved to quote
to her in the old days that consistency was a jewel, and William of Avon
had said so positively, whereupon Kit would swing always, feeling herself
backed by Emerson's opinion that "consistency was a hobgoblin of little
minds." Yet now she felt herself feeling almost righteously consistent.
She had thoroughly made up her mind that very day when Mr. Hicks made his
memorable and fruitless journey to Greenacres 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 other members of the family had something to do
with Kit's stand against him. Even Helen had remarked that she didn't see
how on earth Kit could ever have imagined a person looking like Mr. Howard
could be a berry hooker.
"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." Stanley'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, and waggled it provocatively over her
shoulder. Before he could say any more, she had hurried ahead and caught
up with the rest.